Bush-era lawyers who authorized brutal interrogation (torture) of terror suspects: Former Justice Department officials Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury and John Yoo. (AP Photo/file)
This week, I participated in a panel discussion about the Bush administration's "torture memos" with a former Bush administration official, Daniel Levin.
And it turns out that he and I are in agreement about the need to investigate and hold accountable any government lawyers who violated their duties to uphold the Constitution by authorizing torture -- which means, to my great surprise, that Mr. Levin and I share a very similar outlook on this issue.
Daniel Levin served from 2004-05 as the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice, the office in which government lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee had previously written authoritative legal opinions that sanctioned and justified the CIA's use of torture on detainees.
(After Levin would reportedly be pushed out of the office for not sufficiently towing the Cheney line, acting head Steven Bradbury would author further memos re-authorizing torture.)
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