After ProPublica recently revealed that right-wing megadonor Harlan Crow had spent decades lavishing gifts on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, The New York Times provided conservative lawyer John Yoo an opportunity to defend the man for whom he’d once clerked.

Close readers of the Times might recognize Yoo’s name from any number of stories the paper had published since Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. Yoo served a very specific function in the mainstream media ecosystem at the time — he was a conservative and purported legal authority who would occasionally offer mild criticism of Trump, mostly along procedural grounds.

What Times readers, especially younger ones, might not realize is that Yoo infamously drafted executive branch briefs, which later came to be known as the torture memos, that provided legal cover for the George W. Bush administration’s sprawling rendition, detention, and interrogation program — that is, the torture program. Along with then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee (now a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals) and a small number of other executive branch lawyers and advisers, Yoo laid the legalistic foundation for torture operations carried out in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, and countries that hosted CIA-run or associated “black sites.”

Although Yoo left the government in 2003, he was still a controversial figure at the end of the decade. “Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee were not acting as fair-minded analysts of the law but as facilitators of a scheme to evade it,” the Times wrote in a 2010 editorial titled: “The Torture Lawyers.”

“The White House decision to brutalize detainees already had been made,” the editorial board continued. “Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee provided legal cover.”

The Times’ editorial board was even more forceful in 2014, listing Yoo in a piece headlined: “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses.”

Over the course of these years, when Yoo was mentioned in the paper, it was frequently in reference to a Bush-era controversy. (Yoo also played a central role in approving broad, warrantless wiretapping under the Stellar Wind program, run by the National Security Agency.)

There appears to be little consistency beyond that point in how Yoo was referenced by the Times. A story in 2013 describes Yoo as “a high-ranking Bush administration lawyer who wrote several major opinions on torture,” notably eliding that his opinions justified it. A news analysis from 2013 euphemistically says Yoo “declared harsh interrogation legal.” Two stories about the Supreme Court, one from 2012 and another from 2013, omit Yoo’s role in the program.

But by the time of Trump’s inauguration, the Bush administration had largely been rehabilitated by mainstream outlets, bringing even some of its most notorious characters — like Yoo — back into polite society. After institutionally referring to Yoo as a “torture lawyer” just years earlier, the Times began to welcome him back into its pages as both a source on the straight news side and to write op-eds, almost always referring to him simply as an academic or former government official. In doing so, the Times engaged in an ongoing project of whitewashing the true nature of the so-called war on terror.

What follows is a thorough, if not exhaustive, list of instances in which The New York Times has quoted Yoo or mentioned him since early 2017 as a reliable source of information without referencing the torture memos. In some cases, Yoo is quoted as a conservative critic of Trump, serving to further sanitize not only Yoo’s reputation, but Bush’s as well by proxy.

With the rise of Trump, The New York Times increasingly quoted or mentioned Yoo without referencing the torture memos

A piece on critics of Trump’s “increasingly aggressive attacks on the judiciary” in February 2017 set the template for how Yoo would be treated by the Times. He was quoted defending executive power early in the Trump administration, and identified as “a former counsel to Mr. Bush” who was “now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley.”

Yoo also wrote an op-ed that month titled: “Executive Power Run Amok.”

In the piece, he described his time in office and his subsequent wariness of Trump:

This passing, self-serving account of his role in torture would be one of the few times the issue came up as Yoo was increasingly found in the paper. (Yoo was typically identified as a law professor at Berkeley and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in op-eds he’d written.)

Also in February 2017, Yoo was described in the paper as a “former Bush administration lawyer” and “strong Trump critic.” The later phrase linked to Yoo’s self-rehabilitating op-ed.

That May, a shared op-ed authored by Times columnists Gail Collins and Bret Stephens mentioned Yoo twice, but was silent on torture. They referenced yet another recent Yoo op-ed, which argued in favor of impeachment over an independent counsel as the best method to exercise oversight over the executive branch.

Then in July, a New York Times Magazine article wrote that Yoo “drafted the legal guidelines for the administration’s interrogation techniques.” That those techniques amounted to torture was unsaid.

In October 2017, Yoo published another op-ed arguing in favor of broad executive pardon power. Yoo co-authored still another op-ed that December arguing against prosecuting Trump and in favor of impeaching him (he would later oppose Trump’s actual impeachment).

Near the end of 2017, Yoo was mentioned briefly in a story about executive power and national monuments, and only identified as being from Berkeley’s law school.

In October 2018, a news analysis that examined Trump’s attempts to reverse birthright citizenship linked to a piece of Yoo’s writing that was critical of the president’s efforts. Times readers were told that Yoo “served in the George W. Bush administration and is now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley."

Another news analysis piece, this time from May 2019, quoted Yoo criticizing Trump’s refusal to turn over information to Congress. Again, the Times referred to him as a law professor and former official under Bush, but nothing more. (It’s also worth noting that while historical analogies are never exact, the Bush administration and the CIA spent years covering up the torture program not only from the American public, but also hiding it from other government oversight.)

