The Department of Defense released redacted documents Thursday related to abuse and torture of detainees held in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas prisons.

The 12 documents were released as part of the American Civil Liberties Union’s long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the government.

The Obama administration agreed to reprocess the documents, but it continues to withhold many key details related to the Defense Department’s use of torture methods. In some documents, the Obama administration has withheld details that were previously disclosed by the Bush administration.

“These documents provide still more evidence of the widespread and systemic abuse of prisoners  at Guantanamo Bay and other overseas locations,” said Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney. “They further underscore the need for a congressional select committee to examine the roots of the torture program as well as an independent prosecutor to investigate issues of criminal responsibility.

“Key details relating to the Defense Department’s use of illegal and abusive interrogation methods have, however, been redacted from these documents. In some documents, the Obama administration has even withheld details previously disclosed by the Bush administration. The withholding of this information makes a mockery of President Obama’s promise of transparency.”

One of the documents, was a witness statement taken from the former head of interrogations at Guantanamo who suggested that President George W. Bush verbally signed off on the abusive treatment of detainees at Guantanamo. Details of that document have been previously reported by The Public Record.

On Feb. 14, 2002, just one week after Bush signed the action memo, Maj. Gen. Mike Dunlavey was contacted by Rumsfeld who asked him to attend a Defense Department meeting with him, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, and others.

At the meeting, which took place on either Feb. 21 or 22, 2002, Rumsfeld told Dunlavey he wanted him to oversee interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay naval facility in Cuba. Prisoners captured by U.S. military personnel had first arrived at Guantanamo a month earlier. Dunlavey was a Family Court Judge in Erie County Pennsylvania when he got the call from Rumsfeld and was placed in charge of interrogations at Guantanamo.

Rumsfeld told Dunlavey, according to a March 17, 2005 witness statement Dunlavey gave to U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, who was investigating FBI complaints about abuse at Guantanamo, that Rumsfeld said the Department of Defense had rounded up “a number of bad guys” and the Secretary of Defense “wanted a product and wanted intelligence now.”

Rumsfeld “wanted to set up interrogation operations and to identify the senior Taliban and senior operatives and to obtain information on what they were going to do regarding their operations and structure,” Dunlavey said, according to a copy of his witness statement. “Initially, I was told that I would answer to SECDEF (Secretary of Defense) and [U.S. Southern Command]. The directions changed and I got my marching orders from the President of the United States. I was told by the SECDEF that he wanted me back in Washington, DC every week to brief him….The mission was to get intelligence to prevent another 9/11.”

Dunlavey did not explain what he meant by “I got my marching orders from the president.” But his comments suggest that Bush may have played a much larger role in the interrogation of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo than he has let on.