Scholar Calmly Takes Heat for His Memos on Torture

With his even tones and calm demeanor, his natty suits and warm charm, the 37-year-old constitutional scholar is the embodiment of "reasonable," not the first person you'd expect to find at the heart of an international fight over terrorism, torture and the American way.

But while working for the Department of Justice after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Yoo helped write a series of legal memos redefining torture and advising President Bush that the Geneva Convention does not apply to members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) demanded from the Senate floor last month that Yoo and other civilian officials be held accountable for their part in what he called the "torture scandal" over treatment of Iraqi detainees by American soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Legal scholar Scott Horton, president of the New York-based International League for Human Rights, called last month for Yoo and others to be investigated as war criminals for their part in drafting the memos.

And in a lengthy analysis to be published in the Columbia Law Review this fall, Jeremy Waldron, an author, scholar and Yoo's former colleague at the UC Berkeley School of Law, said that the "defense of torture" by Yoo and other prominent lawyers had caused "dishonor for our profession."

A year after the abuses at Abu Ghraib came to light, nearly a year after the torture memos were leaked, debate over how the U.S. government should treat its prisoners shows no sign of abating.

"If you read the history of philosophy from the Greeks to the present day, the question of when should we be willing to do something terrible in pursuit of some social good is always posed," said Martha Nussbaum, professor of philosophy and law at the University of Chicago. "It would surprise me very much that it would go away."

But as Yoo defends the memos in debates across the country, a measured messenger for some of the Bush administration's most controversial policies, he said he is surprised that "the issue has staying power."

Maybe, he said, it's because the fight against terrorism shows no sign of an end. Maybe it's because the government still does not know how best to battle the nation's new enemies.