Yoo Lawyer: OPR Acting Like “Junior Varsity CIA”

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


If you want to get a sense of the tone of John Yoo’s response to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility report finding he was guilty of “professional misconduct,” take a look at this excerpt from his lawyer’s letter to the OPR:

[The Office of Legal Counsel]’s job was to give legal advice based on the facts as presented by the Central Intelligence Agency, not to assume the role (as OPR now has) of Junior Varsity CIA. OPR appears to think that the proper role of OLC attorneys was to reweigh the operational facts adduced by the CIA and play roulette with the lives of thousands of Americans.

That’s right: any questioning of the CIA’s reliance on the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario amounts to risking the lives of thousands of Americans. Yoo’s lawyer, by the way, is Miguel Estrada. Yes, that one.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate