President Barack Obama's administration said it would Thursday release four memos, with sections blacked out, covering the Bush administration's justification for CIA interrogations of terror suspects. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on Air Force One that the Justice Department would release the memos later on Thursday, in response to a court order in California.
Obama was set to also issue a statement outlining his thinking on the decision, Gibbs said, as Obama flew to Mexico at the start of his debut visit to Latin America. A federal court had given the government until Thursday to either turn over the memos in response to a lawsuit brought by the ACLU, or explain whey they cannot be released.
The memos were authored by Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, who at the time were lawyers for the then-president George W. Bush's Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel. The memos provided the legal framework for a program of interrogations of "war on terror" detainees that included techniques widely regarded as torture such as waterboarding, in which a detainee is made to feel like he is drowning.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that intense debate was underway within the new administration over whether to release the memos. The report said Attorney General Eric Holder and others in the Justice Department had argued aggressively in favour of release, but the CIA has countered that disclosure of such secrets would undermine its credibility and effectiveness. The day after taking office, Obama ordered the closing of the US detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba within a year and the immediate cessation of the special interrogation regime used by the CIA.
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