Judiciary chairmen vow hearings on torture memos report

The chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary committees vowed hearings Friday on a report into interrogation abuses during the Bush administration.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) said they would press forward with congressional inquiries after the Justice Department released a report Friday condemning those lawyers' conclusions, but declining to pursue criminal charges.

The Justice Department report, which was sought by Attorney General Eric Holder, accuses top members of the Office of Legal Council (OLC) during the administration of President George W. Bush of "poor judgment" in providing legal backing to the harsh interrogation tactics of terror suspects. In particular, the report harshly criticized two lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, for penning memos authorizing certain techniques.

Leahy announced a hearing next Friday, Feb. 26 into the memos, and called on Bybee, who is now a federal judge, to resign that position. 

"I have said before that if the Judiciary Committee, and the Senate, knew of Judge Bybee’s role in creating these policies, he would have never been confirmed to a lifetime appointment to the federal bench," Leahy said Friday evening in a statement. "The right thing to do would be for him to resign from this lifetime appointment."

Conyers condemned the actions of lawyers, who wrote memos authorizing waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation tactics.

"Today’s report makes plain that those memos were legally flawed and fundamentally unsound," Conyers said Friday evening in a statement. "It is nothing short of a travesty that prisoners in U.S. custody were abused and mistreated based on legal work as shoddy as this."

He also vowed to press ahead with hearings, for which he's previously called, though he set no timeline for the inquiry.

"While the report concludes that the lawyers did not breach their minimum professional obligations, I certainly hold top lawyers at OLC to a higher standard that, as all Americans should," Conyers said. "As I have previously stated, the committee intends to hold a hearing on these matters shortly."

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