Bush Administration Torture & Surveillance Issues Still Simmering

A couple of headlines this morning having to do with hold over issues from the Bush administration.

Richard Armitage, the State Department’s number 2 during the Bush years, says if he had known about the interrogation techniques being used while he was on the job he hopes he would have had the courage to resign. Armitage revealed this in a conversation with Al-Jazeera English television.  He said he believes waterboarding, a technique used by the CIA during 2002 and 2003, is torture. 

Meanwhile we are expecting the release today of documents that speak to the Bush administration’s justification of those harsh interrogation techniques.

ABC’s Ariane de Vogue reports:

Today the Justice Department may release some of the most controversial legal memorandum written in the Bush administration.

Three of the documents were written by Steve Bradbury who was a top administration official in the Office of Legal Counsel. The memos reportedly conclude that harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA did not violate "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners. 

Bradbury is currently under investigation by an internal DOJ watchdog group for his role in approving controversial interrogation techniques during the War on Terror.

And then there is the New York Times reporting today that the Justice Department is moving to limit the amount of electronic surveillance the National Security Agency (NSA) has been conducting.  That means new limits on the capturing of the nation’s emails and phone calls.