Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0521853249, Hardcover)

Timely in its publication and extremely disturbing in its implications, The Torture Papers consists of the "torture memos" and reports which US government officials wrote to prepare the way for, and to legitimize, coercive interrogation, including techniques many would label as torture, in Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. These documents present – for the first time – a compilation of materials that, prior to publication, have not been collected in one source.

The authors of these memos and documents include President George W. Bush, Counsel to the President and Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; Secretary of State Colin Powell; Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Hayes II; Department of Justice Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, among others. The book also contains the investigative reports of the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Taguba Report, the Mikolashek Report, the Schlesinger Report, the Fay-Jones Report and the American Bar Association Report to the House of Delegates.

Taken together, these incredibly shocking memos and reports document the systematic attempt of the US Government to prepare the way for torture techniques and coercive interrogation practices, forbidden under international law, with the express intent of evading legal punishment in the aftermath of any discovery of these practices and policies.

As the editors’ introduction points out, "Ultimately, what the reader is left with after reading these documents is a clear sense of the systematic decision to alter the use of methods of coercion and torture that lay outside of accepted and legal norms. Not only did the lawyers and policymakers knowingly overstep legal doctrine, but they did so against the advice of individuals in their midst, notably Secretary of State Powell and William H. Taft, Legal Advisor to the Secretary of State."