Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) of the Senate Intelligence committee has just released a declassified narrative (pdf) of the OLC's development of its opinions on torture.

The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder has already picked out a key excerpt, that sheds some light on just who in the Bush administration helped devise and approve the torture policies:

Read more »

As we noted, Philip Zelikow, a former top lawyer to Condi Rice at the State Department, yesterday wrote that the White House tried to destroy all copies of a memo he authored, which took issue with the legal opinions laid out in the infamous OLC torture memos.

Today, Zelikow appeared on MSNBC to flesh out that story. Among other things, he reveals that the Bushies said his memo was "inconvenient to have around." (Would it have been too much for Andrea Mitchell to have followed up by asking him who, exactly, said that?)

Watch:

As David noted over at TPM, there was some potentially big news in a blog post that was written this morning over at Foreign Policy by Philip Zelikow, a top State Department lawyer under Condoleezza Rice.

Zelikow wrote that, in 2005, he had written a memo on the legality of harsh interrogation techniques that expressed an "alternative view" to the OLC memos. He continued:

My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives.

Read more »