Bush DOJ OLC Memos

In what may be (and what I hope will be) the beginning of a movement to start investigations into the Bush administration's policies and acts in its fight against terrorism since 9/11, the Department of Justice yesterday released several DOJ Office of Legal Counsel memos from the Bush administration.

Most of the memos were written by John Yoo when he was at the OLC during the 9/11 aftermath. Two memos are by Steven Bradbury, the acting OLC head at the end of the Bush adminstration. Bradbury's memos, written in October 2008 and on January 15, 2009 (just 5 days before Obama took office), repeal the legal opinions in the Yoo memos, but they notably come long after the fact and right before Bush left office. They look to be a way of covering Bush administration asses.

The big news though are the Yoo memos. I have only read excerpts of them from blogs and news accounts, but they are getting lots of prominence for their amazingly distorted Constitutional views of Presidential power in times of military action. Yoo essentially says that the President can disregard the 1st and 4th amendments, do anything he deems necessary to ensure national security, and that Congress can not get in the way of any of this.

The reviews of these memos are starting today, and the criticism is rolling in. See Glenn Greenwald, Scott Horton, and Jack Balkin for examples. The mainstream media is getting into the act too (h/t Glenn Greenwald for all). Let's hope that some momentum is gained from this towards eventual investigations. If the public becomes more aware of what the Bush administration was up to, and a clamor for investigations hopefully grows, then it will be easier for Obama and Congress to initiate them (and not resist them as they have).

The timing of the memos being released couldn't be more coincidental for me. I've begun reading Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side. It's an engrossing chronicle of the Bush administration actors and their actions in the time since 9/11. There have been a number of critical books written about the Bush administration all of them hovering around the war on terror and the Iraq war, but this book may be the most important account of what the Bush adminstration has done. It goes directly to the heart of the matter: how the Bush administration followed an extreme ideological viewpoint, ran amok of the law, and consequently seriously harmed the reputation of the USA as a moral standard bearer in the world.

I've only read about a third of the book. However, I just read a chapter on the lawyers in the administration, particularly David Addington (Cheney's VP counsel and later chief of staff) and John Yoo. So the release of these memos ties in nicely with reading the book. From what I've read so far, I highly recommend the book.