Office of Legal Counsel

The Office of Legal Counsel is identified as the office of John Yoo, who wrote a legal opinion on March 13, 2003, concerning interrogation methods used by military interrogators at Guantánamo. The account places that opinion within a sequence of official measures associated with the interrogation system, making the office relevant as part of the legal framework surrounding the treatment of detainees, rather than as a direct participant in the interrogations described.

Position in the Authorization Sequence

The editor’s account names three measures in chronological order: a December 22, 2002, Counter Resistance Techniques memorandum signed by Donald Rumsfeld; Yoo’s March 13, 2003, legal opinion for the Office of Legal Counsel; and a further authorization memorandum signed by Rumsfeld on April 16. The source establishes the opinion’s date, author, institutional affiliation, and place in this sequence, but does not set out its reasoning or specific legal conclusions.

Connection to Slahi’s Interrogation

The surrounding account describes a special interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi that followed a second, detailed plan approved by Rumsfeld. The Senate Armed Services Committee found that Geoffrey Miller sought official Pentagon approval for Slahi’s Special Interrogation Plan and that Rumsfeld personally approved it. The Office of Legal Counsel is thus situated in the broader authorization environment described by the book; the evidence does not say that Yoo’s opinion itself approved Slahi’s plan or establish its direct application to that plan.

Documentary Context and Limits

The account draws on summaries of classified interrogation records in the 2008 Senate Armed Services Committee inquiry and the Justice Department’s 2008 review of interrogations in Guantánamo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Those reviews document the special interrogation and its planned methods. In this presentation, the Office of Legal Counsel’s role is specifically anchored to the March 2003 opinion in the sequence of measures, while the precise contents and effect of that opinion remain unstated.