Pentagon lawyer:contrary views(on torture)brushed aside in administration

[dajoki]

NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/politics/20mora.html?ex=1298091600&en=c0f09845203aa26a&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Senior Lawyer at Pentagon Broke Ranks on Detainees

By TIM GOLDEN
Published: February 20, 2006

One of the Pentagon's top civilian lawyers repeatedly challenged the Bush administration's policy on the coercive interrogation of terror suspects, arguing that such practices violated the law, verged on torture and could ultimately expose senior officials to prosecution, a newly disclosed document shows.

The lawyer, Alberto J. Mora, a political appointee who retired Dec. 31 after more than four years as general counsel of the Navy, was one of many dissenters inside the Pentagon. Senior uniformed lawyers in all the military services also objected sharply to the interrogation policy, according to internal documents declassified last year.

But Mr. Mora's campaign against what he viewed as an official policy of cruel treatment, detailed in a memorandum he wrote in July 2004 and recounted in an article in the Feb. 27 issue of The New Yorker magazine, made public yesterday, underscored again how contrary views were often brushed aside in administration debates on the subject.

"Even if one wanted to authorize the U.S. military to conduct coercive interrogations, as was the case in Guantánamo, how could one do so without profoundly altering its core values and character?" Mr. Mora asked the Pentagon's chief lawyer, William J. Haynes II, according to the memorandum.

A Pentagon spokeswoman, Lt. Col. Tracy O'Grady-Walsh, declined to comment late yesterday on specific assertions in Mr. Mora's memorandum. "Detainee operations and interrogation policies have been scrutinized under a microscope, from all different angles," she said. "It was found that it was not a Department of Defense policy to encourage or condone torture."