“We are likely to hear the words: ‘If we don’t do this, people will die,’” Mr. Comey said. But he argued that government lawyers must uphold the principles of their great institutions.
“It takes far more than a sharp legal mind to say ‘no’ when it matters most,” he said. “It takes moral character. It takes an understanding that in the long run, intelligence under law is the only sustainable intelligence in this country.”
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“The problem is, once you’ve got a legal opinion that says such a technique is O.K., what happens when one of our people is captured and they do it to him? How do we protest then?”
- John D. Hutson, former Judge Advocate General of the Navy
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The New York Times published a blistering expose yesterday of the sordid role U.S. Department of Justice lawyers played in providing legal cover for harsh interrogation techniques that clearly are tantamount to torture, by any reasonable standard:
But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.
Justice Department lawyers provided opinions on questions such as this:
“These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature — can they be combined?” Or “Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?”
Apparently, they did not typically "opine" in the direction of caution, restraint or compliance with applicable treaties to which the United States is a signatory.
The result: Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. Rendition. Secret prisons. "Severe" interrogation methods, indeed.
Mr. Cormey had it right - they will be ashamed.
It's time that State bar committees and regulatory bodies begin to take a look at these lawyers' conduct.
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
Visit our Toronto Law Firm website: www.wiselaw.net
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