Balance of Power

Some of this is due to the legal intricacies surrounding these kind of memos, which are generated by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. The memos are intended to provide binding legal advice within the executive branch, meaning multiple agencies have a proprietary interest in keeping the content classified.

Critics of Bush's policies on interrogations, warrantless surveillance and related subjects have long called for a full airing of the office's opinions on the legality of those policies. And the Justice Department has responded to several congressional requests for such legal opinions, providing the Judiciary Committee a 2001 memorandum on the legality of military commissions to try terror suspects and a 2002 opinion on the status of Taliban forces in Afghanistan under Article 4 of the Third Geneva Convention.

But Bush's last attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, told reporters in December that his department was taking its time over interrogation and torture memoranda -- including to Obama's transition team -- because the documents "don't simply get issues for the heck of it."

Steven Aftergood, an expert in government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says Obama's decision to release the information in response to the ACLU's suit points to a breakdown in relations between the branches.

"Congressional oversight did not get the job done," Aftergood said. "This reflects a significant and dangerous weakness on the part of Congress."

Aftergood noted former CIA Director Michael Hayden told MSNBC that the interrogation program "began life as a covert action." According to that reasoning, Aftergood says, Bush should have issued a presidential "finding" or some other official declaration authorizing the program. Instead, the interrogations were a covert action, increasing the potential for deception, Aftergood notes.

All of which means the release of the memos will probably provide fodder for future congressional hearings, as lawmakers try to play catch-up.