Sands, an English lawyer who has done some work on behalf of British detainees at Guantánamo, makes his case in his just-published book Torture Team: Rumsfeld’s Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. The memo in question, which authorized a range of aggressive interrogation techniques, was signed by the former U.S. secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on December 2, 2002; it was retracted two months later.
William “Jim” Haynes II, then general counsel of the Defense Department, authored the memo. According to Sands, five other government lawyers played a key role in its development: Douglas Feith, then an undersecretary of Defense; Jay Bybee and John Yoo, former Justice officials who coauthored a controversial August 2002 opinion on interrogation procedures; and David Addington, then counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney.
