The Torture Memo

Abstract

The people who work in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on Pennsylvania Avenue, next to the West Wing of the White House, stand out for their seriousness even in a city not known for its joie de vivre. Yet the building itself has a rakish charm, with exterior walls made of granite and cast iron, its architectural roots in the French Renaissance. Inside, it has the feel of a slightly seedy, Old World-style Gramercy Park hotel. Attorney Timothy E. Flanigan, a senior administration official, worked on the second floor of the building from 2001 to 2002. He had acted as deputy of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the first Bush administration¹ and was an advisor during President George W. Bush’s campaign—along with a young legal scholar named John C. Yoo—steering Bush on legal issues that came to include the Florida recount.²