by James Oliphant

The House Judiciary Committee Tuesday will again attempt to delve into the thicket of legal advice given the Bush administration concerning its detention and interrogation policies for suspected terrorists.

The hearing is billed "From the Department of Justice to Guantánamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and Administration Interrogation Rules," but it could be less than dramatic.

The committee's chairman, John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), requested that current and former administration officials such as David Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, ex-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo appear to testify and former Pentagon official Douglas Feith. All have declined, citing, among other reasons, that their work was privileged. Conyers has threatened to subpoena them.

A similar conflict regarding the administration and executive privilege is playing out in the Senate over the U.S. attorney firings. That has resulted in litigation in the U.S. District Court in Washington.

It was Yoo's 2003 memo, released just last month, that triggered another round of criticism about the administration's anti-terror policies. That memo concluded that neither the U.S Constitution, existing federal law, nor the Geneva Conventions prevented the government from using aggressive interrogation measures. The memo was later rescinded as government policy.

In advance of the hearing, Amnesty International has released a new commercial, centered around the practice of waterboarding, the interrogation method that simulates drowning.(See above.)

Earlier this year, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, Michael Hayden, told Congress that three detainees had been waterboarded, but none since 2003.

You can read the exchanges between Conyers and lawyers for Addington and others here.