John Yoo: Security & Civil Liberty In A Post-9/11 World

Today on Frank Gaffney’s Secure Freedom Radio, Frank welcomes back John Yoo, Professor of Law at University of California, Berkley, former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice and Co-editor for the new book Confronting Terror: 9/11 and the Future of American National Security, a retrospective from the greatest minds in law and policy on the balance between security and civil liberties 10 years after 9/11. Yoo defends the record of the Bush Administration of no attacks, and attributes this fact to the methods and policies he helped put in place, including Guantanamo Bay, enhanced interrogation and warrantless wire tapping. He explains the difference between approaching 9/11 as an act of war rather than a criminal act, and explains how the Obama Administration, although reluctantly, has continued many of the same war policies, with one important distinction. “No high ranking terrorist has been captured in two years,” says Yoo, who fears with an Administration that would rather kill terrorists than deal with the political backlash of detaining them, we risk losing “the greatest source to our successes in the War on Terror,” namely intelligence. Yoo also comments on the “deeper problem, the ideological fight” here at home, and how “on the frontier of ideas” we must “stop the spread of ideologies that are behind the people that want to attack us.”

Listen here: [audio:http://www.securefreedomradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/09162011_Hour3_Seg3_Yoo_11min18.mp3]