Yoo didn't even tell Ashcroft

Administration Asserted a Terror Exception on Search and Seizure - washingtonpost.com: "Retired Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the memo was written, said that he never saw the document authorizing harsh military interrogations and that its narrow definition of torture is 'absolutely ludicrous.'

'I frankly don't know anyone in the military who bought into that as a good definition of when you cross the line,' Myers said this week. 'In the end, you want to do the right thing. I worry most about reciprocity, how other countries will treat us.'

Neither the attorney general at the time, John D. Ashcroft, nor his deputy, Larry D. Thompson, were aware of the 81-page memo when it was written and sent to the Pentagon in March 2003, according to several former senior department officials. The Pentagon was told in December 2003 to disregard the legal advice in the memo after Justice Department lawyers raised objections.

The memo was written by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who also wrote or co-wrote many of the key legal opinions that asserted an expansive view of presidential power in the Bush administration's early years. Now a California law professor, Yoo has defended his work as a 'near boilerplate' defense of presidential prerogatives and said subsequent criticism has been motivated by politics."