john yoo, he is a pleasure. john: ladies and gentlemen, john yoo. [applause] law at professor of berkeley and a visiting scholar at the american enterprise institute. following september 11, he worked on national security at the department of justice and wrote controversial memos, which will be in your obituary. [laughter] with time you have debated us. the last time we actually did it in philadelphia, your hometown. your mother was in the audience. you told us then that there was no way you could lose with her sitting there. well, she's not here tonight. what does that do to your game? [laughter] you keep inviting me, i keep losing, so you are the ones with the problem. [laughter] mom probably works at nsa now, so she's probably an audience listening anyway. john: ladies and gentlemen, the team arguing for this motion. [applause] now let's meet the team arguing against third welcome michael chertoff. [applause] michael, you have debated with us a number of times before. you are the cofounder of the chertoff group. you are the second secretary of ho

john yoo, he is a pleasure. john: ladies and gentlemen, john yoo. [applause] law at professor of berkeley and a visiting scholar at the american enterprise institute. following september 11, he worked on national security at the department of justice and wrote controversial memos, which will be in your obituary. [laughter] with time you have debated us. the last time we actually did it in philadelphia, your hometown. your mother was in the audience. you told us then that there was no way you could lose with her sitting there. well, she's not here tonight. what does that do to your game? [laughter] you keep inviting me, i keep losing, so you are the ones with the problem. [laughter] mom probably works at nsa now, so she's probably an audience listening anyway. john: ladies and gentlemen, the team arguing for this motion. [applause] now let's meet the team arguing against third welcome michael chertoff. [applause] michael, you have debated with us a number of times before. you are the cofounder of the chertoff group. you are the second secretary of ho

john donovan: thank you john , yoo. [applause] john donovan and finally, making : his closing statement against the moment, michael chertoff, executive chairman and cofounder of the chertoff group. michael chertoff: well, thanks, everybody. very stimulating debate and great questions. look, i know stewart likes to talk a lot about the apple phone case. and we're not going to resolve the engineering question about whether what would have been required would have been to create a general vulnerability. but that's not what the resolution is about. the resolution is about whether tech companies or anybody for that matter should be required to help do whatever can be done in order to make things accessible to law enforcement. there's no doubt congress can pass a law. that's not the issue. the question is, would that be wise? and if you apply it in this circumstance, what you see the resolution says is, you should have to configure your platforms in such a way that you can always access information when there is a lawful deman

never reviewed, much less provided comments on or input on and much less approved any memo from john yoo on this topic. i understand that he thinks it is possible he might have. i can only tell this committee that i have no recollection of that whatsoever and it's the kind of thing that i think i would remember. >> i would think so. >> might not be surprising because my portfolio was focused on the criminal division on the fbi, on the u.s. attorney's offices. it was not -- the office of legal counsel was not part of my portfolio. it's not to say that i never had any interaction with the office of legal action but it was not sort of squarely within my wheel house, which was already pretty full, to be honest. so, later, as i said, as assistant attorney general we did provide input on the general meaning of the statute, but not as to any particular technique. the reason for that is i wanted to preserve for the criminal division the proper role of prosecutors which is not to provide legal advice or forward looking, but rather to be able to investigate and prosecute cases involving cases agai

one of the authors of these memos, john yoo, testified that llc what not issued such opinions without the approval of the office of the attorney general or the office of deputy attorney general. in fact, in his testimony john you specifically referenced mr. wray as one of the individuals who would have received drafts of olc memos. so this raises the question of what exactly was mr. wray's role in reviewing and approving these memos. and i'd like mr. wray to clear this up this morning. i've had an opportunity to talka with him. i think this should go on the record, and i think that he should respond directly to the full committee. i'm also concerned by reports that mr. wray was alerted early on to the abuse of detainees at the abu ghraib prism in iraq. i'd like to know more about what the nominee new and when and what he did in response. this committee is charged with considering mr. wray's qualifications and experience with criminal and counterterrorism investigations. but we must also expand, examine his independence, his integrity and his willingness to stand up in the face of poli