Torture Memo Bombshell

Blockbuster in The Washington Post: The paper reports today that the Bush administration secretly issued a pair of memos in 2003 and 2004 authorizing the CIA's use of waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques. The memos were requested by the CIA, "whose repeated requests for a paper trail reflected growing worries within the CIA that the administration might later distance itself from key decisions about the handling of captured al-Qaeda leaders." While details of meetings between administration officials have been reported, the documents represent the earliest tangible evidence of the Bush administration's consent for the harsh interrogations.