Ex-Justice Dept. Attorney in Hot Seat at UC Irvine

A former Justice Department attorney who wrote memos that critics say condoned torture of terrorism suspects stood by his work Monday during a panel discussion at UC Irvine, saying the fight against Al Qaeda was a different kind of war, one not covered by the Geneva Convention.

John Yoo, who served as deputy assistant attorney general from 2001 to 2003, spoke on campus as part of the Chancellor’s Distinguished Fellows Series. But after faculty and student protests, including an online petition signed by nearly 500 people, Yoo agreed to also take part in the panel discussion.

Yoo was outnumbered 3 to 1 on the panel, and he offered few responses to the panelists’ sharp attacks.

He said that although Al Qaeda was not a country, it was powerful enough to inflict the damage of a nation state and had no compunction about killing civilians.

“How can you wage a war offensively against that kind of enemy?” he said. “Al Qaeda operates by violating the notions of the laws of war.”

About 180 people listened to Yoo debate two UC Irvine associate professors and an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer.

Before the debate began, 10 to 15 people held signs and chanted, “John Yoo, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”

Yoo, a law professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall, mostly ignored the protesters, looking down, just as he did through most of the 1 1/2 -hour debate.

Mark LeVine, a UC Irvine associate professor of history, took issue with Yoo’s argument that this was a different type of war, arguing that civilians had been targeted before. He cited the German bombing of London in World War II and the Allied bombing of Dresden.

The memos, LeVine said, led directly to the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Cecelia Lynch, an associate professor of political science, called Yoo’s view of the world “myopic and simplistic.”

Stephen Rhode, former president of the ACLU of Southern California, said Yoo’s memos were “an obvious attempt to provide legal cover for war crimes.... You too, professor Yoo, may be indicted as a war criminal,” Rhode said.

After nearly an hour of nonstop criticism, Yoo said he didn’t have time to answer all the charges and what he called misstatements.

He reiterated his position: “My argument is that the Geneva Convention does not cover the conflict with Al Qaeda.”