Court Docs Suggest Detainees Tortured Before CIA Received Legal OK

~

CIA Director Leon Panetta has emerged as one of the chief apologists for the agency’s involvement in the Bush administration’s sadistic interrogations practices, stating that agency officials who participated in the systematic torture of “war on terror” prisoners should not be subject to any investigation, let alone prosecution, because they were following legal advice provided by the Justice Department.

However, those claims were seriously undercut Thursday in a letter sent to a federal court judge in which Lev Dassin, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who said for the first time that 92 interrogation videotapes the CIA destroyed were made between April and December 2002.

The Justice Department legal opinion authorizing specific methods, including the near drowning technique waterboarding, was not issued until Aug. 1, 2002.

~