Justice Department decision permits torture.

The New York Times revealed Thursday the U.S. Justice Department issued a secret finding endorsing extraordinary interrogation tactics, such as water-boarding and stress positions. The Bush administration waded into the legal fray regarding permissable interrogation tactics in 2002. Following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, it began to hold prisoners in secret facilities outside the access to the International Red Cross, employing a combination of head slapping, extreme cold, sleep deprivation, simulated drowning, and other tactics. Increased awareness of the techniques resulted in the Bush administration making certain legislative statements called torture “abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms.”

But in 2002, the Office of Legal Counsel had its now famous “torture memo” released to public scrutiny. John Yoo, known as Dr. Yes by then attorney general John Ashcroft, wrote the brief, stating that interrogation tactics would not be considered legal so long as they did not cause pain equivalent to organ failure or “even death.”

As the use of harsh interrogation tactics began to see increased public awareness, Congress stepped in, passing the Detainee Treatment Act in 2005. The DTA, sponsored by U.S. senator John McCain, made the use of inhumane treatment against those in U.S. custody illegal. Later, the Graham-Levin amendment, however, made such legislation unclear. The Supreme Court finally stepped in with the Hamdan decision stating that the Geneva Conventions, outlining the rights of prisoners, did indeed apply to U.S. detainees, thus declaring harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects unconstitutional.

Previously, the Justice Department released findings stating its public declaration that torture was “abhorrent.” That statement, however, did not explicitly state that torture was viewed as illegal. The secret findings in later in Feb., 2005, were based in part on the 1952 Supreme Court decision, Rochin v. California, that stated due process rights were within the law to the point that the methods used “shocks the conscious.” The opinion, signed by the director of the Office of Legal Counsel Stephen G. Bradbury, found that harsh interrogation tactics, such as water-boarding, did not fit the decision in Rochin, especially if the tactics were used in situations where a threat to U.S. national security existed, such as in the case of interrogation tactics such as terrorism.