Now we have The Los Angeles Times’ Miller and Barnes writing

Senior Bush administration officials signed off on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation measures in July 2002 after a series of secret meetings that apparently excluded the State and Defense departments, according to information released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Senate report indicated that then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft and other officials gave the CIA’s interrogation plan political backing even before the methods had been approved by the Justice Department.

The writers go on:

“The program was developed by the CIA, and the director of central intelligence — who was the president’s primary foreign intelligence advisor — recommended the program to the White House as necessary, effective and [one] for which there was no alternative,” the official said.

The verbal assurances from members of President Bush’s National Security Council were backed up the following month in a lengthy memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, one of the documents that Obama released last week.

Report downloads can be found here.