Conservative legal hot shot Jack Goldsmith was tapped for a key job in the Bush Justice Department in part because of his “get tough” reputation on terror.
But within hours of getting inside as head of the Office of Legal Counsel — the office that sets legal boundaries for the presidency — this conservative top gun was shocked by what he saw: The law being tortured, he says, to expand the power of the presidency.
Now he’s out and telling all, about what we should learn from the wartime powers of Lincoln, FDR — and Bush.
Up next, On Point: Jack Goldsmith, and the “terror presidency.”
-Tom Ashbrook
Guests:
Jack Goldsmith, head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from 2003 to 2004, now a professor at Harvard Law School, his new book is “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.”
Benjamin Wittes, fellow and research director in public law at the Brookings Institution and member of the Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security and Law.
