"And the memo's author - John Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel - was a longtime ally and notoriously pliant scribe for the radical legal views of Vice President Cheney and his chief enforcer, David S. Addington. Yoo's memo is a historic document. It is the ultimate expression of Cheney's belief that anything the president or his designates do - no matter how illegal, barbaric or un-American - is justifiable in the name of national self-defense.
"It is also an example of how enabling zealots to disregard the rule of law and the customary boundaries of human conduct leads to madness."
-Dan Froomkin