Contempt of Congress

"On Thursday, they finally got their wish. . . .

"But rather than eliciting new information or forcing damaging admissions from the long-sought witness, the hearing turned into an emotion-charged demonstration of the hostility and mutual disdain between the most liberal critics of the Bush administration's war policies and one of the architects of those policies. . . .

"[W]hen Democrats tried to pin him down on the moral and legal issues they considered crucial, Addington brushed them aside with barely concealed disdain. . . .

"He acknowledged multiple trips to Guantanamo and discussions with interrogators. He said he was familiar with the development of the CIA program. But he gave no details on what he said or did at such meetings."

Marisa Taylor writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "Afterward, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the subcommittee chairman, said in an interview that Addington appeared 'quite smug.' He added that the two men's descriptions of several events appeared to contradict other witnesses. He acknowledged that the two lawyers had provided few answers to important questions about how the administration developed its stance on interrogation.

"'It wasn't as useful as it would have been had Mr. Addington not sought to run out the clock on every question and to parse the words and not answer the questions, and Mr. Yoo not availed himself of rather questionable privileges a number of times,' Nadler said. 'But I think it was useful. I think it laid the groundwork for some future hearings.'"

Scott Shane of the New York Times finds an iota of news: "Both men made clear that a controversial torture memorandum of Aug. 1, 2002, was reviewed at the White House and in the office of Attorney General John Ashcroft and was by no means a renegade initiative of Mr. Yoo, its chief author. The memorandum, which said pain had to reach the level produced by 'death or organ failure' to be illegal torture, was later withdrawn. . . .

"In the view of some human rights advocates, the 50-page memorandum set the stage for abusive interrogations by both the Central Intelligence Agency, which had sought the legal opinion, and the Defense Department, by giving a stamp of legality to even extreme interrogation measures."

Key Excerpts

In this exchange with House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), Yoo refuses to rule out anything. Then Addington plays cute about the "unitary executive theory" -- the theoretical underpinning of his seven years of remarkable assertions of unfettered executive power.

Conyers: "Could the president order a suspect buried alive?"

Yoo: "Mr. Chairman, I don't think that I have ever -- "

Conyers: "I'm asking you that."