WASHINGTON. — A crucial CIA memorandum that had been cited by former US Vice President Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials to justify the effectiveness of the so-called waterboarding method against prisoners contained "plainly inaccurate information" that undermined its conclusions and recommendations, according to Justice Department investigators cited by Newsweek. 

"Cheney has publicly called for the release of the CIA’s still classified memo and another document, insisting their disclosure will bolster his claim that the rough interrogation tactics he vigorously pushed for while in the White House yielded actionable intelligence that foiled terrorist plots against the United States", points out the publication.

The White House lawyers approved the CIA interrogation program based on a document that supposedly backed more "aggressive" questioning techniques and obtained positive results but that seems to have distorted reality.

The Newsweek article adds that "the polemic CIA memo, called the Effectiveness Memo, was especially important because it was relied on by Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department’s acting chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, to write memos in 2005 and 2007 giving the agency additional legal approvals to continue its program of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," an euphemism for torture.

Showing his claw of torturer, the former U.S. vice president had criticized the government of Barack Obama for not using waterboarding on the Nigerian accused of trying to blow up an aircraft flying from Amsterdam to Detroit during interrogation.