John Yoo Should Be Disbarred, continued
EAST BAY EXPRESS
Newly released secret memos of the Bush Administration include more evidence that notorious Berkeley law professor John Yoo should be disbarred. Two of the memos, written in January by Bush appointee, Steven Bradbury, a successor of Yoo's in the Justice Department, strongly repudiate Yoo's work. It was the second known repudiation of Yoo by a conservative legal scholar within Bush administration.
The memos released by the Obama administration yesterday also include opinions written by Yoo, okaying warrantless wiretaps and the use of the US military against targets inside the United States. Yoo also authored the previously disclosed "Torture Memos," which authorized CIA and military interrogators to torture prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere.
The Justice Deparmtent's Office of Professional Responsibility is finishing an internal investigation of Yoo and is expected to recommend disbarrment proceedings against him and other department lawyers who advocated that Bush be allowed to do essentialy whatever he wanted in the so-called "War on Terror." Bush then used the memos to justify his actions. Yoo is a tenured professor at Berkeley, who took a leave of absence to work for the Bush Justice Department from 2001 to 2003. Yoo has his law license from the state of Pennsylvania. If he's disbarred, it will further pressure UC Berkeley to fire him.
--Â Robert Gammon
