Justice Dept. won't try to get lawsuit over torture interrogations dismissed the way it usually does

In what lawyers are calling an unprecedented stance, the U.S. Department of Justice has indicated that it will not try to get a lawsuit dismissed regarding the CIA’s torture-tainted interrogations. The suit was filed last October by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of two victims of the program. In the past, the DOJ has argued that the very existence of the program is too secret to talk about in open court and judges have gone along with it. Eric Tucker at the Associated Press reports:

The Justice Department has signaled that it won't try to block a lawsuit arising from the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques, leaving the door open for a court challenge over tactics that have since been discontinued and widely discredited. [...]

"The government is actually going to show up at the hearing instead of trying to shut it down," said Dror Ladin, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the case. "It's going to be suggesting procedures that might allow the case to go forward."

That’s good news. But, of course, after a few hours or days in court the DOJ might try to return to its old ways in the matter.

The ACLU filed the lawsuit in October 2015 on behalf of three men who were tortured in accordance with a program designed by two CIA contractors, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen. These psychologists were identified in the 525-page summary of the still-unreleased 6,000-page Senate torture report by their pseudonyms: Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar. The pair were not only the architects of the interrogation methods, but also operated and assessed them. DOJ lawyers approved those torture techniques. The CIA paid the men and their company millions of dollars.