Justice Department Gets Tougher on Use of Torture
WASHINGTON — Reversing course, the Justice Department has adopted a revised view of what constitutes torture under federal law, rejecting an earlier department position linked to abuses of military prisoners and suspected terrorists in Cuba and Iraq.
"Torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms," the new analysis begins.
The opinion replaces an August 2002 Justice Department memo that implied that torture of military detainees could be justified under certain circumstances. The disclosure of that memo last summer triggered a firestorm of criticism from human rights groups, members of Congress and others.
The Bush administration later disavowed the memo and said it was working on a replacement document. Officials have also asserted that administration policy has always been to treat prisoners humanely. As a result, it was unclear whether the new position would have any effect on the treatment of detainees.
Nonetheless, the reversal in legal thinking reflects a continuing effort by the administration to quell public concerns that it has condoned abusive treatment of detainees in prosecuting the war on terrorism -- concerns fueled by a persistent stream of reports of misconduct by military interrogators and guards.
And it comes a week before Alberto R. Gonzales, a central figure in the legal drama, is due to face a tough Senate confirmation hearing as Bush's nominee to be U.S. attorney general. Gonzales was the top White House lawyer at the height of the controversy.
The 2002 memo drew fire for the narrow protections it afforded terrorism suspects under federal anti-torture law and the broad power it suggested Bush had to ignore even a narrowly construed law.
For example, the memo concluded that perpetrators could be charged under the torture law only in cases in which the pain they inflicted was "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."
The new opinion, published on the Justice Department website late Thursday and first reported in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, expressly rejected that view and concluded that Congress did not intend to prohibit conduct involving only "excruciating and agonizing" pain.
