Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Marty Lederman
As
I noted earlier this week, White House Counsel Fielding turned over four documents related to torture to Senator Leahy, one of which -- the all-important March 2003 John Yoo memo -- the Administration has deemed classified and thus not subject for public purview.
You'll be shocked to learn, I'm sure, that the other three documents --
the December 30, 2004 OLC "replacement" memo on torture;
Pat Philbin's testimony on lawful interrogation techniques within DOD; and Daniel Levin's
February 2005 letter to Jim Haynes -- were were already in the public domain. Indeed, longtime readers will recognize them as the subjects of many blogposts here, including especially
this one (discussing and linking to the Levin letter and Philbin testimony) and
this one (parsing the portion of the Levin opinion that "legalized" waterboarding).
Once he realized that the White House's idea of generosity and cooperation is to disclose already public documents, and to inappropriately classify the only non-disclosed, important document, Senator Leahy was, to say the least, not
pleased.
Now, it's up to Senator Leahy and the rest of the Judiciary Committee to read the Yoo memo carefully, determine whether anything in it is appropriately classified -- as opposed to, say, a discussion of the interrogation techniques already disclosed in the
April 2003 DOD Working Group Report -- and calll out the Administration for improperly classifying legal advice merely to prevent embarrassment, rather than to protect genuine state secrets.
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