The Justice Department yesterday disclosed the March 2003 legal guidelines they gave the military about interrogating terrorist suspects. In essence, the brief gave the Pentagon the same latitude Justice had given the CIA a year earlier: wartime powers justify skirting anti-torture laws. Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel later rescinded the memo, but not before it may have given the green light to the horrors at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.

The New York Times’ Mark Mazzetti reports that the memo is in the public sphere thanks to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act request finally coming through. It’s their job, of course, but the ACLU deserves credit for using the instruments available to illuminate torture’s legal justification.  Read Mazzetti here.  MB

If you’re the guy getting waterboarded or electrocuted, you are pretty sure it’s torture.  If you’re a Justice Department lawyer in the first years after 9/11, you are pretty sure it’s not.  That’s clear from an internal Justice Department memorandum providing legal justification for the use of torture against suspected terrorists reported on by the Washington Post and the New York Times.  And if you are the Justice Department lawyer — particularly one named John Yoo — it doesn’t really matter all that much whether it’s torture or not.  Torture, implies Yoo, is in the eyes of the beholder, and in any case if the national security justifies it, it’s justified. (more…)

Here’s an environmental regulation problem that you can’t blame on EPA head Stephen Johnson. The Department of Homeland Security has vowed to finish building the last 470 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border fence—and will knowingly violate 30 land-management laws in the process.

DHS is using a waiver granted by Congress under the REAL ID act. The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin writes, “The use of the waiver authority means that the agency will not have to conduct detailed reviews of how the fence’s components will affect wildlife, water quality, and vegetation in the area.” Hey, sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make a largely symbolic 700-mile fence that upsets the Mexican government.  Read Eilperin here.  MB

The Washington Post’s Robert O’Harrow, Jr. reports on “fusion centers”—information-sharing networks run by state government’s in the name of fighting terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security has given a total of $254 million in the last four years to enable these centers to collect a disconcerting amount of personal and financial information. The CIA and Pentagon are also reported to be involved.

Despite the ominous storyline — computer databases aided by Washington’s web of surveillance and contracted out to little-known companies — the normally excellent O’Harrow, Jr. doesn’t really uncover a smoking gun. The piece, though, is valuable in pointing out the various federal govt. lists being handed over. These include the Treasury’s Department’s broad “suspicious activity reports” list — the list that brought down Eliot Spitzer.   Read O’Harrow Jr. here.   MB

Staying on post-9/11 government surveillance, the Wall Street Journal’s Siobhan Gorman reports that the Defense Dept. is gathering personal and financial information from the FBI. This is disquieting for a couple of reasons. First, the Pentagon may be taking advantage of the fact that the FBI has greater spying powers than they do. Second, the FBI itself is under fire for its abuse of national security letters to obtain personal information about citizens tangential to the “war on terror.”   Read Gorman here.  MB