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House Panel Subpoenas Top Cheney Aide
By Pamela Hess
The Associated Press
Tuesday 06 May 2008
Washington - The House Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday to compel a top aide
to Vice President Dick Cheney to testify to the committee about the Bush administration's
interrogation practices.
David Addington, Cheney's chief of staff, refused to testify without a subpoena.
No date has been set for his appearance before Congress.
Addington is one of several lawyers believed to have played a key role in crafting
the administration's interrogation policies shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, policies which some say amounted to torture.
John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote a now-repudiated memo
allowing the harsh interrogations of military prisoners agreed late Monday to
testify to Congress about those practices, averting a subpoena. Yoo is now a
law professor at University of California-Berkeley.
Yoo's memo, dated March 14, 2003, outlines a legal justification for military
interrogators to use harsh tactics against al-Qaida and Taliban detainees overseas
- so long as they did not specifically intend to torture their captives.
Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Under Secretary of Defense Douglas
Feith, and former Assistant Attorney General Daniel Levin have also agreed to
give testimony at a future hearing. Former CIA Director George Tenet is still
in negotiations with the committee, according to House Judiciary Committee spokeswoman
Melanie Roussell.
The Judiciary Committee hearings are meant to determine what role administration
lawyers played in creating and approving interrogation procedures that went
far beyond those traditionally used by U.S. forces, and whether any of them
violated their legal or ethical obligations, said Committee Chairman John Conyers,
D-Mich.
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