olc memos

The Justice Department released more documents — or, at least, less-redacted documents — late Friday to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of the government’s obligation in a pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
These latest documents provide a glimpse of the early struggles between the FBI and the Pentagon over just how to conduct [...]

Documents reveal the CIA was allowed to deny detainees sleep upward of 80 to 180 hours at a time.

On the same day that the government produced the 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report on interrogations, it also turned over seven more memos and letters from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The Washington Post’s editorial today arguing for prosecution only of “those who went well beyond the often-extreme measures authorized by the [Office of Legal Counsel] memos” that justified abusive interrogations is calling more attention to the rumor, first reported by Daniel Klaidman in Newsweek, that Attorney General Eric Holder is seriously considering such prosecutions.
According to [...]

Here’s some clarity on a post I wrote Friday. I wondered what Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) meant when he called on President Obama to withdraw certain Justice Department legal memoranda that remain operative. Which memoranda? Apparently some from President George W. Bush’s second term are still in place.
In a letter — sorry, I don’t have [...]

Asked this morning when the Justice Department plans to release the highly-anticipated report by its internal ethics office regarding the conduct and legal conclusions of Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel lawyers, such as John Yoo and Steven Bradbury, Holder said they are “pretty close to getting their report finalized,” and “they are making changes [...]

After Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and his Judiciary subcommittee officially announced its intent to hold a hearing on the Office of Legal Counsel torture memos next week, I asked Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights and author of “The Prosecution of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution by Book”, what evidence he would [...]

In one technique, the detainee’s weight is “borne by his legs and feet during sleep deprivation,” ensuring that he had to keep awake, for if he “los[t] his balance” from exhaustion he would feel “the restraining tension of the shackles.”

According to Andy McCarthy, senior fellow at the National Review Institute, the idea of calling waterboarding torture is just silly. And the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohamed was waterboarded 183 times just reinforces how ridiculous calling it “torture” really is.
As he said on a conference call with reporters organized by the Federalist Society this morning, [...]

Although he’s not calling it “torture” anymore, according to Greg Sargent at The Plum Line, President Obama on Tuesday said that he is not opposed to a bipartisan investigation on Capitol Hill of Bush administration officials who devised those torturous tactics.
The president has publicly opposed prosecuting the CIA officers who carried them out, but now [...]