The White House decision to declassify a series of legal memos approving the use of harsh interrogation techniques continued to resonate on Capitol Hill Tuesday with senior Senators exchanging calls for more action.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee called for a Bush Administration official who authorized the controversial, harsh interrogation techniques to resign from his post as a federal judge in Las Vegas.
Memos authored and authorized by Jay Bybee allowed CIA interrogators to perform a variety of controversial techniques including waterboarding, prolonged confinement and stress positions, several of which were released by the Obama administration this week.
But Leahy said that had the extent of Bybee's involvement been known, he never would have been confirmed by the Senate for the federal judgeship.
"The fact is that the Bush Administration and Mr. Bybee did not tell the truth," Leahy said. "If the Bush Administration and Mr. Bybee told the truth, he never would have been confirmed."
Leahy, Tuesday, stopped short of calling, as some in Congress have, for Bybee's impeachment.
"The decent and honorable thing to do would be to resign," he added. "If he is a decent and honorable person, he will resign."
Some in Congress have called for the prosecution of the lawyers, including Bybee, who authored the memos, but that has drawn pushback from Republicans, including Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a member of the judiciary committee.
Obama has ruled out prosecution of the interrogators who relied on the memos for assurance that their actions would be legal, but has left open the prospect of going after the drafters.
"I think it's a terrible idea," Cornyn said. "These were novel legal questions during a time of great danger to our country, and I don't believe that we ought to be looking backward and point the finger of blame. What we ought to do is look forward."
Cornyn also said that prosecuting the lawyers could also require consequences for top ranking members of Congress who were briefed on the interrogation programs.
"I think you'd also have to question the chairs of the intelligence committees in the House and Senate who were briefed on these interrogation techniques and question their judgment," he said.
Cornyn said that it would be "inconsistent" to go after the drafters of the memos without seriously questioning the actions of congressional overseers, who he said had at least a responsibility to speak up in classified sessions against something they would later condemn.
"To sit quietly and let this happen and to come back later and say people ought to be prosecuted criminally … to me is inconsistent, to say the least."
Cornyn also called for the declassification and release of other memos and documents that could validate the use of the controversial interrogation techniques."
"They ought to go ahead and release what the interrogation techniques actually produced so that people will be able to put it in context and understand both the urgency of the matter, because it was at a time when we thought another attack like 9-11 was potentially imminent and they can evaluate for themselves whether these interrogation techniques did in fact produce good intelligence," he said.
He added, "According to the vice president and other reports I've heard, they did. I'm convinced that this likely averted another terrorist attack on one or more occasions."
But Leahy noted that the documents that have already been released raise questions of whether some of the most controversial techniques could have actually produced usable intelligence in time for U.S. officials to act on it, casting doubt on claims by Cornyn and former Vice President Dick Cheney that the techniques had been necessary to keep the country safe.
"I remember people testifying before various committees, saying 'Waterboarding, it is so effective, you only have to do it once,'" he said. "Now it turns out that one person was waterboarded, what, 80 times and another person was 130 times. At that point you have to kind of think, maybe it's not the most effective tool in the world anyway."
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April 17, 2026 15:29 ET The ongoing conflict in the Middle East continues to raise concerns for policymakers who worry about the impact of the supply shock and high energy prices on the real economy. Producer price data and various survey results on the housing market were the main news from the U.S. this week. In Europe, industrial production data for the euro area gained attention. GDP figures out of China and the policy move by the Singapore central bank were in focus in Asia.