Judge Chertoff on the August ’02 DOJ memo (called the “torture memo” by Dems): Memo was prepared by Office of Legal Counsel, not the Criminal Division. He was not involved in how or why the memo was generated. His own view is that the memo did not contain a “sufficiently comprehensive” definition of torture.

Chertoff’s role in the discussions on interrogation was as a practical prosecutor discussing with other prosecutors the factors that the government should consider in determining if issues arose about whether actions should be prosecuted. He was careful not to deal in hypotheticals that could be used by anyone as forward-going license to run afoul of the torture laws.

His position was that whenever you have a criminal statute that has a specific intent standard, the good faith of the actors becomes critical in any decision whether they should be prosecuted. His consistent advice – without giving advance advice on any particular interrogation techniques – was that interrogators should conduct themselves comfortably on the right side of the line marking a good faith belief that they were not violating the law.