Legal Ethics in The Torture Debate.

February 23, 2010 at 10:55 A.M. "Errors" were inserted overnight, after my revisions of this text at a public computer in Manhattan. I cannot say, at this time, how many other essays have been vandalized. I will make all necessary corrections as quickly as possible. New F.B.I. investigations concerning the "Equinix" scandal in Bergen and Hudson Counties are heating up. Good luck, Bob -- if you are a "target" of this on-going investigation, that is.

February 22, 2010 at 10:17 A.M. As a response to this post, apparently, an advertisement has been attached, illegally, to this blog:

"News On Hillary Clinton, Latest News on Clinton '08 -- Find Local News and Media on Yellow Pages. http://www.yellowpages.com/ "

I do not believe that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham-Clinton is responsible for this determination by Mr. Margolis. I do not believe that the Secretary of State of the U.S. is "yellow." I do not believe or accept that Ms. Clinton is "yesterday's news." The Secretary of State is doing an amazing job of containing and eliminating a number of threats and rebuilding alliances in the world that were nearly destroyed during the "we'll go it alone" era of Bush/Cheney. We need others in this struggle against terrorism. If you do not wish to assist in those vital efforts by our current government, then get out of the way. The Cubanazos from Miami are yesterday's news.

Cubanoids from the swamps of Hudson County, New Jersey may not be aware that the State Department is an entirely different government agency from the U.S. Justice Department headed by Mr. Eric Holder. Mr. Margolis, I surmise, is employed by the U.S. Justice Department. Let us hope that Mr. Margolis will not join the growing ranks of the unemployed. Let us further hope that Senator Menendez will join the ranks of the unemployed, thus enhancing his capacity for compassion for the poor.

True Ms. Clinton and Mr. Holder are both lawyers. However, their responsibilities are very different and independent. Senator Menendez, can you explain these advertisements or the noise that mysteriously fills the room in which I write? What did you know Senator Menendez? When did you know it? 1988-today. I still miss the OAE. No more threatening letters from Trenton? ("Senator Bob Struggles to Find His Conscience" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

Eric Lichtblau & Scott Shane, "Report Faults 2 Who Wrote Terror Memos," in The New York Times, February 20, 2010, at p. A1.
Peter S. Goodman, "Despite Signs of Recovery, Chronic Joblessness Rises: The Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs, Exhausting Savings and Benefits," in The New York Times, February 21, 2010, at p. A1.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., "The Profession of the Law," in Collected Legal Papers (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1920), pp. 29-32. (Irony?)

Most of what I was taught in law school has turned out to be bullshit. The levels of American criminality in legal processes -- often at the hands of the very people entrusted with enforcing laws and professional ethics rules -- is something that has to be experienced to be believed. A glance at the essays posted in these blogs referring to New Jersey's legal system should make this observation clear and close to irrefutable. ("Law and Ethics in the Soprano State" and "New Jersey's Mafia Culture in Law and Politics.")

Weirdly, I continue to believe in legality as an increasingly distant ideal from America's reality. I cannot imagine how people like Stuart Rabner, who is aware of the public cybercrime to which these writings are subjected, every day, by his state's lawyers, lives with his own hypocrisy. ("Stuart Rabner and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey," "Legal Ethics in 2009," and "American Lawyers Escape Prosecution for Torture.")

"After five years of often bitter internal debate, the Justice Department concluded in a report released Friday that the lawyers who gave legal justification to the Bush administration's brutal interrogation tactics for terrorism suspects used flawed legal reasoning but were not guilty of professional misconduct."

The word "guilty" is legally inappropriate. Legal ethics questions are not necessarily criminal (although in this case, they should be), nor do determinations of an attorney's "lack of ethics" always involve criminal liability. Both the Bush torture memo lawyers and the OAE attorneys participating in a continuing criminal conspiracy to violate my Constitutional and human rights should be indicted as well as disbarred. ("New Jersey's Mafia Culture in Law and Politics.")

