Steven Bradbury News.
Republican Steven G Bradbury News
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 Steven
G Bradbury
STEVEN BRADBURY News:
20080214
-
 John
McCain
-  Mike
Mukasey
- Steven
G Bradbury
-  Torture
- War
Crimes -  Criminal
-  Military
-  Government
-  Intelligence
-  Terrorism
- Prisons
-  Law
-  Politics
-  Water
-  History
-  Arizona
- 2008
Election - "Bush
Will Veto Ban On Torture: [2008 Election Republican
Presidential Candidate John] McCain, Once Tortured Himself, Joins [the
Republican President Bush] White House To Oppose Bill Prohibiting Waterboarding."
... "The White House said today that President Bush will veto a measure
that would ban the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] from using what the
administration describes as "enhanced interrogation methods" on terror
suspects." ... "The provision, part of a broad intelligence authorization
bill passed by the House and Senate, would prohibit any interrogation techniques
to be used on prisoners that are not authorized or condoned by the U.S.
Army Field Manual." ... "[Arizona Senator] Sen. John McCain, who has previously
spoken out against torture (having been tortured himself while held captive
during the Vietnam War), voted against the bill, but said his vote was
not inconsistent with his previous calls for a ban." ... "McCain had earlier
sponsored the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act which included a ban on waterboarding,
which President Bush invalidated by a signing statement giving himself
the authority to ignore it." ... "Although President Bush has stated that
the United States has not and will not torture people, it has been learned
that Mr. Bush himself has authorized the use of waterboarding on detainees
(a practice previously prosecuted by the United States as a war crime),
and has claimed the authority to do so again in certain circumstances."
... "Despite military interrogators' assertions that waterboarding and
other brands of torture do not produce reliable intelligence, the Bush
administration continues to argue that it needs the option of waterboarding
when seeking information from recalcitrant prisoners." ... "[Republican
President Bush's] Attorney General Mike Mukasey has declined to declare
that waterboarding is torture, despite congressional demands during and
after his Senate confirmation process, fueling the administration critics'
assumption that admitting such would expose administration figures who
authorized the practice to criminal prosecution." ... "In 2005 [under Republican
President Bush, Steven G.] Bradbury signed two secret legal memos authorizing
the CIA to use waterboarding, as well as physical violence and freezing
temperatures, when questioning terror detainees." -Contributed
to by Mark Knoller and David Morgan -AP
-CBSNews
20071226
-
Secret
- Torture
- Terrorism
- Government
- Detainee
- Intelligence
- Law
-
 Virginia
-  Christmas
- "Senate
meets briefly to block Bush." ... "The House was
quiet as a mouse the day after Christmas. But across the Capitol, the [Democratic
controlled] Senate was operating in an unusually efficient manner in its
ongoing power struggle with [Republican] President Bush." ... "A nine-second
session gaveled in and out by [Virginia Democratic Senator] Sen. Jim Webb,
D-Va.[Democratic-Virginia], prevented Bush from appointing as an assistant
attorney general a nominee roundly rejected by majority Democrats. Without
the pro forma session, the Senate would be technically adjourned, allowing
the president to install officials without Senate confirmation." ... "Democrats
wanted to block one such recess appointment in particular: Steven Bradbury,
acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legislative Counsel.
Bush nominated Bradbury for the job and asked the Senate to remove the
"acting" in his title." ... "Democrats would have none of it, complaining
Bradbury had signed two secret memos in 2005 saying it was OK for the CIA
[Central Intelligence Agency] to use harsh interrogation techniques — some
call it torture — on terrorism detainees." -By Laurie
Kellman -AP
via -Yahoo
-
 Alberto
R Gonzales -  David
S Addington -  Dick
Cheney
-  John
Yoo - Secret
- Torture
- War
Crimes - Law
- Politics
- Terrorism
- Government
- Intelligence- Prison
- Psychological
-  Health
- Human
Rights -  US
-  World
- History
- "Secret
U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations." ... "When
the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal
opinion in December 2004, the [Republican President] Bush administration
appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential
authority to order brutal interrogations." ... "But soon after Alberto
R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice
Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different
document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement
of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence
Agency." ... "The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided
explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of
painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated
drowning and frigid temperatures." ... "Mr. Gonzales approved the legal
memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey,
the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes
with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s
overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department
that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it."
... "Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman
and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret
opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials
said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A.
interrogation methods violated that standard." ... "The classified opinions,
never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of [Republican] President
Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department,
where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion
by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention
into turmoil." ... "Associates at the Justice Department said Mr. Gonzales
seldom resisted pressure from [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and
David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney’s counsel, to endorse policies that they
saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought
the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats
in Congress. Critics say Mr. Gonzales turned his agency into an arm of
the Bush White House, undermining the department’s independence." ... "The
interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005
has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.
He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency’s
domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings
and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with
the office’s tradition of avoiding political advocacy." ... "The Bush administration
had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners
outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them
to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held
naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by
thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the
ultimate, waterboarding." ... "Never in history had the United States authorized
such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist
that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators,
psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally
or more effective." ... "With virtually no experience in interrogations,
the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting
Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation
methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture.
The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from
lawyers thousands of miles away." ... "“We were getting asked about combinations
— ‘Can we do this and this at the same time?’” recalled Paul C. Kelbaugh,
a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the C.I.A.’s
Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003." ... "Mr. Kelbaugh said the
questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the
Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping
legal justification for even the harshest tactics." ... "That opinion,
which would become infamous as “the torture memo” after it was leaked,
was written largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving
in the Office of Legal Counsel." ... "Mr. Yoo’s memorandum said no interrogation
practices were illegal unless they produced pain equivalent to organ failure
or “even death.”" (1, 2,
3,
4,
5)
-By Scott Shane, David Johnston, and James Risen
-NYTimes
-
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