The disappearance of e-mail messages by Bush lawyers who drafted memos blessing harsh interrogation tactics may launch a criminal inquiry. They cover a critical period in 2002 when Justice Department attorneys labored under heavy pressure on a memo that gave the CIA a green light to use simulated drowning, sleep deprivation and other since-repudiated interrogation techniques against al-Qaeda suspects. The Justice Department's five-year inquiry, which concluded last week, found that Yoo and lawyer Jay S. Bybee "exercised poor judgment" but will not face discipline. In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated former Justice Department lawyer Miguel Estrada to a seat on the federal courts of appeals. Estrada withdrew his name after a filibuster. His wife died of an accidental overdose of alcohol and sleeping pills, having also miscarried during the nomination fight, essentially over memos that Estrada had written while he was in office He now represents Yoo.

John A. Rizzo, who joined the CIA in 1976 and retired late last year as the agency's acting general counsel, has held preliminary discussions with William Morris, the large talent and literary agency. Historical topics Rizzo plans to write about will include Iran-Contra investigations in the 1980s, controversies in the 1990s over the CIA's use of "dirty assets" in Central America and elsewhere, and the George W. Bush administration's counterterrorism interrogation practices. A series of legal opinions, known as the "torture memos,"were explicitly couched as legal advice rendered from the Justice Department to a top CIA lawyer—John A. Rizzo.