Projo Politics Blog

By John E. Mulligan
Journal Washington bureau

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has joined the Senate's second-ranking Democratic leader in pressing the Justice Department on the status of an internal probe of lawyers who advised the Bush administration about the use of waterboarding and other harsh methods of interrogating suspected terrorists.

Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, asked in writing for an update on the probe after Newsweek over the weekend. The magazine reported that key Bush administration lawyers were harshly criticized in a draft report from the Justice Department probe of their work on the legal guidance regarding interrogations.

Newsweek said then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey strongly objected to the draft findings about John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury, all former officials of the Bush Justice Department. The magazine said a top deputy to Mukasey wanted the draft report to include responses from Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury.

In a letter to the chief of the Justice Department's internal investigations arm, the Office of Professional Responsibility, Durbin and Whitehouse said U.S. intelligence personnel ``should be able to rely in good faith'' on legal advice from the Justice Department. Justice officials who violate professional standards ``must be held accountable,'' the two senators said in their letter.

Whitehouse and Durbin are members of the Senate Judiciary Committee who have long inquired about the genesis of the Bush administration's legal justification for interrogation methods that they consider to be torture. They sent a letter Monday to the chief of the internal watchdog office at Justice, Marshall Jarrett.

 Tags  interrogation Justice Department Michael Mukasey Richard Durbin Sheldon Whitehouse torture

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