Secret US endorsement of severe interrogations

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations. But soon after Alberto Gonzales's arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency. The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on "combined effects" over the objections of James Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal reasoning, Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be "ashamed" when the world eventually learned of it. Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the CIA interrogation methods violated that standard. The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush's second term and Gonzales's tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil. The 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh tactics. The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office's tradition of avoiding political advocacy. After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions applied to prisoners who belonged to al-Qaida, President Bush for the first time acknowledged the CIA's secret jails and ordered their inmates moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But in July, after a month-long debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls "enhanced" interrogation techniques–the details remain secret–and officials say the CIA again is holding prisoners in "black sites" overseas. The executive order was reviewed and approved by Bradbury and the Office of Legal Counsel. From the secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe where CIA teams held alleged terrorist suspects, questions for the lawyers at CIA headquarters arrived daily. Nervous interrogators wanted to know: Are we breaking the laws against torture? The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding.