One of the key documents showing the appropriation of DOD’s SERE techniques at CIA appears to have gone missing.

Jim Haynes appears to have followed precisely the same method that Addington did when trying to avoid answering questions about the Bybee Two memo.

The JPRA memo sent to DOD and via Jim Haynes to CIA and OLC on July 26, 2002 described the torture techniques later “improvised” by CIA’s torturers.

8 year 8 years 8 years. That’s the sum total of Dick Cheney’s defense for institutionalizing torture. But I wonder how our allies feel about that defense?

The LAT says the torturers never saw the Bybee Two Memo placing limits on how they executed waterboarding. But chances are very good they saw a memo authorizing far more abusive waterboarding.

As we speak, the CIA–including, by all appearances, John Rizzo–is reviewing the Office of Professional Responsibility’s report on OLC’s torture memos.

As if on cue, the LAT has a story profiling him.

Just wanted to point to two tiny details about the “field trip” of the War Council (Addington, Yoo, Haynes, Gonzales, and Rizzo, plus friends) to Gitmo on September 25, 2002.

Earlier today, I showed that Jim Haynes personally pushed the SERE people to come up with some materials on waterboarding and other techniques on July 25, 2002, just one day after OLC had given CIA clearance to use some–but not all–of the techniques they had asked for.

I wish I had read this passage from this Charlie Savage story before I wrote that post.

One thing could change that dynamic, however.

There’s a weird detail in John Yoo’s prepared testimony for last year’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on Assholes Who Torture. He claims the National Security Committee (so, presumably John Bellinger or Condi or her boss) ordered OLC not to let on what it was doing to either State or Defense.

In particular, the offices of the CIA general counsel and of the NSC legal advisor asked OLC for an opinion on the

The request to JPRA for a description of waterboarding appears to have come from DOD General Counsel Jim Haynes directly. And he did it already knowing they needed backup to authorize waterboarding.