The US Justice Department made public detailed memos on Thursday describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the CIA,as President Barack Obama sought to reassure the agency that CIA operatives who carried out the techniques would not be prosecuted. In dozens of pages,the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior al-Qaeda operatives are spelt out in careful detail from keeping detainees awake for up to eleven straight days,to placing them in a dark,cramped box,to putting insects into the box. Some of the interrogation methods were used as late as 2005 in the CIAs secret overseas prisons. The techniques were among the Bush administrations most closely guarded secrets. Some Obama administration officials have labeled one of the 14 approved techniques,waterboarding,as illegal torture. The memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the CIAs methods and the Justice Departments long struggle,in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics,to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity,slamming into walls,prolonged sleep deprivation and dousing with 41 degree water alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention against Torture. Obama condemned what he called a dark and painful chapter in our history,and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again.
