To his shrillest student critics, UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo -- a mild-mannered, cherubically baby-faced academic who gravitates toward the driest of legal treatises and the sharpest of suits -- incarnates the banality of evil. Yoo has been accused of being a war criminal. Cursed out in public. Escorted by security from a UC Irvine auditorium. Warned by Berkeley police, last spring, that it might not be safe to appear on a law school panel.
"That was pretty wild," acknowledged Yoo, the author of a new book, "The Powers of War and Peace." "That was the most out-of-control thing that ever happened to me."
As Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attempts to lessen anger in Europe over reports that the CIA has operated secret prisons in European countries, it might not be the best time for Yoo to argue his contention that the Bush administration has the right to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely without charges, and question them without a lawyer present, in wartime. Although even Rice seemed to reverse her administration's contention that the prohibition on cruel or inhumane prisoner interrogations didn't apply overseas, Yoo is still ardently opposed to such a ban, saying it could cripple the effectiveness of coercive interrogations abroad.
Legal news service -- An article about UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo in Monday's Calendar section misspelled the name of the University of Pittsburgh, where the online legal news service Jurist is based, as the University of Pittsburg.
But if being a flak-catcher for the Bush administration's most-criticized wartime practices has unnerved Yoo, it's not apparent when he touts his new book, which was released this fall. If he ends up with more critics than readers, so be it.
Yoo doesn't employ the usual rationale for a strong Bush presidency. He says in his book that it is not the 9/11 terrorist attacks that justify the extraordinary presidential powers he advocates. In Yoo's view, the constitution itself gives the president lots of leeway, allowing him to invade Iraq without congressional permission and to disregard such treaties as the Geneva Convention, which governs the moral code of conduct of war.
