Judge Plans To Review Opinion on CIA Tactics

Judge Plans To Review Opinion on CIA Tactics

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 9, 2008; Page A08


A federal judge in New York intends next week to review one of the Bush administration's most controversial legal opinions related to detainee interrogations, to decide if it has appropriately been withheld from public view.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein of the Southern District of New York said in an order yesterday that on Monday he intends to review an Aug. 1, 2002, memo on specific CIA interrogation techniques, marking an unusual review outside the executive branch.

The 2002 memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel accompanied a broader document on the definition of torture that has already been released publicly and disavowed by the administration.

The second, still-classified memo focuses on the specific interrogation techniques that were deemed legally permissible at the CIA, according to court documents and intelligence officials. The memo was authored by then-OLC deputy John C. Yoo and includes discussion of waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning that the CIA has acknowledged using on three al-Qaeda suspects in its custody, officials have said.

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