In an amazing article in Today's NY Times, We learn that the Bush Administration's December 2004 OLC legal opinion denouncing torture as unacceptable was secretly replaced in February 2005 by a memo that allowed combinations of interrogation techniques that many in the government felt were extreme.
James Comey, the former Deputy Attorney General who stood up to the Administration over warrantless wiretapping told colleagues at the Department of Justice "that they would all be 'ashamed' when the world eventually learned of it."
Now the world knows about it.
According to the article:
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
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.
Thus after Alberto Gonzales became AG, the memo decrying torture as "abhorrent" was secretly replaced with a memo that approved torture.
According to the article, the new memo was written by Steven G. Bradbury the acting OLC head under Gonzales since 2005. According to the article, Bradbury was installed as acting OLC head without nomination for a "trial period." No doubt they wanted to ensure he could be controlled by Addington/Cheney/Gonzales to generate the legal opinions they demanded.
The article also chronicles the purge of the last remnants of integrity at the DOJ. Jack Goldsmith, who also opposed the Administration on warrantless wiretapping, resigned as he withdrew the existing Bybee/Yoo torture memo that approved techniques some in the Government felt abhorrent and in violation of international law.
Goldsmiths replacement, Daniel Levin, authored the December 2004 memo on interrogations that seemed to outlaw torture techniques. This memo remains on the Justice Department website as the public face of the Administration's torture policy. But this memo was in reality in effects for 3 months. By February, 2005, Levin had been transferred, and Bradbury wrote the top secret memo permitting combinations of severe techniques that James Comey warned would be considered shameful.
With Jack Goldsmith, Patrick Philbin, and John Ashcroft gone, Comey was the last remaining moderating influence in the DOJ. Comey was the only one left with the backbone to stand up to David Addington. But he was on the Administration Blacklist. Upon Gonzales' arrival, Comey found himself alone, and left Government shortly thereafter.
Under Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Comey’s opposition might have killed the opinion. An imposing former prosecutor and self-described conservative who stands 6-foot-8, he was the rare administration official who was willing to confront Mr. Addington. At one testy 2004 White House meeting, when Mr. Comey stated that "no lawyer" would endorse Mr. Yoo’s justification for the N.S.A. program, Mr. Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Mr. Comey shot back: "No good lawyer," according to someone present.
But under Mr. Gonzales, and after the departure of Mr. Goldsmith and other allies, the deputy attorney general found himself isolated. His troublemaking on N.S.A. and on interrogation, and in appointing his friend Patrick J. Fitzgerald as special prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case, which would lead to the perjury conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, had irreparably offended the White House.
With Comey gone in early 2005, the DOJ went to hell in a handbasket under Gonzales: Politicization of prosecution, firing good US Attorneys for political reasons, political hiring, and far reaching opinions on surveillance, detention and torture. Comey was right, the DOJ under Gonzales and this Administration was Shameful.
We are only now seeing the details of the profound corruption of principle at the DOJ that took place in the Bush Administration.
We will no doubt learn more in the coming months and years.
Update:
Now is an appropriate time to again acknowledge the men in our Government who were prepared to resign in March 2004 over the flawed Yoo opinion authorizing the Warrantless Wiretapping Program. From an old diary of mine:
The following day, The Illegal Warrantless Surveillance Program was authorized by the president without a customary (and possibly required) DOJ approval signature. According to the written testimony of James Comey for the SJC, this incredible situation prompted James Comey, Jack Goldsmith, Patrick Philbin, Chuck Rosenberg, Daniel Levin, James Baker, David Ayres, David Israelite and Robert Mueller to prepare to resign from the Government if the Warrantless Surveillance program continued illegally.
.
.
Note: mcjoan had a frontpage diary on what this report might mean for the Mukasey nomination, and OneCrankyDom also has an earlier diary on this article, focusing on the CIA and "black sites". I am leaving mine up because the Times article is tremendously important, and my take here is somewhat different, focusing on the Good vs. Evil dynamic at play between personnel the DOJ and WHO from 2003-2005.
Alas, Evil won.