WASHINGTON — The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed “in good faith” that harsh techniques used to break prisoners’ will would not cause “prolonged mental harm.”
That heavily censored memo, released Thursday, approved the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques method by method but warned that if the circumstances changed, interrogators could be running afoul of anti-torture laws.
The Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion signed by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee was issued the same day he wrote a memo for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales defining torture as only those “extreme acts” that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure.
The Bybee legal opinion defining torture was withdrawn more than two years later. Justice spokesman Peter Carr said the conclusions of the opinion approving specific interrogation methods are still in force.
Waterboarding is a form of simulated drowning that critics call torture. CIA Director Michael Hayden banned waterboarding in 2006, but government officials have said it remains a possibility if approved by the attorney general, the CIA chief and the president.
Secret Bush administration memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques have been made public starting in 2004, when the Abu Ghraib prison-abuse scandal revealed detainee mistreatment.
Thursday’s release adds to the growing record of the still-secret program launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
