The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration Hardcover - 2007

New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. First edition. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. 256 p. Notes. Index Jack Goldsmith's duty as head of the Office of Legal Counsel was to advise President Bush what he could and could not do...legally. Goldsmith took the job in October 2003 and began to review the work of his predecessors. Their opinions were the legal framework governing the conduct of the military and intelligence agencies in the war on terror, and he found many especially those regulating the treatment and interrogation of prisoners that were deeply flawed. Goldsmith is a conservative lawyer who understands the imperative of averting another 9/11. But his unflinching insistence that we abide by the law put him on a collision course with powerful figures in the administration. Goldsmith's fascinating analysis of parallel legal crises in the Lincoln and Roosevelt administrations shows why Bush's apparent indifference to human rights has damaged his presidency and, perhaps, his standing in history. From Wikipedia: "Jack Landman Goldsmith (born September 26, 1962) is a Harvard Law School professor who has written extensively in the field of international law, civil procedure, cyber law, and national security law. He has been "widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament." He was a law professor at the University of Chicago when in 2002, he joined the Bush administration as legal adviser to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense. In October 2003 he was appointed as an United States Assistant Attorney General, leading the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice under Attorney General John Ashcroft and Deputy Attorney General James Comey. He resigned in July 2004. He wrote a book about his experiences there called The Terror Presidency (2007). Goldsmith graduated from Washington & Lee University with a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in 1984. He earned a second B.A. with first class honours, from Oxford University, in 1986, a J.D. from Yale Law School, in 1989, an M.A. from Oxford (which is not a separate degree, but an upgrading of the BA), in 1991, and a diploma from the Hague Academy of International Law in 1992. He clerked for Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1989 to 1990, and for Justice Anthony Kennedy of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1990 to 1991. He was a professor at the University of Virginia Law School before going to the University of Chicago Law School. He was working there in 2002 when he first joined the administration of President George W. Bush as a political appointee. In August 2002, the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice, had issued three documents, which became known as the Torture Memos or the Bybee memo (referring to one in particular. ) The Bybee memo was directed to the Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency in relation to interrogation of a detainee, Abu Zubaydah. It authorized certain enhanced interrogation techniques (later characterized as torture) for use with detained enemy combatants at the Guantanamo Bay detention center and other locations. In addition, on March 14, 2003, John Yoo wrote a legal opinion at the request of the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, five days before the US invasion of Iraq, concluding that federal laws did not prohibit torture by interrogators of foreign subjects overseas. (This memo was not revealed until 2008. ) By September 2002, Jack Goldsmith had been hired to work as a legal adviser to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, William J. Haynes II, in the Bush administration. He accompanied Haynes late that month as one of a large party of senior government appointees who traveled to military detention facilities at Guantanamo, Norfolk, Virginia; and Charleston, South Carolina to see detainees (including two United States citizens) and the conditions for enemy combatants. He had participated in discussions related to treatment. In October 2003, Goldsmith was appointed to head the.