State official hit out at Bush regime view of torture law

A memo released on harsh interrogation techniques shows that a former USState Department official strongly dissented from the George W Bush administration’s secret legal view in 2005 that an international treaty against torture did not apply to CIA interrogations in foreign countries.

Until now, the Feb 2006 analysis by Philip Zelikow has been a high-level, classified, internal critique of the Bush administration’s controversial interrogation policies.

At the time his criticism, Zelikow was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s representative on terrorism issues to the National Security Council’s deputies committee.