I appreciated Jonathan Adler's link on Saturday to the remarkable ABC News story about Dan Levin, then the acting head of DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel, who underwent waterboarding and concluded, as Jonathan noted, that "waterboarding could be illegal torture unless performed in a highly limited way and with close supervision . . . [that] the Bush Administration had failed to offer[.]"

  I just wanted to draw extra attention to the rest of the ABC News story, as it has other parts that struck me as the real news here:

  In December 2004, Levin released the new memo. He said, "Torture is abhorrent" but he went on to say in a footnote that the memo was not declaring the administration's previous opinions illegal. The White House, with Alberto Gonzales as the White House counsel, insisted that this footnote be included in the memo.
  But Levin never finished a second memo imposing tighter controls on the specific interrogation techniques. Sources said he was forced out of the Justice Department when Gonzales became attorney general.

  It seems that the real story is that "the White House" actually "insisted" on essentially drafting part of an OLC opinion, and that the person who was drafting a second memo limiting the practice was fired before the follow-up memo could be released. That story deserves wider attention; I hope we'll hear more about this.