Justice Department memos probed

WASHINGTON – An internal watchdog office at the Justice Department is investigating whether Bush administration lawyers violated professional standards by issuing legal opinions that authorized the CIA to use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, officials confirmed Friday.

H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the Office of Professional Responsibility, wrote in a letter to Democratic lawmakers that his office is investigating the circumstances surrounding Justice opinions that established a legal basis for the CIA’s interrogation program, including a now-infamous memo from August 2002 that narrowly defined torture and was later rescinded by the department.

“Among other issues, we are examining whether the legal advice contained in those memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys,” Jarrett wrote.

This is the second publicly disclosed Justice Department investigation related to the CIA’s use of waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning that is considered torture by most human rights groups and legal scholars. Jarrett’s inquiry got under way in 2004, but was not confirmed publicly until now, officials said.

In January, Attorney General Michael Mukasey assigned a special U.S. attorney to investigate whether CIA officials committed crimes by destroying interrogation videotapes of two high-level al-Qaida detainees, including one who was waterboarded. But Mukasey has rebuffed demands from Congress to investigate the interrogations themselves, saying officials were acting under legal advice from the Justice Department.