http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/washington/09lawyers.html?_r=1When John C. Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer, was selected by President George W. Bush in May 2004 to join a government board charged with releasing historical Nazi and Japanese war crimes records, trouble quickly followed.
The Abu Ghraib torture scandal was exploding, and fellow panelists learned that Mr. Yoo had written secret legal opinions saying presidents have sweeping wartime power to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. They protested that it was absurd to name Mr. Yoo, who they believed might have sanctioned war crimes, to a war crimes commission.
White House officials canceled the appointment, though it had already been announced in a news release, and kept the episode quiet. “We saved them from incredible embarrassment,” said Thomas H. Baer, one of the dissenting panelists.
But for Mr. Yoo, a Berkeley law professor, the swift exit from the war crimes board was only the beginning of his troubles. For more than four years, the Justice Department ethics office has been investigating his work and that of a few of his colleagues. A convicted terrorist has filed a lawsuit blaming Mr. Yoo for abuses he says he endured. Law students have led protests and the Berkeley City Council even passed a resolution in December calling for Mr. Yoo’s prosecution for war crimes.
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Even if they escape punishment at home, however, the lawyers could find themselves pursued in European countries that have laws allowing them to prosecute torture no matter where it occurred.
“I think people like Yoo will be taking their chances if they want to go to Europe for a very long time,” said Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which has asked a German prosecutor to indict several Bush legal team members along with policy makers. The prosecutor declined, but the case is on appeal.
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