DOJ releases Bush-era memos on war on terror

It's hard to even know where to start with the previously-secret war on terror memos released by the DOJ yesterday. The memos were released in response to a massive ongoing Freedom of Information Act lawsuit the ACLU brought seeking the release of information about the capture and treament of terror suspects. From my perspective, the most important thing they show us is that the Obama administration appears to be very serious about living up to his campaign promise to improve government transparency - and they may signal a new era in FOIA.

I'm busy this week, and haven't had a chance to read through them yet, so I will defer to some well-informed writers who have. The Post's Dan Froomkin, Salon's Glenn Greenwald, and Yale law professor Jack Balkin have good overviews of the memos (Balkin's has a good overview of the recent memos from the Bush DOJ distancing itself from the earlier ones). From reading the various commentary, the most absurd argument in the memos might be John Yoo's claim that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) doesn't apply to national security surveillance, because it did not include a "clear statement" showing that was its intent. As GW law professor Orin Kerr explains, not only was the undeniable purpose of the law to regulate national security surveillance, but federal law actually says that it is the exclusive way such spying can be conducted.

Want to hear something depressing? Yoo is currently employed as a law school professor: he's a visiting professor at Chapman University School of Law in California, and that state's taxpayers should know that he's still on the Berkeley payroll.

Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda [usdoj.gov]