Secret justice department memos said to sanction 'severe' interrogation tactics.

• Author: Crook, John R.

In 2005, according to October 2007 press reports, officials at the U.S. Department of Justice prepared and circulated highly classified legal opinions concluding that "severe" interrogation tactics, including simulated drowning and exposure to cold temperatures, were lawful. (1) One of these opinions, apparently issued in May 2005, reportedly reversed, or at least significantly modified, the department's December 2004 statements repudiating an earlier, 2002 opinion prepared in the department's Office of Legal Counsel that had offered legal sanction to such techniques. (2)

A second opinion was prepared while Congress was considering legislation, urged by Senator McCain and others in the summer of 2005 and subsequently enacted as the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which sought to prohibit cruel, inhuman, or degrading interrogation techniques. (3) This document reportedly concluded that such "severe" interrogation techniques were consistent with the proposed legislation. (4)

The White House spokesperson declined to comment on the substance of the press reports about these 2005 opinions but insisted that the United States does not practice torture:

Q Just generally, does the administration--does the President believe that head-slapping and simulated drowning are necessary tactics to use against suspected terrorists to keep America safe?

MS. PERINO: ... In this new war, which is an unprecedented war, facing an enemy unlike we've ever faced before, sometimes--oftentimes the best information that you get is from the terrorists themselves. They know where the other terrorists are hiding and what the other terrorists are planning. And to win the war on terror we must be able to detain them, interrogate them, question them, and when appropriate, prosecute them--in America--when we capture them here in America and on battlefields around the world. The policy of the United States is not to torture. The President has not authorized it, he will not authorize it.

But he had done everything within the corners of the law to make sure that we prevent another attack on this country, which is what we have done in this administration. I am not going to comment on any specific alleged techniques. It is not appropriate for me to do so. And to do so would provide the enemy with more information for how to train against these techniques. And so I am going to decline to comment on those, but I will reiterate to you once again that we do not torture. We want to make...