It is likely that these persons -- who can only be described as the absolute dregs of humanity (that's you, John) -- will escape liability for their heinous crimes. Certainly, I will have nothing to do with any so-called family member or "friend" who cooperated in the violation of my rights or in the cover-up which has followed those events in New Jersey, including the censorship and cybercrime which you are witnessing. ("How Censorship Works in America" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

The lawyers drafting memos seeking to justify what America had previously defined as "crimes against humanity," placing guilty nations and individuals other than ourselves beyond the pale of civilization, as in the Nuremberg trials, have helped to bring about the suffering of thousands and painful deaths of many. These lawyers -- like Mr. Yoo and "Judge" Bybee -- have contributed to undermining what little respect, credibility, or authority American legal pronouncements merit on the world stage today, even as OAE lawyers have brought shame to New Jersey's befouled Supreme Court. ("Crimes Against Humanity in New Jersey" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics," then "Mafia Out of Control in New Jersey and Anne Milgram is Clueless.")

American law has become the embodiment of HYPOCRISY. Only one new "error"? We pronounce a commitment to principles of jurisprudence and legality that we violate -- with utter and transparent cynicism -- when convenient for our "interests" while asking others to abide by those same legal norms at all times. ("New Jersey's Feces-Covered Supreme Court" and "New Jersey's Legal System is a Whore House.")

For New Jersey to continue to deny and stonewall in response to my requests for information defies any plausible rationalization or excuse. The exoneration of "alleged" frauds such as Jay S. Bybee (who is an American Federal Circuit Court judge!) and law professor John C. Yoo (an expert on legal ethics matters!) is simply laughable to the global legal profession. ("Deborah T. Poritz and Conduct Unbecoming to the Judiciary in New Jersey.")

The spectacle that is my twenty-one year and counting "experience" with New Jersey's legal establishment, together with my daily struggle against censorship and suppressions of speech as well as the after-effects of torture is irrefutable proof of America's legal reality as distinct from our bogus rhetoric. We are not fooling anyone in the world with our increasingly surreal rhetoric concerning "due process of law." ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")

" ... David Margolis, a career lawyer at the Justice Department, rejected that conclusion [that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee violated professional ethics] in a report of his own released Friday."

The reasoning by this person, Mr. Margolis -- who will certainly excuse Rabner and Poritz, Milgram and the others in Trenton -- is that 9/11 makes everything O.K. My experiences date from 1988 until today.

"The Office of Professional Responsibility, however, suggested in its report that the legal conclusions were in effect preordained. [OAE?] It said that John Rizzo, the C.I.A. lawyer who requested the opinion, had 'candidly admitted the agency was seeking maximum legal protection for its officers' against possible criminal prosecution. Mr. Rizzo objected to the way his remarks were characterized by the office."

New Jersey officials are hoping that I will make a statement that they can twist into an anti-semitic remark. However, I doubt that Mr. Yoo is Jewish. Also, Mr. Gonzales -- who should have been charged along with these attorneys -- is not a rabbi. Mr. Margolis may have mistakenly believed that these men were fellow members of his stamp collecting society or that they could be invited to play bridge on Saturdays in Georgetown. Whatever Mr. Margolis was thinking, it had little to do with legal ethics rules and case law.

Drafting a legal memo with a predetermined conclusion that is, ostensibly, designed to provide an "objective statement of the law" makes a mockery of legality. Legal reasoning is not merely a form of ass cover for guilty bureaucrats. Maybe that is exactly what the American legal system has become -- obfuscation and excuses for corrupt officials and penalties (or worse) for the poor. Here is a good example:

"Fully 80 percent of the sexual abuse reported [by juveniles] was committed not by other inmates but by staff. And surprisingly, 95 percent of the youth making such allegations said they were victimized by FEMALE staff. Sixty-four percent of them reported at least one incident of sexual contact with staff in which no force or explicit coercion was used. Staff caught having sex with inmates often claim it's consensual. But staff have enormous control over inmates' lives. They can give inmates privileges, such as extra food or clothing or the opportunity to wash, and they can punish them: everything from beatings to solitary confinement to extended detention. The notion of a truly consensual relationship in such circumstances is grotesque even when the inmate is not a child."

