Former State Department lawyer Philip Zelikow testifies before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee On Administrative Oversight and the Courts during a hearing May 13, 2009 in Washington, DC.
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Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the 9/11 Commission who went on to become counsellor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, described a "collective failure" on the part of the entire Bush administration. It was certainly a government-wide breakdown, but Zelikow directed significant ire at Bush administration lawyers, whose interpretation of US law was "indefensible in a whole variety of ways", and produced an "unprecedented programme in American history of cruelly calculated, dehumanising abuse and physical torment to extract information."
