Newsweek Story, May 24 issue

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4999734/site/newsweek/


?? 2001..fall - DOJ advice to CIA on interrogation techniques

## 2001.11.13 - WH "Military Order"  

?? 2001.12.28 - DOJ Legal Counsel Office opinion on Gitmo

?? 2002.01.09 - DOJ Legal Counsel Office "Yoo 42-page Memo"

?? 2002.01.11 - State Dept. Taft reply to Yoo

## 2002.01.25 - WH Gonzales memo

## 2002.01.26 - State Dept. Powell reply to Gonzales

## 2002.02.07 - WH "Fact Sheet" 





** One Justice Department memo, written for the CIA late in the fall of 2001,
put an extremely narrow interpretation on the international anti-torture
convention, allowing the agency to use a whole range of techniques -- including
sleep deprivation, the use of phobias and the deployment of "stress factors" --
in interrogating Qaeda suspects. The only clear prohibition was "causing severe
physical or mental pain" -- a subjective judgment that allowed for "a whole
range of things in between," said one former administration official familiar
with the opinion.


** On Dec. 28, 2001, the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel weighed in
with another opinion, arguing that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction to review the
treatment of foreign prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. The appeal of Gitmo from the
start was that, in the view of administration lawyers, the base existed in a
legal twilight zone -- or "the legal equivalent of outer space," as one former
administration lawyer described it.


** And on Jan. 9, 2002, John Yoo of DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel co-authored a
sweeping 42-page memo concluding that neither the Geneva Conventions nor any of
the laws of war applied to the conflict in Afghanistan.


** Two days after the Yoo memo circulated, the State Department's chief legal
adviser, William Howard Taft IV, fired a memo to Yoo calling his analysis
"seriously flawed." State's most immediate concern was the unilateral conclusion
that all captured Taliban were not covered by the Geneva Conventions. "In
previous conflicts, the United States has dealt with tens of thousands of
detainees without repudiating its obligations under the Conventions," Taft
wrote. "I have no doubt we can do so here, where a relative handful of persons
is involved."


** The White House was undeterred. By Jan. 25, 2002, according to a memo
obtained by NEWSWEEK, it was clear that Bush had already decided that the Geneva
Conventions did not apply at all, either to the Taliban or Al Qaeda. In the
memo, which was written to Bush by Gonzales, the White House legal counsel told
the president that Powell had "requested that you reconsider that decision."
Gonzales then laid out startlingly broad arguments that anticipated any
objections to the conduct of U.S. soldiers or CIA interrogators in the future.


** Desperately seeking to change Bush's mind, Powell fired off his own
blistering response the next day, Jan. 26, and sought an immediate meeting with
the president. The proposed anti-Geneva Convention declaration, he warned, "will
reverse over a century of U.S. policy and practice" and have "a high cost in
terms of negative international reaction."


** Powell won a partial victory: On Feb. 7, 2002, the White House announced that
the United States would indeed apply the Geneva Conventions to the Afghan war --
but that Taliban and Qaeda detainees would still not be afforded prisoner-of-war
status. The White House's halfway retreat was, in the eyes of State Department
lawyers, a "hollow" victory for Powel