ACLU Uncovers a Third Bradbury Torture Memo from 2005

By Spencer Ackerman - November 6, 2007, 4:36PM

Just in time for Michael Mukasey's impending Senate vote to become attorney general, the ACLU has discovered that one of his would-be underlings, Steven Bradbury of the Office of Legal Council, penned three memoranda in 2005 on the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA. The discovery raises the possibility that the Justice Department has penned other as-yet-unknown torture memos since 2005.

Two of those memoranda were first revealed by The New York Times in early October. That story struck the ACLU as outrageous -- not just on the substantive merits, but because on January 31, 2005, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the OLC and other federal agencies demanding documentation on the treatment of detainees. Yet even though the ACLU had received documents from the government dated after the OLC memos described in the Times, it still had to read about material clearly relevant to its FOIA request in the paper.

ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer says Justice Department officials told him that the date the organization filed its FOIA request represented a cut-off date for material -- a bizarre argument, given that it's already received documentation dating after the January 31, 2005 filing -- and as a result, Jaffer asked Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District Court of New York to adjudicate late last month. And in response to the ACLU, the government revealed this piece of tantalizing information:

OLC has reviewed its opinions from that time frame and has determined that there were in fact three opinions issued to CIA relating to the interrogation of detainees in CIA custody … Two of the opinions were issued on May 10, 2005 … The third was issued on May 30, 2005 ... OLC has not located any legal opinions issued to CIA from January 31, 2005 through May 9, 2005 that relate to the interrogation of detainees in CIA custody.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004653.php

"any person" to testify against him- or herself. That sort of makes any form of torture of even extreme interrogation techniques. What purpose do these techniques have other than forcing a person to testify against him- or herself. This is not up for discussion. None of these techniques are ever to be used in a criminal case -- and in what other kind of case would they be used?