In a long-anticipated action, the Justice Department, at the direction of Attorney General Eric Holder, finally released today the controversial memos used by the Bush Administration to support its erosion of constitutional rights. Elections have consequences, and now it's all coming out in the open.
Link to Released Memos
From the AP:
The Justice Department on Monday released a long-secret legal document from 2001 in which the Bush administration claimed the military could search and seize terror suspects in the United States without warrants.
The legal memo was written about a month after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. It says constitutional protections against unlawful search and seizure would not apply to terror suspects in the U.S., as long as the president or another high official authorized the action.
Of course, had Richard Nixon used this rationale, Ted Kennedy and Jack Anderson would probably have been locked up.
Another memo showed that, within two weeks of Sept. 11, the administration was contemplating ways to use wiretaps without getting warrants.
The author of the search and seizure memo, John Yoo, did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
In that memo, Yoo wrote that the president could treat terrorist suspects in the United States like an invading foreign army. For instance, he said, the military would not have to get a warrant to storm a building to prevent terrorists from detonating a bomb.
Yoo also suggested that the government could put new restrictions on the press and speech, without spelling out what those might be.
"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."
The files are all in PDF form, so pulling quotes in from the documents is going to be difficult. But finally, we can all see the twisted and ugly logic that supported eight years' worth of destruction.
The titles of the memos are:
Memorandum Regarding Status of Certain OLC Opinions Issued in the Aftermath of the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 (01-15-2009)
Memorandum Regarding Constitutionality of Amending Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to Change the "Purpose" Standard for Searches (09-25-2001)
Memorandum Regarding Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities within the United States (10-23-2001)
Memorandum Regarding Authority of the President to Suspend Certain Provisions of the ABM Treaty (11-15-2001)
Memorandum Regarding the President's Power as Commander in Chief to Transfer Captured Terrorists to the Control and Custody of Foreign Nations (03-13-2002)
Memorandum Regarding Swift Justice Authorization Act (04-08-2002)
Memorandum Regarding Determination of Enemy Belligerency and Military Detention (06-08-2002)
Memorandum Regarding Applicability of 18 U.S.C. § 4001(a) to Military Detention of United States Citizens (06-27-2002)
Memorandum Regarding October 23, 2001 OLC Opinion Addressing the Domestic Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities (10-06-2008)
The DailyKos community should collectively go through these and bring all the particularly egregious passages to light. Some of them will undoubtedly be cloaked in lawyer-speak, so those Kossacks who are lawyers should especially take a look at what case law these memos are based on. Let's get to work.
*UPDATE*
More from the AP:
A newly released Bush administration legal memo from 2002 claimed that the president has an unfettered right to transfer suspected terrorists to other governments without regard for whether they would be subject to torture.
The memo appears to underpin the Bush administration's use of extraordinary rendition, a secret program of moving terror detainees to nations where they were imprisoned and, in some cases, reportedly tortured.
The document is one of nine made public Monday detailing the Bush administration's expansive definition of presidential power.
When the memo was written on March 13, 2002, the White House legal office had already decided that al-Qaida and Taliban detainees were not protected by the Geneva Conventions, the international treaty the governs the treatment of prisoners of war.
This is the Bybee memo, used to rationalize the transfer of prisoners to countries that torture. But read on:
The memo on extraordinary rendition, written by Jay S. Bybee, then assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel, further said that prisoners held outside the United States were not protected by U.S. laws against torture, nor against an international treaty banning torture.
The Bybee memo also said that a 1998 law making it U.S. policy not to hand over prisoners to country where they may be tortured was invalid because it unconstitutionally interferes with presidential powers.
However, the possibility that prisoners might be tortured after a transfer to another government outside the criminal justice system appeared to be on the minds of George W. Bush's White House lawyers. The memo suggested ways to U.S. officials could transfer prisoners to countries where they may indeed be tortured without making them legally liable for their treatment.
"To fully shield our personnel from criminal liability, it is important that the United States not enter in an agreement with a foreign country, explicitly or implicitly, to transfer a detainee to that country for the purpose of having the individual tortured," Bybee wrote.
"So long as the United States doe not intend for a detainee to be tortured post-transfer, however, no criminal liability will attach to a transfer even if the foreign country receiving the detainee does torture him," he wrote.
Honestly, it makes me sick reading such twisted logic.