'Torture' lawyers cleared by US review

JUSTICE Department lawyers showed "poor judgment" but did not commit professional misconduct when they authorised CIA interrogators to waterboard prisoners, an internal review has found.

The finding apparently brings an end to one of the major lingering investigations into the counter-terrorism policies of George W Bush's administration.

US president Barack Obama campaigned on abolishing the simulated drowning technique and other tactics which he described as torture, but he had left open the question of whether anyone would be punished for authorising such methods.

While the finding closes the debate within the Justice Department and the Obama administration, Democrats indicated they would continue to debate the issue.

Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy said he was "deeply offended" by the legal memos and planned to hold a hearing later this week.

An initial review by the Justice Department's internal affairs unit found that former government lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo had committed professional misconduct, a conclusion that could have cost them their law licences. But, underscoring just how controversial and legally thorny the memos have become, the Justice Department's top career lawyer reviewed the matter and disagreed.

"This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda," assistant deputy attorney general David Margolis wrote in a memo released on Friday.

Margolis, the top nonpolitical Justice Department lawyer and a veteran of several administrations, called the legal memos "flawed" and said that, at every opportunity, they gave interrogators as much leeway as possible under US anti-torture laws.

But he said Yoo and Bybee were not reckless and did not knowingly give incorrect advice, the standard for misconduct.