Top Cheney staffer grilled on torture policy

At one point Yoo asserted attorney-client privilege, at another, internal deliberative privilege, and at another, said he could not talk about classified matters.

Asked by Rep. Bobby Scott, D- Va., “If U.S. officials tortured people based on your memo, would they be protected if they followed your memo, would they be protected from prosecution…?”

Yoo replied, “The purpose of the memo was to define torture so that people would not commit torture.” He added later, “I’m not going around torturing people and the memo does not authorize anyone to torture anybody.”

“We were functioning as lawyers, we don’t make policy,” Yoo told the committee in his opening statement. “Policy choices in these matters were up the NSC, the White House, or the Department of Defense…. We were not in the business of choosing among different policy options.”

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By the end of the day, the question was left unresolved of who exactly did choose specific interrogation techniques such as simulated drowning or waterboarding. Yoo said his memo clearly specified drowning as one of the prohibited acts — but he could not add much beyond that.

Will new administration prosecute?
Another unresolved question by day’s end: If the next president is Democrat Barack Obama, will he ensure that Yoo, Addington and other former Bush administration officials who allegedly authorized torture are prosecuted?

Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said Thursday that Obama had not yet commented on the issue of potential prosecution of Bush administration officials.

But asked whether any former Bush officials are likely to be prosecuted by the new administration, Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D- Calif. said, “I actually think there is a possibility of that. And I’m not saying who. The United States has made serious mistakes and that’s all I want to say right now.”

The risk of possible prosecution has been on the minds of Bush officials since they began to formulate policy after Sept. 11, 2001.

Former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith, who succeeded Yoo at the Office of Legal Counsel, says in his book "The Terror Presidency," that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales did worry about "...a subsequent administration of a different party prosecuting officials for wartime decisions with which it disagreed."

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