WASHINGTON, April 20 (UPI) -- A top House Democrat said Monday U.S. Judge Jay Bybee "should be impeached" for his role in Justice Department authorization of harsh interrogation methods.
Bybee, who sits on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was a principal author of Justice Department memos released last week by the Obama administration, which provided legal justification for using such methods as waterboarding and slamming suspects into walls during questioning. Former President George W. Bush appointed Bybee to the bench and the Senate confirmed the appointment long before his participation in the development of the interrogation policy was publicly known.
"(Bybee) ought to be impeached," Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., told the Huffington Post Monday. "It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law."
Nadler -- a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee and chairman of the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Subcommittee -- is to meet Tuesday with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. He said he would urge the appointment of a special prosecutor.
"Any special prosecutor on torture would have to look at the authors of those torture memos," said Nadler.
The New York Times Sunday called in an editorial for Bybee's impeachment.
President Barack Obama has said his administration will not prosecute intelligence officers who carried out interrogations using the Justice Department memos as guidance, but Nadler said "if crimes were committed, we are duty-bound under our law, we must -- the United States must investigate torture if it happened in America."
