Yoo Ordered To Testify In Court

A federal judge has ordered John Yoo to testify in a case of alleged torture of Jose Padilla, according to the New York Times.

A federal judge has ruled that John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer who wrote crucial memorandums justifying harsh interrogation techniques, will have to answer in court to accusations that his work led to a prisoner’s being tortured and deprived of his constitutional rights. The government had asked Judge Jeffrey S. White of Federal District Court in San Francisco to dismiss the case filed by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in a military brig as an enemy combatant. Judge White denied most elements of Mr. Yoo’s motion and quoted a passage from the Federalist Papers that in times of war, nations, to be more safe, “at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.”

John Yoo is now a tenured professor at Berkeley. Yoo is a member of the “Bush 12,” a group of lawyers who wrote memos and opinions allowing the so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques of detainees. There is a movement to get these 12 lawyers disbarred (one of whom is a federal judge). The Bush 12 are John Yoo, Judge Jay Bybee, Stephen Bradbury (these 3 are authors of memos) Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Michael Chertoff, Alice Fisher, William Haynes II, Douglas Feith, Michael Mukasey, Timothy Flanigan, and David Addington (all advisors, but not memo authors).

Is this the beginnings of accountability for some of the excesses of the Bush administration? The Padilla case will be interesting because Padilla is a U.S. citizen, picked up on U.S. soil so I doubt it will be as easy to exclude evidence in court.