This may not be breaking news, but I was pleased to see this story make it into the MSM.
Ever wondered how the U.S. justified torturing detainees at Guatanamo? It wasn't the fault of a few rogue soldiers, as the administration would have you believe.
Turns out that they enlisted five White House, Pentagon, and Justice department lawyers to 'find a way' to make this sound legal. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney instructed these lawyers to "find a way" to make torture legal.
The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the “War Council," drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military's code of justice, the federal court system and America's international treaties in order to prevent anyone — from soldiers on the ground to the president — from being held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.
Fortunately the Supreme Court has struck down many of their legal interpretations, with the most recent being that detainees at Guatanamo are allowed to challenge their detainment in federal court.
Who was in the Gang of Five?
Only one of the five War Council lawyers remains in office: David Addington, the brilliant but abrasive longtime legal adviser and now chief of staff to Cheney. His primary motive, according to several former administration and defense officials, was to push for an expansion of presidential power that Congress or the courts couldn't check.
Alberto Gonzales, first the White House counsel and then the attorney general, resigned last August amid allegations of perjury related to congressional hearings about the firings of U.S. attorneys.
The Defense Department in February abruptly announced the resignation of William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel, amid sharp public criticism by military lawyers that he failed to ensure a just system of detainee trials at Guantanamo.
Even some conservatives have condemned former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo for what many called sloppy legal work in drafting key memorandums about detention policy. He's now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
The last and least known member of the group, Timothy E. Flanigan, a former deputy to Gonzales, withdrew his nomination to be deputy attorney general in 2005 amid mounting questions in the Senate about his role in drafting the administration's legal definition of torture and other issues.
This is fascinating to me. I can't wait to see how this story plays out. We saw bits and pieces of it - the Alberto Gonzales debacle, with Al throwing himself under the bus, the firings of all these attorneys who were obviously not on board with the program... I'm sure there's more. It's like picking up a rock and watching all the bugs scuttle away.
Click on the link - there's a list of memos in the McClatchy article that changed the legal terrain and made it more hospitable for torture... at least temporarily.