WASHINGTON - Stung by suggestions that top U.S. officials encouraged mistreatment of prisoners from the war on terrorism, the Justice Department disavowed a memo that appeared to justify the use of torture Tuesday.

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The memo, signed by former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, included long sections that appeared to defend the use of torture and contended that U.S. personnel could be immune from prosecution. The memo also argued that the president’s powers as commander in chief allowed him to override U.S. laws and international treaties banning torture.

Senior officials at the Justice Department told The Associated Press that the 50-page memo, which was issued to the White House on Aug. 1, 2002, would be repudiated and replaced because it contained what they called overbroad and irrelevant advice. The new document will narrowly define the question of proper interrogation techniques for al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, they said.

The decision became known as the White House launched a wide-ranging public relations campaign to counter suggestions that the administration had condoned torture. Late Tuesday afternoon, it released hundreds of pages of documents concerning the treatment of prisoners captured in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Bush says he can ‘suspend Geneva’
Two inches thick, the documents chronicled how the administration grappled from January 2002 to April 2003 with how aggressively interrogators should push detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other facilities.

Administration lawyers argued that terrorists were not entitled to protections of the Geneva Conventions, the series of international treaties that govern the treatment of prisoners of war. President Bush accepted that argument, declaring that detainees from the war in Afghanistan, who were held at the base in Cuba, were “illegal combatants,” not prisoners of war. But he wrote that all detainees should be treated humanely, regardless of their status.

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“I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time,” the president said in the memo, titled “Humane Treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban Detainees.”

In Iraq, it was decided from the start that all detainees were prisoners of war. “Iraq was going to be all Geneva, all the time,” said a lawyer for the military who briefed reporters Tuesday.

Speaking earlier Tuesday in the Oval Office, Bush told reporters: “We do not condone torture. I have never ordered torture. I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.”

Rumsfeld approved use of dogs
But early on, military officials in Cuba asked for permission to use more aggressive interrogation techniques to get better intelligence about future terrorist plots, including the threat of death or the use of wet towels or dripping water to create the sensation of drowning, the memos show.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld rejected those tactics but approved 17 other interrogation tactics in December 2002, such as forcing a detainee to stand up for as long as four hours, forced isolation for up to 30 days, deprivation of light, use of 20-hour interrogations, removal of clothing, forced shaving of facial hair, “inducing stress by use of detainee’s fears (e.g., dogs)” and use of mild physical contact that did not cause injury.

In one of the documents, Rumsfeld asked why detainees could be forced to stand up for only four hours, noting that he was routinely on his feet eight to 10 hours a day.

A Defense Department legal brief recommending the use of the tactics argued that the proposed techniques were likely to pass constitutional muster as long as they were applied “in a good faith effort and not maliciously or sadistically for the very purpose of causing harm.”

“The federal torture statute will not be violated as long as any of the proposed strategies are not specifically intended to cause severe physical pain or suffering or prolonged mental harm,” said the legal brief, whose contents have been reported previously.

Defense sources told NBC News that some military interrogators refused to use the more aggressive techniques because they considered them violations of international law. A month later, Rumsfeld rescinded the order.

‘Constant drip on this issue’
William J. Haynes, general counsel of the Defense Department, said the release of the documents would hinder the war on terrorism by effectively telling enemy fighters what limits were being imposed on U.S. interrogators.

But Haynes said the decision was needed to counter charges that the administration’s interpretation of the law paved the way for the highly publicized abuses of prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad late last year.

Another senior official, speaking to the AP, complained about the “constant drip on this issue” — a continuous stream of leaks and accusations that the administration had stepped outside the bounds of international law. “Everyone reached the conclusion that the administration had authorized torture,” he said.

The official, saying the United States was facing a new kind of war with an enemy that did not respect or operate under the rules of the Geneva Conventions, pointed to the kidnapping and beheading of U.S. civilian engineer Paul M. Johnson Jr. in Saudi Arabia last week. The papers released Tuesday showed that the White House and other agencies were wrestling with “how best to address that foe,” another official said.

Criticism of White House continues
Critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have said that memo provided the legal underpinnings for subsequent abuses of prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Human rights lawyers took the unusual step of filing a racketeering lawsuit this month against U.S. civilian contractors who worked at Abu Ghraib. The suit alleges that contractors conspired to execute, rape and torture prisoners during interrogations to boost profits from military payments.

Reacting to the White House release, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, accused the administration of continuing to withhold information.

“Though this is a self-serving selection, at least it is a beginning,” Leahy said. “But for the Judiciary Committee and the Senate to find the whole truth, we will need much more cooperation and extensive hearings.”

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