That was, um, unexpected. Not only did Michael Mukasey repudiate the so-called 2002 “torture memo” signed by Office of Legal Counsel chief Jay Bybee — which appears to have survived in spirit, if not in letter — but he compared U.S. torture to the Holocaust.
Most significantly, Mukasey said that he is unaware of any inherent commander-in-chief authority to override legal restrictions on torture — a huge repudiation of Dick Cheney, David Addington and John Yoo’s perspective on broad constitutional powers possessed by the president in wartime — or to immunize practitioners of torture from prosecution. That answer is sure to create anxiety inside the CIA, where many interrogators fear that they will be brought up on charges for carrying out interrogation methods earlier approved by the administration.
The Bybee memo is “worse than a sin, it’s a mistake,” Mukasey said. He referenced the photographs taken by U.S. troops who liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1945 to document the “barbarism” the U.S. opposed. “They didn’t do that so we could duplicate what we oppose.” Beyond legal restrictions barring torture clearly, torture is “antithetical to what this country stands for.”
He wouldn’t comment on the recent Steve Bradbury memo reported on by The New York Times authorizing some torture methods in 2005, since he hasn’t read it. But he told the panel that he would review all legal memoranda on interrogations and other national security programs to ensure their soundness.
Update: Here’s the video:
