MORE ON PROF. YOO

I went to the Boalt Hall site and find this bio-bit on Yoo:

BIO - John Yoo received his B.A., summa cum laude, in American history from Harvard University. Between college and law school, he worked as a newspaper reporter (WSJ) in Washington, D.C. He received his J.D. from Yale Law School, where he was an articles editor of the Yale Law Journal. He then clerked for Judge Laurence H. Silberman of the U.S. Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit. Professor Yoo joined the Boalt faculty in 1993, then clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas of the U.S. Supreme Court.


The name Silberman was familiar to me from reading David Brock's book, Blinded by the Right. People for the American Way has a lot more about Silberman here and this is what they have from Brock:

David Brock’s Surrogate Father

During the early years of the Clinton administration, Brock wrote stories—which he now disavows—accusing Anita Hill of lying in her testimony against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Brock also wrote smear pieces concerning rumors of President Bill Clinton’s alleged sexual improprieties, including the now infamous “Troopergate” scandal. According to Brock, who has since cut his ties with the Right, Silberman and his wife Ricky were his “surrogate parents” during this period and played “an absolutely key role” in what he wrote.

In Blinded by the Right, Brock notes that the Silbermans provided grist for the Anita Hill rumor mill even as he was serving as a judge on the Court of Appeals:

“If Republican aides were eager to abet my savaging [Anita] Hill, so were Thomas’s closest friends [including] D.C. Circuit Court Judge Laurence Silberman [and] his wife, Ricky…. [Judge] Silberman speculated that Hill was a lesbian, ‘acting out.’ Besides, Silberman confided, Thomas would have never asked Hill for a date: Did I know she had bad breath?”

Such groundless speculation eventually served as part of backbone for Brock’s 1993 book, The Real Anita Hill.

Brock also indicates Ricky Silberman viewed investigations of the Clintons as payback for the Clarence Thomas hearings:

“[I]t was actually Ricky Silberman's idea to approach Ken Starr to file that friend-of-the-court brief in the Paula Jones case. And Ricky knew the Jones case was simply payback for the Anita Hill affair. She thought, wouldn't it be delicious that Clinton would now be accused of sexual improprieties in the same way that Clarence Thomas had been?”

And, according to Brock, Silberman pressed him to write a controversial piece on Troopergate:

“Though he was a sitting judge who would rule on matters to which the Clinton administration was a party, Larry [Silberman] strongly urged me to go forward…. The trooper story would be much bigger than the Anita Hill book, he predicted. Clinton would be ‘devastated’…. [T]he judge told me he felt sure that if the same story had been written about Ronald Reagan, it would have toppled him from office. Clinton, he surmised, might be toppled as well.”

I am trying to suggest here that Yoo may be just another wingnut lawyer who was glad to provide Pres. Fredo with any legal justification he needed or wanted.