October 4, 2007 9:30 AM

More From the Files of "Worst President Ever"

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales's arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

The New York Times reports this under the headline: "Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations." Secret? Really? I mean, maybe the DOJ said torture was "abhorrent," but did any of us believe they meant it?

This is an Administration that's had secret camps, that has kept Guantanamo open despite international humiliation and domestic opposition, that never held anyone accountable for Abu Ghraib and that just a year ago rammed through a Constitution-trampling measure against Habeas Corpus. Tie in a general disregard for law, precedent, compassion and public pressure, and was it really "secret" to anyone that torture was condoned at the highest levels of the Bush Presidency?

It's really just a reminder that they can't be trusted -- that oversight is essential -- and that when they make promises to change their ways, that is an empty promise...whether it's the promise that General Petraeus would be entrusted with honestly measuring the surge's success or that their new AG pick would restore integrity to the Justice Department.

We can want them to be telling the truth. But unless we actually push an agenda of transparency, honesty and accountability, we'll never know until several years later a well-known "secret" is revealed about our nation's position on something as life-or-death serious as torture.