I’m sure we’re all very shocked to hear that the man who subverted and perverted the law to give his masters the pseudo-legal cover to run a torture program against Arab and Muslim detainees doesn’t want the methods used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to be revealed in open court.
Marcy Wheeler deconstructs (emphasis is Marcy’s):
Of course, what John Yoo is really worried about are precisely those sources and methods: that is, torture. He’s worried that prosecutors may have to reveal the details of the torture they did to KSM.
[…]
… Yoo’s concerns about the exposure of torture-related information–to the extent that they might be valid–are all premised on the notion that the only information we got is so secret that introducing it at trial would violate sources and methods. Aside from the issue of competency hearings (which I think does risk exposing details on torture), torture (and illegal wiretapping–but it wouldn’t be illegal against any of these terrorists) would only be exposed if that’s the only kind of evidence the government has.
And Eric Holder is convinced there’s plenty that comes from clean sources.
John Yoo pretends he knows the universe of information on KSM. His argument suggests that the only evidence came from illegal or highly sensitive means.
What the trial will likely show, instead, is that there was a great deal of information already available before they started torturing KSM. It’ll show that the KSM expert in FBI–who we know was never allowed to get close to the Yoo-sanctioned torture sessions–knew much if not all of the stuff that KSM was blabbing away after being waterboarded the 183rd time.
That’s the real risk for Yoo: not the illegal actions that the trial will expose. But how much evidence there was independent of Yoo’s little torture shop.
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