Alberto J. Mora

Alberto José Mora (born April 11, 1952) is a former General Counsel of the Navy. He led an effort within the Defense Department to oppose the legal theories of John Yoo and to try to end the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay.

Mora is featured in two documentaries: the 2008 Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side and Torturing Democracy.

Early life Mora was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in Cuba. His father, a medical doctor and professor, is Cuban, and his mother's parents are from Hungary, which they fled in advance of active Hungarian-German cooperation in 1941. Mora's family fled Cuba after the Cuban Revolution of 1959 when Mora was eight years old. Mora's family relocated to Jackson, Mississippi, where Mora lived until leaving for college. He received a B.A., with honors, from Swarthmore College in 1974.

Career From 1975 to 1978 he worked for the U.S. State Department as a foreign service officer at the U.S. embassy in Lisbon, Portugal. He left to enroll at the University of Miami School of Law, where he received his J.D. in 1981. He worked in litigation at a number of firms, until returning to government work. From 1989 to 1993, he served in the administration of President George H. W. Bush as general counsel to the United States Information Agency. He was later appointed three times by President Bill Clinton to the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the Voice of America and other U.S. information services. He also worked as an Of Counsel attorney with the prominent law firm of Greenberg Traurig, at their Washington office, focusing on matters of international law.

Mora speaks Spanish, French, and Portuguese. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Mora as the General Counsel of the Navy, the most senior civilian lawyer for the Navy, after a recommendation by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, who is friends with Mora.

Mora was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, when it was struck by the Boeing 757 of American Airlines Flight 77. Mora said that it "felt jarring, like a large safe had been dropped overhead."

Mora retired from the Federal Government in January 2006. He became the chief counsel for Wal-Mart's international division and later served as general counsel and secretary of Mars, Inc.

He served on the board of directors of Human Rights First.

In 2020, Mora, along with over 130 other former Republican national security officials, signed a statement that asserted that President Donald Trump was unfit to serve another term, and "To that end, we are firmly convinced that it is in the best interest of our nation that Vice President Joe Biden be elected as the next President of the United States, and we will vote for him."

Campaign against torture at Guantanamo Bay

In December 2002, Mora received word from David Brant, director of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), that NCIS agents at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba had learned that detainees being held there were being subjected to "physical abuse and degrading treatment" by members of the Joint Task Force 170 (JTF-170), and that authorization for this treatment had come from "a 'high level' in Washington". Mora reports that he was "disturbed" and felt he had to learn more.

Mora described his reaction to learning of the authorization for coercive interrogation techniques in these words:

To my mind, there's no moral or practical distinction [between cruelty and torture]. If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It destroys the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity, including the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in America—even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this exception, the whole Constitution crumbles. It's a transformative issue... Besides, my mother would have killed me if I hadn't spoken up. No Hungarian after Communism, or Cuban after Castro, is not aware that human rights are incompatible with cruelty. The debate here isn't only how to protect the country. It’s how to protect our values."