We’ve been there, done that:

[1] Interview with Jane Mayer [July 2006]

Cheney’s Cheney [David Addington]

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/07/03/060703on_onlineonly01

“[…] Their partnership was cemented when they worked together on the Minority Report on the Iran-Contra affair. Both Addington and Cheney took the idiosyncratic position that it was Congress, not President Reagan, that was in the wrong. This view reflected the opinion, held by both men, that the executive branch should run foreign policy, to a great extent unimpeded by Congress. […]”

[2] Mr. Cheney’s Minority Report,by Sean Wilentz, 7/9/2007

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/09/opinion/09wilentz.html?pagewanted=print

"[…] Still, Mr. Cheney’s quest to accumulate unaccountable executive power — a quest that has received much attention of late — took a major turn 20 years ago. And part of Iran-contra’s legacy has now become a legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration. […]"

[3] Also, see John W. Dean on this [2/10/06]:

http://writ.corporate.findlaw.com/scripts/printer_friendly.pl?page=/dean/20060210.html

“Vice President Cheney and The Fight Over "Inherent" Presidential Powers: His Attempt to Swing the Pendulum Back Began Long Before 9/11.

[…] Attorney General Alberto Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to offer what may have been the weakest legal argument for presidential power to conduct warrantless electronic surveillance since Nixon's Justice Department invoked the views of King George III. […]”

[4] See also: “Cheney: The Fatal Touch”-by Joan Didion, 10/5/06

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19376

“[…] the "mistakes" in Iran-contra, as construed by the minority report, had followed not from having done the illegal but from having allowed the illegal to become illegal in the first place. As laid out by the minority, a principal "mistake" made by the Reagan administration in Iran-contra was in allowing President Reagan to sign rather than veto the 1984 Boland II Amendment forbidding aid to contra forces: no Boland II, no illegality. A second "mistake," to the same point, was Reagan's "less-than-robust defense of his office's constitutional powers, a mistake he repeated when he acceded too readily and too completely to waive executive privilege for our Committees' investigation."

I'm no lawyer, but here's something I saw a while back:

Torture’s Paper Trail-byJoann Mariner, 10/10/2007

http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/mariner/20071010.html

“[…] But here is the key point: mistake of law is an excuse, in some circumstances, when the potential criminal defendant is a public official. Rules on qualified immunity for criminal conduct provide that if a public official reasonably believes that his actions are legal, he will not be prosecuted even if it later turns out that he violated the law. Not only are OLC memos, given their recognized authority, an ideal basis on which to base a defense of reasonable belief, but last year's Military Commissions Act also includes provisions to strengthen this defense. […]” http://writ.lp.findlaw.com/mariner/20071010.html

I appreciate you posting that. I'm in the process of proof reading...again. I am also interested if anyone finds errors. Thanks.

Page 4- THREE Major errors:

[1] July 7, 2004 should be relocated to 2004

[2] Mid August, 2004 should be Mid August 2003

[3] August 13, 2002 [page 4] should be 2003

YIKES!

Thanks

Through your words, I hear that sad and beautiful music.

Thank you.

From the SASC Report [12/11/08]

January 15, 2003-“ On January 15, 2003, the same day he rescinded authority for GTMO to use aggressive techniques, Secretary Rumsfeld directed the establishment of a “Working Group” to review interrogation techniques. For the next few months senior military and civilian lawyers tried, without success, to have their concerns about the legality of aggressive techniques reflected in the Working Group’s report. Their arguments were rejected in favor of a legal opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel’s (OLC) John Yoo. Mr. Yoo’s opinion, the final version of which was dated March 14, 2003, had been requested by Mr. Haynes at the initiation of the Working Group process, and repeated much of what the first Bybee memo had said six months earlier.”