Posted by Jonathan Adler:
"Holy Hell" in Torture Memo Fight:
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2009_03_29-2009_04_04.shtml#1238862479
It appears the Obama Administration remains divided over whether to
release additional OLC "torture memos." Attorney General Eric Holder
wants to release the memos, but high-level intelligence officials,
including John Brennan and Leon Panetta, are opposed. [1]Michael
Isikoff reports:
the White House last month had accepted a recommendation from
Attorney General Eric Holder to declassify and publicly release
three 2005 memos that graphically describe harsh interrogation
techniques approved for the CIA to use against Al Qaeda suspects.
But after the story, U.S. intelligence officials, led by senior
national-security aide John Brennan, mounted an intense campaign to
get the decision reversed, according to a senior administration
official familiar with the debate. "Holy hell has broken loose over
this," said the official, who asked not to be identified because of
political sensitivities. . . .
The continued internal debate explains the Justice Department's
decision late Thursday to ask a federal judge for another two-week
delay (until April 16) to file a final response in a Freedom of
Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union
seeking the release of the memos. The ACLU agreed to the two-week
delay only after Justice officials represented that "high-level
Government officials will consider for possible release" the three
2005 memos as well as another Aug. 1, 2002, memo on torture, that
has long been sought by congressional committees and members of
Congress, according to a motion filed by Justice lawyers with U.S.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in New York, who is overseeing the case.
The 2002 memo, written by former Justice lawyers Jay Bybee and John
Yoo, concluded that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation
techniques could be used against Qaeda suspects without violating a
federal law that prohibits torture. That memo was publicly
withdrawn by the Justice Department in 2004 after its existence
became publicly known and sparked a public controversy. But a new
set of Justice lawyers�led by Steven Bradbury, the newly installed
chief of the department's Office of Legal Counsel�later secretly
authored additional memos in the spring of 2005 that essentially
approved the same techniques, permitting the agency to barrage
terror suspects with a combination of physical and psychological
tactics, including head-slapping and frigid temperatures, according
to a 2007 New York Times account. Those memos concluded that the
harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA would not violate
Geneva Conventions restrictions on "cruel, inhuman and degrading"
treatment of prisoners.
References
1. http://www.newsweek.com/id/192314
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