Levin quizzes Mukasey on release of DoJ documents

After new questions surfaced this week over tactics the administration allows during interrogations of suspected terrorists, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) asked U.S. Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey Friday whether he would release a 2003 Justice Department opinion on the questioning techniques if confirmed.

{mosads}The opinion in question was written by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Woo for Defense Department General Counsel William Haynes, and is entitled “Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States.”

In a letter to Mukasey, Levin said his committee has sought the legal opinion for the past three years. But on August 17, 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales rejected Levin’s request to read the opinion.

“I am deeply troubled by the Department of Justice’s position on this matter as it has prevented the Armed Services Committee from understanding the U.S. Government’s interpretation of relevant domestic and international laws as they apply to the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody,” Levin wrote Mukasey, whom President Bush has nominated to replace Gonzales.

Levin asked Mukasey if he would provide the Armed Services chairman access to the memo if the Senate confirms him as attorney general.

The controversy of interrogation tactics was raised anew this week after a The New York Times report that uncovered two previously undisclosed memos that authorized the use of head slaps, freezing temperatures and simulated drowning.