UPDATE: This Hearing Has Been Cancelled as of 4PM February 17, But Will Be Re-scheduled.
February 17, 2009, New York – February 17 – A federal judge will hold a hearing tomorrow to examine the Obama administration’s request for a 90-day delay of an American Civil Liberties Union/Veterans for Common Sense lawsuit concerning public access to controversial Bush-era legal memos. The memos, written by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), supplied the basis for the Bush administration’s torture and rendition programs. The hearing is scheduled for tomorrow, February 18 at 3:00 p.m. in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Among the memos still being withheld are those written by Steven J. Bradbury when he was the acting-head of OLC. They are believed to have authorized the CIA to use extremely harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding.
In October 2003, the ACLU – along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace – filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for records concerning the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. To date, more than 100,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU’s FOIA lawsuit.
WHAT:
A hearing to examine the Obama administration’s request for a 90-day delay of an ACLU lawsuit seeking Bush administration torture memos
WHO:
Jenny-Brooke Condon of the law firm Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C will be arguing before Judge Alvin Hellerstein; ACLU attorneys Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh will be present to answer questions
WHEN:
Tomorrow, Wednesday, February 18, 2009
3:00 p.m. EST
WHERE:
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
500 Pearl Street
New York, NY 10007-1312
