Surprise! We Can Still Torture

It turns out the DoJ has some secret legal opinions on torture from 2005 and 2006. A House Panel has demanded the documents be turned over. Because Congress has been so very successful in the past in getting material from the administration. They can’t even get them to turn over subpoenaed material.

[S]oon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued [a secret opinion on torture,] according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics

[...]

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

  NYT

Of course he was giving them credit for having shame.

Comey strongly objected and told associates that he advised Mr. Gonzales not to endorse the [torture] opinion. But the attorney general made clear that the White House was adamant about it, and that he would do nothing to resist.

Under Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Comey’s opposition might have killed the opinion. An imposing former prosecutor and self-described conservative who stands 6-foot-8, he was the rare administration official who was willing to confront [Dick Cheney's counsel David] Addington. At one testy 2004 White House meeting, when Mr. Comey stated that “no lawyer” would endorse Mr. Yoo’s justification for the N.S.A. program, Mr. Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Mr. Comey shot back: “No good lawyer,” according to someone present.

[...]

[I]n July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the C.I.A. again is holding prisoners in “black sites” overseas.

And now I know how Patrick Fitzgerald got to be the special prosecutor in the Plame case: James Comey appointed him, further pissing off the Bush cabal, or, as the NY Times article puts it, “irreparably offending” the White House.

They were offended that a “good lawyer” might get involved.

....but, hey....do what you want, you will anyway.