Korean researcher admits massive fraud (satire)
Woo apologized "for creating an inspeakable shock. And for all the dead people. And the collapse of the Bush Administration and the conservative movement."
Woo said farewell to students as he left his office at Berkeley yesteday, after resigning from his post there. The U.S. government, which had vigorously promoted Dr. Yoo as the symbol of its drive to carve out a niche in democratic totalitarianism, admitted to "crushing misery."
Supporters of torture and the suspension of civil liberties expressed concern that the setback would damage the image of what was already a controversial field. Many critics have long worried that the high-profile tactics of famous scholars like Mr. Yoo fundamentally distort our system of checks and balances.
The panel at Berkeley pledged to impose a heavy punishment on Mr. Yoo, and said it was investigating his other claims, including his contention that the President can suspend elections if there is any possibility that his party might lose and has the inherent power to sleep with any bride in the nation on her wedding night.
As he announced his resignation, surrounded by jeering students, Mr. Yoo said, "I apologize to the American people for creating an unspeakable shock and awe."
But he insisted that he had invented the idoology needed to expand Presidential power to levels unheard of in a stable democracy in recent years.
"Ideology for crushing dissent with espionage and blackmail belongs to America," he said before leaving his office. "And you will find out that this is true."
The nationally televised announcement by the university, which examined reasoning from his memos and questioned members of his intellectual claque, was the first official confirmation of a series of criticisms of his work in the last month, many of them posted on Web sites used by American bloggers.
Mr. Woo had already retracted the torture memo, effects of which appeared in the past several years in the American-run prisons Abu Ghraib and Guantanemo, after critics and associates pointed out that arguments used to support it appeared to have been pulled out of his stanky hind end. He cited "human depravity."
But on Friday, the dean of research affairs at the university, said at the panel's news conference that the erroneous arguments "were not egregious stupidity, but were an intentional fabrication of arguments to undercut democracy, human rights, and American leadership in both."
The dean said that Mr. Woo had read only two Supreme Court decisions, when he submitted his memo to Vice President Cheney, but concocted specious arguments to make it look as if he had read and understood the entire body of relevant case and statutory law.
"We determined that this is a grave misconduct that damages the foundation of legal scholarship," she said.
The panel has not yet determined whether the two existing released memos were derived from scholarship at all, as Mr. Woo reported, or were simply generated in the usual way from rambling drunkenly at a computer in his pajamas.
The dean also reported as false a principal claim by Mr. Woo in the domestic spying field, that he had made governance far more practical by using fewer people to produce, execute, and evaluate the propriety of policy. He had reduced the average requirement from the 535 members of Congress needed to generate the Foreisn Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, to a mere 1, he wrote.
"We believe that he is off his bleeding gourd," she said.
Another American legal scholar, Judge Michael Luttig, has said as many as 1,100 people or more might been involved in writing, executing and interpreting such a law. This includes an independent judiciary.
The breakthrough Mr. Woo said he had achieved would have been a significant "advance" in separation of powers doctrine, in which a wide range issues could be treated with policies generated from a President's own whims. On Friday, that potential was cited - wistfully, angrily or with renewed determination - by Administration officials in the United States.
The Rev. Pat Robertson, a pastor who was one of the prime supporters of torture and wiretapping, cited in the Science paper, said he vividly remembered the day he first met Mr. Woo.
"I asked him, 'Can you make the President able to override the Constitution at will?' " Rev. Robertson said. "And Mr. Woo said, 'He will do so, I promise.' "
Sen. Russell Feingold, a separation of powers expert on Capitol Hill, said Mr. Woo's falsifications "will produce cynicism about the constitutional law field and government in general." He added that political leaders would need to convince the public and policy makers that people commit fraud in legal scholarship, just as in any profession, and that as political leaders "we must make it apparent that we do our best to prevent the corruption of the political process."
A critic of untrammeled Presidential power, the deputy director of pro-freedom activities for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the field had been seriously damaged.
"It's all very well to say one scandal shouldn't set back the field," he said. "But Yoo's team was the field. If his reasoning is false, then after four years of attempts no one has succeeded in getting even the first justification for 'reactionary authoritarianism' to work on a practical scale."
Government officials, however, argued that the damage was narrower. "There may be some political flareback," said Vice President Richard Cheney, editor of Maxim Umpower. "But I hope people would consider the many exciting experiments with abusing executive authority that have worked, rather than focusing on one very embarrassing failure."
Dr. Bill Frist, president of the Senate in Cheney's absence, said that it was too soon to say whether Mr. Yoo's failure would prove a political setback for raising the Presidency to dictatorial status, but that it was evidently a political reverse.
"It's a political setback," he said, "and ground we thought we had won must now be re-won."
A group of young democrats who helped reveal flaws in Yoo's memos through a Web site frequented by students of politics issued a statement saying that any leniency toward Yoo would further damage the credibility of the American government.
Mr. Yoo's rise from obscure aide to international fame has often been attributed to Republicans' eagerness to embrace any justification for their rampant avarice and their fiercely nationalistic desire to become No. 1 in the hearts of the populace, as exemplified by the insane raving talk show host and graft placement industries.
But Sen. Robert Byrd, a leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said America's "overriding emphasis on quick achievements" and its "need for a hero who can put the country together at a time of economic uncertainty helped make Mr. Yoo what he is today."
Senator Byrd said, "The government depended on Yoo to justify its policy of support for Presidential overreach." Since 2001, the government has provided Mr. Yoo's team with an estimated umpty-ump brazillion dollars in research funds.
"Popular support was total; people had not listened to suspicions about Yoo," said Sen. Byrd, who was among the first to question the work. "In a way, we were all chasing an optical illusion. Down a well."
