more:
http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/21/opr-report-will-be-devastating-to-bush-legal-opinions/Senator: OPR report will be ‘devastating’ to torture memo authors
By David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: April 21, 2009
Updated 3 hours ago
Several members of the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel worked on memos authorizing torture, but particular attention has been focused on Jay Bybee, who is now a federal judge with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. Since the release of the memos, calls have been coming from all quarters for his impeachment.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Monday, however, that he believes no action should be taken “until the Department of Justice’s Office of Professional Responsibility finishes its investigation.”
“It is certainly possible that an impeachment inquiry is warranted — but I think that decision should probably wait,” Whitehouse stated. “They’ve been working on this for, I would say, more than a year now, and I expect it will be a very thorough report. … I think it can’t be more than a few weeks away.”
“There’s … every reason to believe this will be a devastating opinion,” Whitehouse commented.
Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff reported on the forthcoming OPR report in February, and what he wrote then takes on additional significance with the release of the torture memos.
“An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials,” Isikoff wrote.