Waterboarding Is Fair Game
I’m pooped so will have to return to this article. It explains how, after DOJ under Jack Goldsmith threw out John Yoo’s torture policies, Steven Bradbury came in and replaced them with still worse opinions.
When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent†ina legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared tohave abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authorityto order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’sarrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Departmentissued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very differentdocument, according to officials briefed on it, an expansiveendorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time providedexplicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination ofpainful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping,simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects†over the objections of James B. Comey,the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruisingclashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as theopinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues atthe department that they would all be “ashamed†when the worldeventually learned of it.
Later that year, as Congress Read more →