Woo said farewell to students as he left his office at Berkeley yesteday, after resigning from his post there. The U.S. government, which had vigorously promoted Dr. Yoo as the symbol of its drive to carve out a niche in democratic totalitarianism, admitted to "crushing misery."
Supporters of torture and the suspension of civil liberties expressed concern that the setback would damage the image of what was already a controversial field. Many critics have long worried that the high-profile tactics of famous scholars like Mr. Yoo fundamentally distort our system of checks and balances.
The panel at Berkeley pledged to impose a heavy punishment on Mr. Yoo, and said it was investigating his other claims, including his contention that the President can suspend elections if there is any possibility that his party might lose and has the inherent power to sleep with any bride in the nation on her wedding night.
As he announced his resignation, surrounded by jeering students, Mr. Yoo said, "I apologize to the American people for creating an unspeakable shock and awe."
But he insisted that he had invented the idoology needed to expand Presidential power to levels unheard of in a stable democracy in recent years.
"Ideology for crushing dissent with espionage and blackmail belongs to America," he said before leaving his office. "And you will find out that this is true."
The nationally televised announcement by the university, which examined reasoning from his memos and questioned members of his intellectual claque, was the first official confirmation of a series of criticisms of his work in the last month, many of them posted on Web sites used by American bloggers.
Mr. Woo had already retracted the torture memo, effects of which appeared in the past several years in the American-run prisons Abu Ghraib and Guantanemo, after critics and associates pointed out that arguments used to support it appeared to have been pulled out of his stanky hind end. He cited "human depravity."
But on Friday, the dean of research affairs at the university, said at the panel's news conference that the erroneous arguments "were not egregious stupidity, but were an intentional fabrication of arguments to undercut democracy, human rights, and American leadership in both."
The dean said that Mr. Woo had read only two Supreme Court decisions, when he submitted his memo to Vice President Cheney, but concocted specious arguments to make it look as if he had read and understood the entire body of relevant case and statutory law.
"We determined that this is a grave misconduct that damages the foundation of legal scholarship," she said.
The panel has not yet determined whether the two existing released memos were derived from scholarship at all, as Mr. Woo reported, or were simply generated in the usual way from rambling drunkenly at a computer in his pajamas.
The dean also reported as false a principal claim by Mr. Woo in the domestic spying field, that he had made governance far more practical by using fewer people to produce, execute, and evaluate the propriety of policy. He had reduced the average requirement from the 535 members of Congress needed to generate the Foreisn Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, to a mere 1, he wrote.
"We believe that he is off his bleeding gourd," she said.
Another American legal scholar, Judge Michael Luttig, has said as many as 1,100 people or more might been involved in writing, executing and interpreting such a law. This includes an independent judiciary.
The breakthrough Mr. Woo said he had achieved would have been a significant "advance" in separation of powers doctrine, in which a wide range issues could be treated with policies generated from a President's own whims. On Friday, that potential was cited - wistfully, angrily or with renewed determination - by Administration officials in the United States.
The Rev. Pat Robertson, a pastor who was one of the prime supporters of torture and wiretapping, cited in the Science paper, said he vividly remembered the day he first met Mr. Woo.
"I asked him, 'Can you make the President able to override the Constitution at will?' " Rev. Robertson said. "And Mr. Woo said, 'He will do so, I promise.' "
Sen. Russell Feingold, a separation of powers expert on Capitol Hill, said Mr. Woo's falsifications "will produce cynicism about the constitutional law field and government in general." He added that political leaders would need to convince the public and policy makers that people commit fraud in legal scholarship, just as in any profession, and that as political leaders "we must make it apparent that we do our best to prevent the corruption of the political process."
A critic of untrammeled Presidential power, the deputy director of pro-freedom activities for the American Civil Liberties Union, said the field had been seriously damaged.
"It's all very well to say one scandal shouldn't set back the field," he said. "But Yoo's team was the field. If his reasoning is false, then after four years of attempts no one has succeeded in getting even the first justification for 'reactionary authoritarianism' to work on a practical scale."
Government officials, however, argued that the damage was narrower. "There may be some political flareback," said Vice President Richard Cheney, editor of Maxim Umpower. "But I hope people would consider the many exciting experiments with abusing executive authority that have worked, rather than focusing on one very embarrassing failure."
Dr. Bill Frist, president of the Senate in Cheney's absence, said that it was too soon to say whether Mr. Yoo's failure would prove a political setback for raising the Presidency to dictatorial status, but that it was evidently a political reverse.
"It's a political setback," he said, "and ground we thought we had won must now be re-won."
A group of young democrats who helped reveal flaws in Yoo's memos through a Web site frequented by students of politics issued a statement saying that any leniency toward Yoo would further damage the credibility of the American government.
Mr. Yoo's rise from obscure aide to international fame has often been attributed to Republicans' eagerness to embrace any justification for their rampant avarice and their fiercely nationalistic desire to become No. 1 in the hearts of the populace, as exemplified by the insane raving talk show host and graft placement industries.
But Sen. Robert Byrd, a leader of the opposition Democratic Party, said America's "overriding emphasis on quick achievements" and its "need for a hero who can put the country together at a time of economic uncertainty helped make Mr. Yoo what he is today."
Senator Byrd said, "The government depended on Yoo to justify its policy of support for Presidential overreach." Since 2001, the government has provided Mr. Yoo's team with an estimated umpty-ump brazillion dollars in research funds.
"Popular support was total; people had not listened to suspicions about Yoo," said Sen. Byrd, who was among the first to question the work. "In a way, we were all chasing an optical illusion. Down a well."