Many of these victims -- the abuse is always worse for female offenders who have usually been raped their entire lives -- are juveniles placed in adult facilities in order to be raped:

"Eighty-one percent of juveniles sexually abused by other inmates were victimized more than once [-- often with the cooperation of the authorities, even lawyers in administration --] and 32 percent more than ten times. Forty-two percent were assaulted by more than one person. Of those victimized by staff, 88 percent had been abused repeatedly, 27 percent more than ten times, and 33 percent by more than one facility employee. Those who responded to the survey had been in their facilities for an average of 6.3 months." (emphasis added)

David Kaiser & Lovisa Stannow, "The Rape of American Prisons," in The New York Review of Books, March 11, 2010, at p. 16, pp. 16-17. ("What is it like to be tortured?")

Why bother with a legal analysis to justify what you know to be criminal actions or what you've decided to do regardless of legality?

What people need to appreciate to understand this torture-lawyers' scandal is the culture of the U.S. legal profession which is viciously result-oriented and (disingenuously) committed to the "highest standards of legality and ethics." These conflicting loyalties will bring about a crisis in persons and systems. In fact, they have done exactly that. Sometimes such crises can be artificially manufactured, for a small fee, by torturers like Terry Tuchin. "Dr." Tuchin will also be exonerated by Mr. Margolis -- or someone like him in Trenton.

How many African-Americans and Palestinians have you tortured, Terry, "if any"? ("An Open Letter to My Torturers in New Jersey, Terry Tuchin and Diana Lisa Riccioli.")

During the Bush/Cheney years, the Constitution and legality lost, or were abandoned, with the result that hundreds or thousands have been tortured, wrongfully detained, killed, and payback murders as well as tortures of Americans have taken place and will continue to occur for many years to come. ("Captured American Tortured on Video by Taliban" and "More Tortures of Captured American Soldier.")

These horrors are consequences of breaches of legal ethics, as disgust for the Garden State and laughter at the pathetic incompetence of its legal processes is one result of Tuchin/Riccioli tortures and the OAE's embrace of criminality in so-called "secrecy." Persons who cooperated with the OAE's illicit efforts will continue to suffer for the rest of their lives. What does that "E" stand for in "OAE"? ("Corrupt Law Firms, Senator Bob, and New Jersey Ethics" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")

"The ethics report is not the last word on the emotional national dispute about torture. In August, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. opened a criminal investigation to determine whether the C.I.A. interrogation program broke the law, and that inquiry is expected to continue for months." (emphasis added)

Is Terry Tuchin a forensic psychiatrist with the C.I.A., as he claimed to be? Is Diana Lisa Riccioli a forensic psychiatrist specializing in juvenile offenders? Anyone wish to discuss "lying"? ("U.S. Courts Must Not Condone Torture" and "On Bullshit.")

"But the Justice Department's findings about its own lawyers are a milestone in the long debate over the treatment of Qaeda prisoners. Interrogators were directed to use coercive methods in an effort to find out whether new terrorist attacks were planned."

Torture and cruelty -- especially when used secretly and without adequate or any accountability -- become addictive to individuals of the caliber of Terry Tuchin. Who did you "recruit" to assist in your efforts against me? How many lawyers were sharing in stolen clients and money, Terry? How much were those lawyers kicking back to Rabner, Poritz or Milgram? Did Senator Bob get his "cut"? ("Senator Bob, the Babe, and the Big Bucks" and "Does Senator Menendez Have Mafia Friends?")

"Some of the brutal interrogation methods that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee approved for use on Qaeda prisoners, including wall-slamming and the near-drowning of waterboarding, had never before been authorized in American history, and the United States had condemned such treatment as torture and abuse when used by other countries."

It is O.K. when we do it. Right, Mr. Cheney? Even the official entrusted with whitewashing and covering-up this hideous spectacle of American "legal" criminality, admitted in an uncharacteristic moment of candor:

"While I have declined to adopt O.P.R.'s findings of misconduct, [by Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee,] I fear that John Yoo's loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client" -- Who was your client as N.J. Attorney General, Anne Milgram? exclusively the Garden State's lesbians in the legal profession? -- "and led him to author opinions that reflected his own extreme, albeit sincerely held, view of executive power while speaking for an institutional client,' Mr. Margolis said."

Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner? ("Neil M. Cohen, Esq. and Conduct Unbecoming to the Legislature in New Jersey" and "New Jersey's Legal System is a Whore House," then "Judges Protect Child Molesters in Bayonne, New Jersey" and "New Jersey Superior Court Judge is a Child Molester.")

How much do child molesters pay for protection these days in Hudson County?