Legal Ethics
Gonzales Axed Anti-Torture DOJ Lawyer, But Promised US Attorney Job, ABC Says
Posted Jun 19, 2008, 05:16 pm CST
By Martha Neil
In Congressional testimony that helps connect two controversial legal issues in the Bush administration, a former high-level Justice Department lawyer says he was asked to leave after he wrote a memo opposing harsh interrogation techniques he considered torture but was promised a job as a U.S. Attorney by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Daniel Levin confirmed in testimony yesterday that he was asked in 2005 to leave his DOJ job as the acting head of the Office of Legal Counsel after he opposed harsh interrogation techniques in a 2004. Although he didn't draw a direct parallel between the memo and the request to step down, others did, reports ABC News, relying on unnamed sources.
Meanwhile, sources say Levin was told by Gonzales that he would appoint him to a U.S. Attorney position, once the dust settled, to sweeten the downward departure to a position the ex-AG found for him at the National Security Council. Although Gonzales reportedly made a preliminary move or two to get Levin a job as a U.S. Attorney, that never happened and Levin later left to return to private practice.
"Levin, a graduate of Harvard University and the University of Chicago Law School, was seen by some in the administration as too independent, sources said. For example, while analyzing specific interrogation techniques, he went to a military base outside Washington and personally underwent waterboarding, which he concluded qualified as torture, unless done in a narrow way with close supervision," the ABC News article recounts.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: "CIA Lawyer’s Torture Definition: ‘If the Detainee Dies, You’re Doing It Wrong’"
Related Stories
- DA in Cheney-Gonzales Case Shouts at Judge, Who Seeks Higher-Court Backup
Nov 21, 2008, 06:01 pm CST - Layoffs at Big Immigration Boutique; Fragomen Says Hiring to Be Curtailed
Nov 21, 2008, 04:43 pm CST - Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Sues After His Wife is Banned from City Hall
Nov 21, 2008, 04:24 pm CST - Slain Judge’s Widow Speaks, Prosecutors Take Heat at Nichols Sentencing
Nov 21, 2008, 01:52 pm CST
Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.
Comments
Posted by pAUL - 5 months, 2 days, 16 hours, 43 minutes ago
What the heck? What is this guy doing, thinking for himself?! I hope that they did not teach him that in law school! What is th is world coming to, when we have free-thinkers practicing law. Good thing that the non-free-thinking AG took care of this situation.
Posted by Carl Ian Schwartz - 5 months, 2 days, 15 hours, 15 minutes ago
Exactly what you’d expect from Sleazy Gonzales. By the way, Mukasey is no better—he just has better credentials (as a U.S. District Judge and member of a good New York law firm). He also does not think waterboarding is torture. And yet he holds himself up as a religously observant person. What would Jesus (who also was a Jew) have done? NOT say torture is OK!
By the way, Gonzales cannot get a job to practice law with a firm. What goes around comes around.