A confidential Justice Department legal memo sent to the White House in August 2002 concluded that interrogation of detainees can involve "cruel, inhuman or degrading" acts without violating U.S. and international laws prohibiting torture.

		Read the Memo The original document is 50 pages. To reduce file size, the memo has been broken into sections, optimized for viewing online. Part I: Introduction and discussion of 18 USC 2340-2340A (13 pages, 990K) Part II: U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (9 pages, 481K) Part III: U.S. Judicial Interpretation (6 pages, 344K) Part IV: International Decisions (5 pages, 257K) Part V: The President's Commander-in-Chief Power (9 pages, includes three short sections blacked out by source, 514K) Part VI: Defenses (8 pages, 451K) Appendix (4 pages, 263K) Complete document in single download (50 pages, best version for printing, 2.9MB) To view this graphic you must have Adobe Acrobat Reader 6.0, available as a free download from Adobe

Moreover, the memo argued that due to the "current war against al-Qaida and its allies," a legal prohibition against detainee torture does not apply because it may be viewed as an unconstitutional infringement on the president's powers as commander-in-chief to conduct war.

And, the legal analysis says, even if an interrogation method violates anti-torture laws -- including intentional homicide -- the actions could be justified by invoking the defense of "necessity," also known as the "choice of evils," which holds that the taking of one life to save two others is permissible.

Also, the memo said, the "self-defense" of U.S. citizens could justify detainee torture.

The existence of the memo, which was sent to Alberto R. Gonzales, counsel to the president, was first revealed last Tuesday by The Washington Post. Later that day, there were heated exchanges on Capitol Hill when Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to provide that memo and others to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ashcroft claimed they constituted confidential legal advice for President Bush and, therefore, Congress had no claim to them.

According to the Post, the memo was written at the request of the CIA, which wanted authority to conduct more aggressive interrogations than were permitted prior to the 9/11 attacks. The interrogations were of suspected al-Qaida members whom the CIA had apprehended outside the United States. The CIA asked the White House for legal guidance and the White House asked Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for its legal opinion.

The 50-page memo has provided ammunition to Bush administration critics who claim abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were a natural outgrowth of such a legal interpretation of what is permissible in the interrogation of detainees.

Since the scandal exploded in late April, a number of memos leaked to the media -- including one completed in March 2003 by Pentagon lawyers for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- have shown administration attorneys providing legal justification for avoiding the constraints of international law barring mistreatment of detainees.

Administration officials have steadfastly said they do not approve of "torture" in interrogations, but the Aug. 1, 2002, memo makes clear there are various interpretations of the word.

Under the U.S. Code, torture is said to be acts inflicting "severe pain or suffering, whether mental or physical."

However, the Justice Department memo seizes on the adjective "severe," and offers that "physical pain amounting to torture must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death.

"For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture ... it must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, [for example] lasting for months or even years."

The memo was prepared by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, who has since been appointed a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Las Vegas. His staff said yesterday he was unavailable and would make no comments on the memo.

Sean McCormack, press aide for National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, said yesterday that Rice "does not recall seeing the memos. If she did not see them, it's unlikely the president saw them."

Claire Buchan, White House spokeswoman, said Gonzales' office was aware of the memos but did not review drafts or edit them.

Bush said last week he couldn't recall if he had seen the memos but said he had given instructions that "anything we did would conform to U.S. law and would be consistent with international treaty obligations. That's the message I gave our people."

Attorneys for most of the seven MPs charged in the Abu Ghraib scandal have claimed that their clients were following orders of military intelligence officers to "soften up" detainees prior to interrogations, adding that the intelligence officers themselves were following policies adopted in Washington.

"Everything [the MPs] did was approved by the powers that be, all the way up to the president," said Harvey J. Volzer of Washington, D.C., attorney for Spc. Megan Ambuhl. "This [memo] tells me the defense of following orders is a valid defense because everything that was done was approved not only by their immediate superiors but by the attorney general of the United States.

"There has to be a presidential directive [permitting such abuses in interrogations]. That will come out next."

The Justice Department memo contains legal advice on standards of conduct under the U.S. law that was passed to comply with the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (known as the CAT).

The CAT was adopted by the United Nations in 1984, and ratified by the U.S. Congress in 1994. It mandates that parties to the treaty "take effective legislative, administrative, judicial, or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction."

The federal anti-torture statute passed to comply with that mandate makes it a crime for anyone "outside the United States [to] commit or attempt to commit torture." Torture inside the United States is addressed in state law.