Mr. Yoo Goes to Washington

Korean American in Bush administration talks about his place in the legal system and the way government has changed

By Terry Hong
Special to AsianWeek

On the door to John Yoo’s Department of Justice office is a photocopy of the Gettysburg Address. There’s a reason for this, explains Yoo, who is Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. “A few nights ago, I was watching Jay Leno and he was at a college graduation somewhere interviewing students. He asked a student if he knew what the Gettysburg Address was and the kid said that he didn’t know the exact address but it was somewhere in Gettysburg.” Yoo is not pleased.

“This worries me,” he says with a shake of his head. “Kids are actually graduating with such a lack of any sense of American history.”

The press representative appointed to sit in on our afternoon interview adds with a smile, “John really takes his job seriously.”

As one of the highest-ranking Korean Americans in the Bush Administration, Yoo certainly knows his history. Appointed in April 2001 to his post by President Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft, Yoo is part of the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) which “is charged by federal regulation with providing answers to legal questions for the executive branch,” he explains. OLC and its two dozen attorneys are often called the “President’s law firm.” Yoo began the two-year appointment in June 2001. Why did he take the job?

“You don’t say ‘no’ to the White House,” he laughs. “OLC is an extraordinary place to work ... It is an especially extraordinary and challenging place to work these days,” he says ruefully, referring to life post-Sept. 11.

Born in Korea, Yoo immigrated as a three-month-old with his parents in 1967 to the suburbs of Philadelphia. His parents, both doctors, came in search of “economic opportunity and educational resources,” he says. The first-born son, Yoo graduated summa cum laude in 1989 from Harvard University, then from Yale Law School in 1992. Since earning his law degree, he’s been back and forth between Washington D.C. (for two clerkships, a Judiciary Committee post and this current appointment) and California. He is a professor at UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law, where he has specialized in constitutional law for almost a decade. “I help keep the moving business going,” he laughs, not without irony.

AsianWeek: I understand you were a journalist for a summer in the Washington Bureau of the Wall Street Journal, covering politics and economics. How did you end up in the law?
John Yoo: Journalism is somewhat ephemeral. You chase a story the day it happens, you write about [it] and then it’s done. Law is more permanent. Besides, as a history major, law was the natural follow-up.

AW: You started teaching at Berkeley just one year out of law school. How did that happen?
Yoo: Teaching was something I always wanted to do, although I never planned to do [it] so early. An entry-level position opened up at Berkeley and I had the chance to teach in a field that I’m very interested in. My Yale professors really encouraged me to take the job, which I was very fortunate to get, especially at that age, at such a great school.

AW: And then you came back to D.C. again.
Yoo: I clerked the year after Yale with Judge Laurence H. Silberman in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Then I taught for a year at Berkeley. When I had applied for clerkships originally, I also interviewed with Justice Clarence Thomas but didn’t get it at that time. But for some reason, Justice Thomas remembered me and called to ask me to clerk for him [1994-1995]. It was an opportunity of a lifetime.

AW: And after your clerkship, you stayed in D.C.?
Yoo: For the first time in 40 years, Congress was Republican. So I thought I should stay around after my clerkship at the Supreme Court and see what happened. I wanted to participate in the legislative branch of the government. So I went to the U.S. Senate, as General Counsel of the Committee on the Judiciary, where I worked for Chairman Orrin Hatch of Utah. I learned more in one year there than anywhere else. It was practical politics — the things you can’t learn in any grad schools. Clerking is an isolated experience, without contact with the outside world. The Judiciary Committee was the opposite: I got to know the Committee Senators, I would help them get ready for public appearances, I helped draft legislation and I was constantly meeting with constituents. It was a crash course on politics, on just how Congress works.

AW: With the crash course in hand, you returned to California to teach your own courses that focused on foreign affairs law and presidential powers during wartime. Your academic specialty is almost an uncanny match with what you do today at the OLC.
Yoo: When I came to OLC last June, I could not have imagined that such a tragic event would occur, or that the subjects of my academic pursuits would become the subjects of real-world controversies with serious consequences. But the tragedies are very real, and I am grateful to have been given this opportunity to make a contribution to this most American of causes — the protection of freedom and the security of liberty — and to help the president and the attorney general do what they have been called upon to do in order to keep this country safe, strong and prosperous.

As the president’s and attorney general’s advisors on questions of constitutional law, OLC has been called upon repeatedly ... to answer legal questions that, in earlier times, had been asked primarily by academics, and only for hypothetical reasons. Unfortunately, those questions are hypothetical no more.

AW: What are some of the most obvious ways that the U.S. government has changed since Sept. 11?
Yoo: The tragedy of September 11 was a terrorist attack of an unprecedented magnitude. [But] it brought this country together, in a renewed spirit of patriotism and united purpose that has commanded the attention and admiration of people all over the globe. The government today is much more focused in fighting terrorism and ensuring national security. Last decade, we were fortunate that we didn’t have matters of war at the forefront of our national agenda. This war was thrust upon us and the government has organized and devoted itself to confronting that challenge in a way our generation has never faced before.

I’ve been impressed with all levels of the government. Before 9-11, the concerns were different, with people focused on issues such as social security or economic growth or education. I’m not saying that these issues are not important, but this war on terrorism is something that the government is focused on all together.

The expanded powers of the Justice Department were overwhelmingly approved by Congress. And Congress, I believe, reflects what the American people want, which is to pursue terrorists. The people all working together — it’s been amazing to see.

AW: And last but not least, do you keep kimchi in your refrigerator?
Yoo: [laughter] No, I admit I don’t keep it in the refrigerator. But I eat kimchi on a regular basis. And I do know how to cook Korean food. All the Korean-language newspapers were so interested in that fact when I first got nominated. Bulgogi is the easiest. But for a full Korean meal, you have to be continuously chopping and marinating at least a whole day ahead.