Torture Memo Shields Interrogators
Government Memo Says Even Brutal Actions OK if Done in 'Good Faith'
By Spencer Ackerman
07/24/2008
One of the most important building blocks in the Bush administration's apparatus of torture became public Thursday.
An Aug. 1, 2002 memorandum from the Justice Dept.'s Office of Legal Counsel to the Central Intelligence Agency instructed the agency's interrogators on specific interrogation techniques for use on Al Qaeda detainees in its custody. Most of the 17-page memo is blacked out and unreadable. But at least one of those techniques is waterboarding, the process of pouring water into the mouth and nostrils of a detainee under restraint until drowning occurs.