I missed this.

For weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

via Justice Official Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo Probe – Declassified Blog – Newsweek.com

If this is true and as plain as Bybee and Yoo being cleared, the Obama Administration has proven that it has no interest in curbing the frightening expansion of the unitary executive as defined by Bush White House and the Holder Justice Department has proven it has feigned independence all along.

In addition, the fact that a 59-41 Democratic majority in the Senate means that the Senators need that same President to be their daddy to tell them where to go, before they miss every deadline, weaken the effect of every bill they write for political expediency means that there is no hope that they will pass progressive legislation making administration attorneys professionally and legally responsible for the memos they write. Even when they break the law.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz Cheney (Fox News Channel)

Ali H. Soufan, F.B.I. special agent from 1997 to 2005, writes for the New York Times:

The inspector general’s report distinguishes between intelligence gained from regular interrogation and from the harsher methods, which culminate in waterboarding. While the former produces useful intelligence, according to the report, the latter “is a more subjective process and not without concern.” And the information in the two memos reinforces this differentiation.

They show that substantial intelligence was gained from pocket litter (materials found on detainees when they were captured), from playing detainees against one another and from detainees freely giving up information that they assumed their questioners already knew. A computer seized in March 2003 from a Qaeda operative for example, listed names of Qaeda members and money they were to receive.

via Op-Ed Contributor – What Torture Never Told Us – NYTimes.com.

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Administration reactions to the Office Of The Inspector General’s report on CIA Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities:

[The Obama Administration] wrested control of future interrogations of suspected senior al-Qaeda members away from the CIA and handed it to an interagency group that will be housed at the FBI — whose agents had not only objected to the CIA’s techniques but also refused to stay in the rooms where they were practiced.

[...]

Obama and his aides, in contrast, have concluded that the benefits of the harsh interrogation program were unproven or slight, and that the costs to America’s standing in the world exceed any potential gains from allowing it to persist.

via Analysis: Bush, Obama Administrations Drew Different Lessons From CIA Report.

Accoording to the report FBI agents refused to partake in torture. It is fairly safe to conclude that the CIA agents tortured because they felt they were covered by permission slips from Jay Bybee and John Yoo and they were “just following orders”. CIA interrogators were effectively ordered to operate as if they were above the law.

The new interagency interrogation team, overseen by the National Security Council and housed at  the FBI, seems to be organized to empower the professionals who honored the rule of law and signal Obama’s distrust of the current CIA’s ability to do the same.