The Justice Department should make a public report following its internal investigation of the Office of Legal Counsel's torture memos, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Thursday.
Speaking at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association, Whitehouse called it a "sad thing" that the Office of Legal Counsel is under investigation by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility. "OPR doesn't customarily make its
findings public," Whitehouse said, "but I hope that here OPR produces a public report that takes a
cold, hard look into an office that became a little hothouse of legal
ideology."
Whitehouse, a first-term senator, is a member of the Senate's judiciary and intelligence committees. He is a former U.S. attorney and a former Rhode Island attorney general.
Picking apart how the Office of Legal Counsel came to defend practices such as waterboarding, Whitehouse said the office's lawyers relied on a definition of torture found in a Medicare reimbursement statute. He accused the office of ignoring relevant cases, including the federal prosecution of a Texas sheriff whose office used waterboarding and the court-martial of U.S. soldiers in the Philippines.
"How is it that the Office of Legal Counsel—the elite conscience of the Department of Justice—missed all of this?" Whitehouse said.
The senator praised Attorney General Michael Mukasey for restoring "firewalls" intended to limit case-specific discussions between the Justice Department and the White House. In response to an audience question, he said he favored similar restrictions on communication between Justice and Congress.
Asked by another audience member about one-party rule in Washington, Whitehouse said Congress will need to compete for power jealously. The danger, he said, is that "the legislative oversight function gets put on the shelf in favor of the political loyalty function."
The bar association's conference, which continues Friday, is focusing on national security law, military commission trials and U.S.-Russian relations. Chief Judge David Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to speak Friday about the role of the courts in national security.
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