In an op-ed from January 2018, Yoo referenced his tenure under Bush, and criticized Trump’s “impulse to transform every activity of government into a partisan conflict undermines the difficult task of repairing a Justice Department that sorely needs it.”

That April, Yoo again argued in an op-ed in favor of vast executive authority, this time that Trump had the authority to fire special counsel Robert Mueller.

In a September 2019 op-ed, Yoo reversed his position on impeachment. He now advised against bringing articles against Trump and in favor of broad executive immunity by implicitly pushing the so-called unitary executive theory, one of the very philosophical underpinnings of the torture program.

One month later, in a table-setting piece that examined what former Trump national security adviser John Bolton might say to Congress during Trump’s impeachment, the Times referred to Yoo only as a “Berkeley law school professor and senior Justice Department official under President George W. Bush."

Also in October 2019, Yoo appeared on Fox News with host Laura Ingraham. The two discussed Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, a key figure in Trump’s impeachment proceedings.

“Here we have a U.S. national security official who is advising Ukraine, while working inside the White House, apparently against the president's interest, and usually, they spoke in English,” Ingraham said. “Isn't that kind of an interesting angle on this story?”

“I find that astounding, and in — you know, some people might call that espionage, but it doesn't actually seem to add any new facts to what we know,” Yoo responded.

Despite significant coverage of his exchange with Ingraham in the Times, Yoo’s role in torture went unmentioned. A Times straight news article on the topic referred to Yoo only as “a former top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.” An opinion piece, also critical of Yoo’s comments about Vindman, similarly failed to include mention of his role in the torture program. Another op-ed about the same episode that was also critical of Yoo nonetheless characterized him simply as an “establishment conservative.” The Times covered Vindman’s lawyer calling for a retraction from Fox over the segment with Yoo, identifying him simply as “a top lawyer in the George W. Bush administration.”

The next February, the Times wrote about Trump’s relationship with his then-Attorney General Bill Barr similarly referenced Yoo as a law professor and former government lawyer under Bush.

Days after the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, the Times quoted Yoo, who praised outgoing Vice President Mike Pence for not participating in Trump’s attempted coup. The Times noted that Yoo advised Pence, referring to him as “a legal scholar” and “a prominent conservative at the University of California at Berkeley who served in Mr. Bush’s administration.”

In the eyes of the Times, Yoo had by now been fully transformed from “torture lawyer” into a defender of democracy itself. Indeed, Yoo’s history had been so thoroughly sanitized that it could be referenced in passing as the subject of a charming anecdote without further elaboration.

After a draft leaked of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year, the Times covered Thomas’ response condemning the leak and arguing it hurt the court as an institution. He made his remarks at a conference sponsored by right-wing think tanks alongside his mentee, Yoo, whose role in legitimizing torture had become an amusing anecdote.

The Times article didn’t elaborate on what “the Bush administration’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks” actually consisted of: indefinite detention, rectal sexual assault under the pretext of force feeding, and death by torture, just to name a few.

Last September, the Times mentioned that Yoo had publicly argued Trump “likely obstructed justice.” He was referenced as “a top Justice Department official under President George W. Bush.”

In the rare instance after 2017 when the Times’ straight news reports did include mention of Yoo’s authorship of the torture memos, the common denominator appears to be reporter Charlie Savage. A news analysis Savage wrote in 2020 mentioned it, as did a straight news story from 2019 with three additional bylines about Trump’s first impeachment trial. In 2018, Savage also wrote at least two additional stories about Yoo’s role in crafting Bush’s warrantless surveillance programs that were generally critical of his participation, though they didn’t include mentions of the torture memos.

Other sections of the Times reference Yoo’s role in torture

Despite this pattern of omission in its news reporting which amounts in practice to an affirmative project of collective amnesia, other sections of the Times retained the ability to reference Yoo’s role in torture.

Yale professor Bruce Ackerman did that in Times op-eds in 2017 and again in 2018. Columnist Maureen Dowd did as well, also in 2018. As did an op-ed from 2020. So too did columnist Tom Edsall in 2022.

A New York Times Magazine story from 2020 mentioned Yoo’s role in torture, as did another magazine piece two years later.

A review of the 2019 movie The Report — which dramatized the Senate’s efforts to write a comprehensive history of the post-9/11 rendition, detention, and interrogation programs — links to the Times’ own editorial on Yoo’s role in providing legal cover for them. A book review from 2021 includes a mention of the torture memos. Months earlier, journalist and author Spencer Ackerman talked about Yoo’s role in the torture memos on Ezra Klein’s podcast for the Times.

In 2020, a review of a book Yoo wrote defending broad executive power and immunity mentioned “enhanced interrogation” in a nominally critical context, but avoided the use of the term torture and failed to make clear Yoo’s role in the program.

There is a cliche that journalism is the first draft of history, yet the Times is making the real history of U.S. torture more opaque with each new draft that it publishes citing one of the program’s key architects as merely a principled conservative law professor. The fact that Yoo has been able to successfully launder his reputation through its pages stands as a condemnation of the Times’ commitment to informing the public about one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history.