Secret memo claimed interrogators were exempt from federal laws

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clipped from blogs.usatoday.com The Justice Department has declassified an 81-page legal opinion that authorized military interrogators to use aggressive techniques to extract information from the terrorism suspects in their custody. The memorandum was issued March 14, 2003. “Senior officials at the Justice Department gave the Pentagon the green light to torture prisoners,” Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, says in a statment. “It is outrageous that none of these high-level officials have been brought to task yet for their role in authorizing prisoner abuse.” John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote the memo, defended his analysis in an e-mail to The Washington Post. Here are some excerpts from this controversial document, which is available in its entirety via The Washington Post: "Today’s declassification of one such memo is a small step forward, but in no way fulfills those requests," the Judiciary Committee chairman says in a statement.