WASHINGTON, April 29 (UPI) -- Bush administration legal opinions allowing the harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects were made in "good faith," says the U.S. official who signed them.
U.S. Appellate Court Judge Jay Bybee, who in 2002 was the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, said in an interview with Wednesday's New York Times his signing of the controversial opinions was "based on our good-faith analysis of the law."
The public release this month of two Bush White House memorandums providing legal underpinnings for the use of techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation and isolation -- which critics say constitute torture -- have sparked controversy and calls for Bybee's impeachment.
"The central question for lawyers was a narrow one; locate, under the statutory definition, the thin line between harsh treatment of a high-ranking al-Qaida terrorist that is not torture and harsh treatment that is," Bybee told the newspaper. "I believed at the time, and continue to believe today, that the conclusions were legally correct."
Bybee said that in retrospect he would have done some things differently, such as clarifying the analysis of his arguments to help the public better understand how he arrived at his conclusions, the Times said.
