Senate approves Trump administration job
for author of 'torture' memos
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[November 15, 2017]
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A former government
official criticized for being the principal author of the legal
justifications for "enhanced interrogation techniques" was narrowly
confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday as the top lawyer for the U.S.
Department of Transportation in the Trump administration.
Steven Bradbury, a Washington lawyer at Dechert LLP who was a senior
Department of Justice lawyer under President George W. Bush, was
criticized by both Republican and Democratic senators before being
confirmed by a 50-47 vote.
"Mr. Bradbury's memos were permission slips to torture," Republican
Senator John McCain, who was a Vietnam War prisoner for 5-1/2 years
after his plane was shot down over Hanoi in 1967, said on the Senate
floor. "This is a dark, dark chapter in the history of the United States
Senate."
Bradbury, who was nominated to the transportation post by President
Donald Trump, defended his work in June before a Senate panel. He said
the "questions we addressed raised difficult issues about which
reasonable people could disagree" on interrogation techniques and the
memos represented his "best judgment of what the law required."
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On Tuesday, Bradbury could not immediately be reached for comment.
Described by the government at the time as "enhanced interrogation
techniques," the methods were used between 2001 and 2006 on detainees
held during the Bush administration's "War on Terror" following the
Sept. 11 attacks.
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McCain, who was the unsuccessful Republican Party presidential
nominee in 2008, said the memos written by Bradbury provided a legal
framework for the "inhumane interrogation" of detainees using
methods such as "forced nudity and humiliation, facial and abdominal
slapping, dietary manipulation" and "more than 48 hours of sleep
deprivation."
Senator Rand Paul, another Republican who opposed Bradbury, said on
Twitter "you shouldn’t get to author memos on torturing people &
then get another government job."
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Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, in a separate speech, also
criticized Bradbury for what she termed "a troubling history of
disregard for United States and international law and seems unable
to offer objective legal analysis."
She said he "helped justify the CIA's torture program."
"During a time when we needed independent voices in government to
check the CIA's actions, Bradbury failed to rise to the occasion. He
failed to fulfill the responsibilities of his position," Feinstein
said.
(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Peter Cooney and Grant
McCool)
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