Professor John Yoo Is Evil & a Dangerous Person

[WaTcHeR]

BERKELEY -- Some 50 protesters, clad in orange jumpsuits and black hoods to emulate the infamous photos of prisoners in Iraq, picketed UC Berkeley's law school graduation ceremony Saturday, demanding that the university fire Professor John Yoo for his authorship of the Bush administration's policies on torture.

"We want to see him fired and disbarred for being a war criminal," said Anne Weills, an Oakland attorney who said she was with the National Lawyers Guild, one of the groups that protested. "Academic freedom stops when you intend to harm or injure somebody."

Yoo, a tenured constitutional law professor at Boalt Hall, took a leave of absence from 2001 to 2003 to work for the U.S. Department of Justice. During that time, he wrote what critics call the "torture memos," which protesters say outlined the legal basis for the use of torture at the Abu Ghraib (Iraq) and Guantanamo Bay (Cuba) military prisons.

Boalt Hall officials said earlier last week that Yoo would not attend Saturday's graduation ceremony.

Graduates and their families and friends generally were supportive of the protest, held outside UC Berkeley's Greek Theatre, but they were also supportive of Yoo's right to teach at the law school.

"He definitely should be prosecuted, but he deserves his day in court like anyone else," said Reem Salahi of Los Angeles, who graduated from the law school Saturday. "Some people think this protest takes away from a celebratory event, but I think it's a good opportunity to raise this issue."

William Upshaw of Oakland, who was at the event to see his wife graduate, was unhappy with the hoopla outside the theater.

"It's interesting, but unexpected," he said as he filed past the protest, carrying a bouquet for his wife, "and, actually, I don't think it's appropriate."

Protesters toted signs and handed out leaflets. Two protesters knelt in a cage meant to resemble a prison cell. Standing guard at the cage was Mary Erwin of Oakland, who was dressed in camouflage fatigues and brandished a cardboard replica of an automatic rifle.

"I'm here because it's a good opportunity to pressure the government on this issue," she said. "It feels good to be out here talking about it. Most people are saying 'thank you.' "
Airborne demonstration

After the ceremony, protesters and graduation attendees exchanged a few barbs as graduates, their friends and family gathered for a reception outside Boalt Hall. Some criticized the noise from a plane that circled the Greek Theatre for part of the ceremony, pulling a banner blasting Yoo.

Yoo is not likely to be fired for his political views, Boalt Dean Christopher Edley Jr., wrote in a memo last month. The memo was posted on the Boalt Hall Web site.

While many of his colleagues and students are disturbed by Yoo's opinions, Yoo is protected by the First Amendment and campus policies on academic freedom, Edley wrote.

"My sense is that the vast majority of legal academics with a view of the matter disagree with substantial portions of Professor Yoo's analyses, including a great many of his colleagues at Berkeley," Edley wrote. "If, however, this strong consensus were enough to fire or sanction someone, then academic freedom would be meaningless."

Yoo and former Attorney General John Ashcroft agreed last week to appear before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties regarding CIA interrogation techniques.
Legal basis for torture

Yoo drafted an August 2002 memo, signed by his boss, former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, providing the legal basis to justify torture in interrogating terrorism suspects. Among other things, Yoo argued that habeas corpus and other legal protections don't apply to CIA detainees because Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib are not on U.S. soil.

Yoo's torture memo was later rescinded by the Department of Justice and, in 2004 and 2006, in two lawsuits challenging the legality of the torture policy, the U.S. Supreme Court voided many of Yoo's arguments.

Yoo could not be reached for comment Saturday, but he has defended his positions in several newspaper opinion articles.

"In wartime ... attacking members of the enemy is not considered assassination or murder," he wrote in a Chronicle essay in September 2005. "Killing the enemy is legal in war."


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c ... .DTL&tsp=1

[WaTcHeR]

Read about raping children in front of parents-

http://www.policecrimes.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3954

[WaTcHeR]

The men who advised former President Bush to waterboard detainees and deprive them of sleep will be cleared of charges of professional misconduct by a Justice Department ethics report.

The report, which has yet to be released, states that Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor, showed "poor judgment," but will not face legal action for their advocacy of harsh interrogation tactics.

Previously, the probe concluded that the two men violated professional obligations, meaning Yoo could be barred from practicing law and Bybee could be impeached.

Now, not so much.

The torture memos of Bybee and Yoo, officials in the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, outraged civil liberties groups and Democrats because they protected CIA interrogators from legal consequences for torture.

The winds began to turn for Yoo when attorneys with the Obama administration filed a brief arguing against prosecution. The brief states that because Yoo was giving advice to the president on a national security matter, Yoo should not be held accountable for his actions as it would have a chilling effect on advice provided to future presidents.

Shortly after the release of the memos in March 2009, constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann that the memos "provide the very definition of tyranny."

"These memos include everything that a petty despot would want," Turley said.


http://rawstory.com/2010/01/authors-bus ... isconduct/

[WaTcHeR]

I'm glad I'm not John Yoo, that guy is a dead man walking and he knows it. I really don't blame those people who are out to get John Yoo, more power to them.

[WaTcHeR]

Leahy Calls For Justice Department Investigation Into Missing John Yoo Emails


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A long-awaited Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report released last week found that lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee “had committed professional misconduct in writing legal opinions that authorized torture.” The OPR report revealed that many of Yoo’s emails had vanished:

[W]e were told that most of Yoo’s records had been deleted and were not recoverable. [Former Deputy AAG] Philbin’s email records from July 2002 through August 5, 2002 — the time period in which the Bybee Memo was completed and the Classified Bybee Memo (discussed below) was created — had also been deleted and were reportedly not recoverable.

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) “called on Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the destruction of emails” and reported that “he destruction of these emails represents a blatant violation of the Federal Records Act (FRA) and may break criminal laws.”

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said the deleted records pose “very serious concerns about government transparency and whether the [OPR] had access to all of the information relevant to the inquiries.”

Leahy then asked whether the DOJ has initiated an investigation into the circumstances behind the destruction of the emails. Acting Deputy Attorney General Gary G. Grindler said the DOJ is in the process of trying to establish the facts for why the emails disappeared. Grindler also studiously avoided suggesting that any foul play was behind the disappearance of the emails, stating that there was “nothing nefarious” about the deletions. Leahy then drew a parallel between the Yoo emails and the emails that the Bush White House previously claimed had disappeared:

I recall when millions of emails mysteriously disappeared during the Bush administration, and I had [said] they don’t just disappear. They must be there. And I recall them sending their press secretary Ms. Perino out to say, ‘what is he some kind of IT expert? That’s foolish, they’ve been deleted. They’ve disappeared. We all know they’ve disappeared. Why would anyone suggest otherwise.’ And then we found 22 million emails. [...]

During the firing of the U.S. Attorneys…there were a number of emails by Mr. Karl Rove and others in the White House that were missing. Now, two months ago, we finally find those emails of course after the investigation was over and after the time when the U.S. Attorneys might have been reinstated. I hope we don’t have to wait that long this time.


http://thinkprogress.org/2010/02/26/yoo-email-deletion/