Obama Releases Torture Memos

President Obama has chosen to disclose the controversial interrogation techniques used by the CIA, but he will not prosecute the agents who used them. According to the Associated Press, “The Obama administration on Thursday informed CIA officials who used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects that they will not be prosecuted.” The statement from Attorney General Eric Holder is the first definitive assurance that those CIA agents are in the clear, so long as their actions were in line with legal advice they received. The statement was released alongside four Bush-era legal opinions that detailed, in graphic detail, the interrogations of terror detainees. One memo specifically authorizes the combination of multiple techniques, which human rights groups allege is torture even if the individual methods—which include sleep deprivation, forced nudity, and slamming of detainees into walls—are not.