The Green Light: Attorney Philippe Sands Follows the Bush Administration Torture Trail

The memo shows the Justice Department told the Pentagon that presidential authority overrode numerous laws banning torture or cruel treatment of prisoners in US custody. The memo endorsed assault, maiming and even administering mind-altering drugs on prisoners.

The memo was written on March 14, 2003 by attorney John Yoo. At the time Yoo was a deputy in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel. Today Yoo is a law professor at the University of California Berkeley.

Meanwhile the British attorney Philippe Sands has just published an article in Vanity Fair exposing new details about how Yoo and other high-ranking administration attorneys helped design and implement the interrogation policies seen at Guantanmo, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons.

According to Vanity Fair, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez personally visited Guantanamo in 2002, discussed interrogation techniques and witnessed interrogations. Also on the trip was David Addington – then Dick Cheney’s chief counsel–and William Haynes, the general counsel of the Department of Defense.

Gonzalez, Haynes and Addington and Yoo made up what Sands describes as Bush’s “torture team of lawyers.” Sands argues that the actions of these lawyers might have amounted to war crimes and could result in their prosecution overseas.

Philippe Sands joins us at the Firehouse. He is an international lawyer at the firm Matrix Chambers and a professor at University College London. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and The Betrayal of American Values.” His last book was titled “Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules.”

Philippe Sands, international lawyer at the firm Matrix Chambers and a professor at University College London. His article “The Green Light” appears in the new issue of Vanity Fair. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and The Betrayal of American Values.” His last book was titled “Lawless World: America and the Making and Breaking of Global Rules.”

Related Links

• "The Green Light" by Philippe Sands