United States

Waterboarding Lawyers Will Not Be Prosecuted

Paul C. Kadzielski

According to a recent report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, lawyers John Yoo and Jay Baybee will not be punished for providing the legal arguments that allowed the Bush administration to legally justify waterboarding in the questioning of terrorists. The department was evaluating them to determine whether their advice concerning waterboarding was significant enough to charge them with a crime. The Bush administration had asked the Justice Department, where Yoo and Baybee were high-ranking officials, to define the legality of enhanced interrogation techniques after the September 11^th attacks in 2001. The Central Intelligence Agency and, to a lesser extent, the Federal Bureau of Investigation are the US agencies that conducted interrogations involving waterboarding. Only suspected terrorists have been waterboarded.

• Waterboarding: A type of enhanced interrogation where subjects are strapped to a board and put underwater for varying periods of time. By simulating drowning the subject is encouraged to tell the interrogator information.
• Enhanced Interrogation Techniques: A technique, such as waterboarding, where the subject being questioned is made to feel uncomfortable, but not tortured.

• Argument for not punishing Yoo and Bybee: They were just doing their job. They interpreted the law and applied it the best way they saw fit given the threat terrorism posed to America at that time. Waterboarding does not permanently damage subjects.
• Argument to punish Yoo and Bybee: Waterboarding has not yielded any actionable intelligence since it was allowed. Yoo and Bybee have merely sanctioned behavior that is technically legal but directly opposes the terms of the Geneva Convention and the 8^th Amendment, which forbids cruel and unusual punishment.

Additional Reading:

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/politics/20100220JUSTICE/20100220JUSTICE-OPRFinalReport.pdf

http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_geneva_con.htm

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/faculty/yooj/

http://www.law.unlv.edu/faculty/jay-bybee.html

http://news.findlaw.com/wp/docs/doj/bybee80102ltr.html