The House Judiciary Committee has requested testimony from former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former White House attorney John Yoo (Office of Legal Counsel), and counsel for Vice President Cheney David Addington.

To date, these three civil officers, all connected to the memoranda apparently authorizing the use of torture on prisoners held by the United States, have not agreed to testify voluntarily.

Chairman John Conyers' letter to John C. Millian, attorney for Yoo, is linked here.

Conyers' letter to David Addington, now Chief of Staff for Cheney, is linked here.

His letter to Charles J. Cooper, attorney for John Ashcroft, is linked here.

The committee invited all three men to appear voluntarily for a hearing on May 6.

Here is Ashcroft's response, through counsel.

Here is Yoo's response through counsel.

Here is the letter from the Office of the Vice President, also declining.

It may be noticed that Yoo, now a college faculty member, uses the argument that he is no longer a government official and "thus any questions that the Committee may have about current policies are outside his knowledge and are better directed to current officials in the Justice Department."

Catch-22: When officials are still in the Justice Department--or any other department, for that matter--similar requests are often evaded or denied as a "personnel matter" and thus confidential for privacy reasons. This striking concern about privacy, one notes, is notably lacking in regard to either female reproduction issues or concerns raised by the Patriot Act or by illegal or warrantless wiretapping and other surveillance.

And if 'personnel' is not the watchword, then 'security' often is. By some unhappy coincidence, almost everything Congress or the courts, the legal watchdogs over the Executive branch, might want to know about lately seems to have the direst implications for national security.