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Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush [NYT]
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Tue, 08 Jun 2004 17:43:51 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: "Trei, Peter" <ptrei () rsasecurity com> Date: June 8, 2004 3:54:47 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush [NYT] For IP, if you wish. It sort of reminds me of the Nixon line 'When the President does it, its not against the law.' Peter ----------------- From the NYT, June 8 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/08/politics/08ABUS.html (free registration required) Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush By NEIL A. LEWIS and ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON, June 7 - A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security. The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons. One reason, the lawyers said, would be if military personnel believed that they were acting on orders from superiors "except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently unlawful." "In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign," the lawyers wrote in the 56-page confidential memorandum, the prohibition against torture "must be construed as inapplicable to interrogation undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority." [...] Scott Horton, the former head of the human rights committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, said Monday that he believed that the March memorandum on avoiding responsibility for torture was what caused a delegation of military lawyers to visit him and complain privately about the administration's confidential legal arguments. That visit, he said, resulted in the association undertaking a study and issuing of a report criticizing the administration. He added that the lawyers who drafted the torture memo in March could face professional sanctions. Jamie Fellner, the director of United States programs for Human Rights Watch, said Monday, "We believe that this memo shows that at the highest levels of the Pentagon there was an interest in using torture as well as a desire to evade the criminal consequences of doing so." The March memorandum also contains a curious section in which the lawyers argued that any torture committed at Guantánamo would not be a violation of the anti-torture statute because the base was under American legal jurisdiction and the statute concerns only torture committed overseas. That view is in direct conflict with the position the administration has taken in the Supreme Court, where it has argued that prisoners at Guantánamo Bay are not entitled to constitutional protections because the base is outside American jurisdiction. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/
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- Lawyers Decided Bans on Torture Didn't Bind Bush [NYT] David Farber (Jun 08)