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Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators
Justice Dept. Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes

By Dan Eggen and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 2, 2008; Page A01

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.
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Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators
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Memorandum: Part 1 (PDF)
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Memorandum: Part 2 (PDF)
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Memorandum: Part 3 (PDF)
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Memorandum: Part 4 (PDF)
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dot.comments: When Laws Don't Apply
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E.J.'s Precinct: That Justice Dept. Memo: The Road to Tyranny?

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The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect" calculated to "cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality." .....

Disavowed Justice Department legal memo: constitutional protections did not apply

By PAMELA HESS and LARA JAKES JORDAN
Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) -- For at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism.

That view was expressed in a Justice Department legal memo dated Oct. 23, 2001. The administration on Wednesday stressed that it now disavows that view.

The October 2001 memo was written at the request of the White House by John Yoo, then the deputy assistant attorney general, and addressed to Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel at the time. The administration had asked the department for an opinion on the legality of potential responses to terrorist activity.

The 37-page memo has not been released. Its existence was disclosed Tuesday in a footnote of a separate secret memo, dated March 14, 2003, released by the Pentagon in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations," the footnote states, referring to a document titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."

Exactly what domestic military action was covered by the October memo is unclear. But federal documents indicate that the memo relates to the National Security Agency's Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP.

That program intercepted phone calls and e-mails on U.S. soil, bypassing the normal legal requirement that such eavesdropping be authorized by a secret federal court. The program began after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and continued until Jan. 17, 2007, when the White House resumed seeking surveillance warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court....

Bush Administration Memo Says Fourth Amendment Does Not Apply To Military Operations Within U.S. (4/2/2008)

ACLU Calls For Immediate Release Of Withheld Legal Memo

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: (212) 519-7829 or (646) 785-1894; media@aclu.org

NEW YORK – A newly disclosed secret memo authored by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) in March 2003 that asserts President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations of detainees also reveals a radical interpretation of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protection from unreasonable search and seizure. The memo, declassified yesterday as the result of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, cites a still-secret DOJ memo from 2001 that found that the "Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations." ...