By Jason Leopold
Online Journal Contributing Writer
Mar 4, 2008, 00:44
The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) last month confirmed that it has launched a formal investigation to determine whether agency attorneys provided the White House with poor legal advice when it drafted legal opinions authorizing CIA interrogators to use waterboarding against so-called high-level terrorist detainees to extract information about alleged plots against the United States.
According to an OPR official, the investigation was launched after a Feb. 21 article, written by this reporter, revealed that the author of the August 2002 legal opinion, John Yoo, a former attorney in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), relied on a health benefits statute to form the legal basis for waterboarding and other "enhanced" interrogation techniques.
The official requested anonymity because he said he was not permitted to discuss the probe. More on the story.
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