WASHINGTON ( 2008-04-02 14:08:50 ) :
A newly declassified 2003 US Justice Department memo gave US military interrogators broad authority to use extreme methods in questioning al Qaeda detainees, US media said on Wednesday.
The memo -- sent to the Pentagon as it struggled to establish guidelines for its interrogators -- argued that the US president's wartime authority exempted them from US and international laws banning cruel treatment.
Withdrawn nine months after it was written, the document helped create the legal environment for the use of techniques such as simulated drowning and the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, experts said.
"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," The Washington Post cited the memo as saying.
"In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."
The 81-page memo was written at a time when the Pentagon was trying to come up with a list of approved interrogation methods for use on detainees at the US "war on terror" prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld had been forced in December 2002 to suspend a list of aggressive techniques, due to objections from senior military lawyers.
But, largely because of the memo, a Pentagon working group approved in April 2003 the continued use of "extremely ag
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