Obama Administration Releases Four OLC Torture Memos

The Obama administration has just released four new ‘torture’ memos, written by lawyers working in the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice in the Bush administration. The release of these memos has been long anticipated, and seems to have produced much wrangling within the Obama administration, with the CIA pressing to keep them classified. Some portions of the memos are redacted, to protect the identities of actual interrogators.

The memos are now available at the ACLU website. A statement by President Obama, in which he explicitly states that his administration will not prosecute any CIA interrogator who relied on the OLC advice in good faith, is available here. A similar statement by the Attorney General is available here. I will post more on the memos when I have the time to read them.