Philip Zelikow: Argued against torture

Shortly after the start of President George W. Bush's second term, a high-level "deputies" meeting was called at the White House. Issue one on the agenda was how to improve the administration's message in the face of allegations that the U.S. government condoned torture. Philip Zelikow, the powerful counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, spoke up first. He argued firmly that the problem was not how the policy of interrogation and detention was presented to the world; it was the policy itself. No one was surprised by that stance: State, after all, is the diplomatic caretaker of America's global image, and for some time Rice has been quietly campaigning to dial back detention policies.

But what happened next shocked everyone. Gordon England, the Pentagon No. 2 recently installed as Paul Wolfowitz's successor, enthusiastically endorsed Zelikow's views. The critical question from England's perspective was: are we better or worse off using these methods? Worse, he concluded. "He was utterly pragmatic," recalls one senior official who declined to be named because the deliberations were private.