The American Civil Liberties Union today sent a letter asking the Justice Department to release dozens of still-secret legal memos used by the Bush administration to justify controversial national security policies.
The letter was addressed to Acting Assistant Attorney General David Barron, who overseas the Office of Legal Counsel. It cited President Obama’s new Freedom of Information Act policy directing the government to become more transparent. The ACLU noted it has sought release of the memos for more than five years and has filed three lawsuits seeking to force the government to comply with their FOIA requests.
While the government has released thousands of pages of documents to the ACLU already, it’s withheld key memos, mostly about detainee treatment. The investigative journalism site ProPublica has compiled a list of the still-secret memos here.
