Pressure is mounting against two former Bush administration attorneys who wrote the legal memos used to support harsh interrogation techniques that critics say constituted torture. John Yoo, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is fighting calls for disbarment and dismissal, while Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals faces calls for impeachment.
Justice Department investigators say Bush administration lawyers who approved harsh interrogation techniques of terror suspects should not face criminal charges, according to a draft report that also recommends two of the three attorneys face possible professional sanctions.
Sen. John McCain says pursuing charges against Bush administration officials who approved harsh interrogations for suspected terrorists might be an effort to settle some old political scores.
A leading Democratic senator said Sunday independent investigators should determine whether Bush administration officials ought to face charges over the harsh interrogation techniques used against suspected terrorists.
The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee says she hopes the public outrage over Bush-era interrogation methods subsides so Congress can calmly investigate the issue.
A White House adviser claims there's nothing in those newly released interrogation memos that the American people didn't already know about.
The White House on Thursday said it did not support creation of an independent panel to investigate the Bush administration's harsh interrogations of terror suspects.
Five previously unacknowledged secret memos revealing new information about the Bush administration's interrogation policies remain hidden in government file cabinets, a Senate report disclosed Wednesday.
An Army Reserve brigadier general demoted because of prisoner abuses at the Abu Ghraib facility in Iraq says a new Senate report supports claims that uniformed military people were made "scapegoats" for Bush administration prisoner interrogation policies.
As national security adviser to former President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice verbally approved the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, the earliest known decision by a Bush administration official to OK use of the simulated drowning technique.
Three Bush administration lawyers who worked in an elite Justice Department unit face further scrutiny over their advice on how to conduct tough interrogations of terror suspects, but criminal prosecution remains only an outside possibility.
A look at the White House's shifting rhetoric on the possibility of prosecutions stemming from CIA interrogation techniques against terror suspects.
Widening an explosive debate on torture, President Barack Obama on Tuesday opened the possibility of prosecution for Bush-era lawyers who authorized brutal interrogation of terror suspects and suggested Congress might order a full investigation.
President Barack Obama left the door open Tuesday to prosecuting Bush administration officials who devised the legal authority for gruesome terror-suspect interrogations, saying the United States lost "our moral bearings" with use of the tactics.
President Barack Obama does not intend to prosecute Bush administration officials who devised the policies that led to the harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said Sunday.
President Barack Obama is trying to close a chapter in the nation's history that continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy.
Four former CIA directors opposed releasing classified Bush-era interrogation memos, officials say, describing objections that went all the way to the White House and slowed release of the records.
The Obama administration's release of classified Bush-era memos on harsh CIA interrogations was delayed for nearly a month in part because of strenuous objections from four former intelligence directors.
Human rights groups and former detainees in U.S. custody expressed disappointment Friday with the decision by President Barack Obama not to prosecute CIA operatives who used interrogation practices described by many as torture.
The journey into the CIA's most extreme interrogation program began in darkness.
Text of a written statement by President Barack Obama on Thursday's release of four significant memos written by the Bush administration in 2002 and 2005 on the interrogation of terror detainees:
President Barack Obama says the release of legal opinions governing harsh questioning of terrorism suspects is required by the law and should help address "a dark and painful chapter in our history."
Attorney General Eric Holder says the government won't prosecute CIA officials for using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects.
In the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA operatives were allowed to shackle, strip and waterboard terror suspects. Now, President Barack Obama has assured these operatives that they will not be prosecuted for their rough interrogation tactics.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply as the U.S. stepped up its response to terrorism, according to documents released to the public for the first time.
Congressional Republicans on Friday accused Democrats of full complicity in the approval of the Bush administration's brutal interrogations, citing a new accounting that shows frequent briefings for some top Democrats on waterboarding and other harsh methods starting in 2002.
A key Senate critic of Bush-era interrogations has announced that a subcommittee he chairs will hold hearings on the Bush administration's detainee interrogation program, the first public hearing on that matter since Obama released controversial Bush memos.
Well here we go again, boys and girls. Today's lesson in Big Government doublespeak and terrorizing New Yorkers is brought to you by the same president who claims to want to eliminate torture, then authorizes drone air strikes maiming and torturing women and children.
A central theme of Barack Obama's presidential campaign was putting the nation's bitter, divisive politics behind us.
Does anybody else think it's odd...the emphasis surrounding the release of the Bush era torture memos is now centered on the political problems they've created for the Obama administration--how the memos reflect poorly on the current White House--and not, y'know, what the memos s …
During this first hundred days, a new president uses good will to his advantage, trying to push through an executive agenda while generally being forgiven for novice mistakes. April 30th marks the end of President Obama's first 100 days in office.
This article is not going to discuss the morality of torture. Why? Because most of the people that support the use of torture in extracting humint (human intelligence) that even suspect someone of opposing torture on moral grounds reacts thusly:
Why would the Administration vociferously deny a desire to prosecute Bush war crimes yet dump all needed evidence to convict the perpetrators for the public (and the Courts) to see?
The trouble with torture is that sometimes it works; and when it does, the devil sings. Scarpia may have ended with Tosca's knife in his chest, but his torturers got what they needed from Cavaradossi.
It is pretty straightforward... President Bush, Vice President Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales were all intimately involved in the decisionmaking process to go ahead with what amounts to torture.
If rank-and-file employees at the nation's top spy agency are angry over President Obama's release of secret memos on sensitive interrogation practices last week, they are keeping their feelings well-hidden.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney wants documents released that he feels demonstrate the effectiveness of interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration.
The former vice president Dick Cheney is slamming President Obama's efforts to set a new tone for relations with the U.S. on the world stage.
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency during the last two years of George W.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A former head of the CIA slammed President Obama on Sunday for releasing four Bush-era memos, saying the new president has compromised national security. Former CIA chief Michael Hayden said Sunday it is wrong to make interrogation methods public.
How conveniently they choose to ignore the fact that these documents were requested under the Freedom of Information Act and that, had the President chosen NOT to release them, he'd have been signing onto the Bush attitude that the government has a right to keep things from its o …
President Obama's administration has apparently decided not to prosecute Bush administration officials who allegedly tortured prisoners.
I don't understand why this is being released, shouldn't it be used in a court of law as evidence to convict these criminals? Instead, are we being told to be okay with this type of behavior by our elected officials?
"You can never get over how bad these opinions were," said Dellinger, who headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration.
When we said; "People you need to awaken. G.W. Bush has tweaked the laws to enable him to become a de facto dictator" You laughed. Called us crazy, leftist moonbats. When we said; "Posse Comitatus is dead"
A set of nine secret memos released by the US Justice Department Monday reveal that in the weeks and months after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks the US government began erecting the legal scaffolding for a full-blown military dictatorship.
A day after releasing a set of Bush administration opinions that claimed sweeping presidential powers in fighting terrorism, the Obama administration faced new pressure on Tuesday to support a broad inquiry into interrogation, detention, surveillance and other practices under Pre …
The Bush administration's "war on terror"—including its controversial policies on detentions, interrogations and warrantless wiretapping—was all underpinned by legal memoranda.
I still find it hard to believe that George W. Bush, to his eternal shame and our nation's great discredit, made torture a matter of hair-splitting, legalistic debate at the highest levels of the U.S. government. But that's precisely what he did.