From today's NY Times.  Discuss:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 When the Justice Department publicly declaredtorture abhorrent in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bushadministration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearlyunlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzalessarrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Departmentissued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very differentdocument, according to officials briefed on it, an expansiveendorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time providedexplicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination ofpainful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping,simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on combined effects over the objections of James B. Comey,the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruisingclashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as theopinions overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues atthe department that they would all be ashamed when the worldeventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing cruel, inhumanand degrading treatment, the Justice Department issued another secretopinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and formerofficials said. The Justice Department document declared that none ofthe C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hiddenlegacy of President Bushs second term and Mr. Gonzaless tenure at theJustice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the WhiteHouse after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policieson surveillance and detention into turmoil.

Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in thelast two years to impose limits on interrogations, and theadministration has responded as a policy matter by dropping the mostextreme techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain ineffect, and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several morerecent memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House hassucceeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harshtactics.