"No Legal Rationale" To Hide Torture Memos

A senior White House official defended the release of previously-classified torture memos last week, saying there was no legal rationale for keeping them secret.

The Justice Department documents, which the Obama administration simultaneously released and repudiated on Thursday, provided the legal cover the Bush administration sought for committing torture against detainees held by the CIA. The documents provide grim details about the abuse that was used against terror suspects — procedures which many claim violate international law but which some former administration officials (including Vice President Dick Cheney) continue to defend. ( The memos can be read here.)

On CBS News' Face The Nation, White House Senior Advisor David Axelrod said that many details in the memos had already been revealed, and that there was no credence to the argument that their release would help terrorist by letting them know what was is in store for them if captured.

"It is not what is going to happen to them," Axelrod said, because President Obama "banned these enhanced interrogation techniques.

"The truth is that, because these were in the public domain, because even the last administration has revealed the most serious aspects of this, and because the president has banned these techniques, there was no legal rationale for keeping them classified.

"The New York Review Books had a full catalogue of these techniques that were given to the International Red Cross through testimony," Axelrod added (referring to a recently-disclosed report on detainee abuse). "The CIA may believe that al Qaeda doesn't read the New York Review of Books, but I suspect they know what's going on."

"These techniques, far from improving our security, became a recruiting and propaganda tool for al Qaeda and extremists," he added. "We are moving past all of that."

Axelrod also said that those involved in the torture of prisoners, who were advised that the techniques were legal, should not be prosecuted.

This morning a New York Times editorial called for the impeachment of Jay Bybee, a former assistant attorney general who authored the memos giving political cover for torture. Bybee is now a federal judge.

More from Face The Nation (4.19.09):