Historian Philip Zelikow claims Bush White House destroyed his anti-torture memo
Philip Zelikow, a longtime diplomat who worked as counselor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and was the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, has been forthright in his opposition to the harsh interrogation techniques used under the Bush administration.
Zelikow disagreed with the legal reasoning employed by Bush's Office of Legal Counsel to justify the use of harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. And he claims that copies of memo he circulated to detail his opposing views were destroyed by the White House.
Writing in Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog , Zelikow details:
"At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives."
Read entire article at Huffington Post
Zelikow disagreed with the legal reasoning employed by Bush's Office of Legal Counsel to justify the use of harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding. And he claims that copies of memo he circulated to detail his opposing views were destroyed by the White House.
Writing in Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog , Zelikow details:
"At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives."