ALBERTO GONZALES:

…With the Geneva Conventions out of the way, Gonzales then asked the Office of Legal Counsel to analyze the government’s obligations under the Federal Torture Act.

The OLC responded with an infamous 50-page memo (Aug. 1, 2002) purporting to show that the president and his subordinates had legal permission to use torture. The memo defined torture so narrowly as to include only treatment equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying crippling injury, organ failure, or death; it proposed that U.S. torturers could invoke concepts of self-defense and necessity as a defense against criminal prosecution; and it maintained that the president has constitutional authority to order any kind of torture he deems necessary in times of war.

Moreover, the memo itemized specific techniques that it argued would not constitute torture under its interpretation of the Federal Torture Act. These include mind-altering drugs, wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation, deprivation of food and drink, shaking, the “frog-crouch” and the “Shabach” (a combination of techniques including prolonged stress positions and loud noise).

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