In the spring of 2004, the Abu Ghraib prisoner scandal broke into the news, and in June 2004, the Bybee memo was leaked to the press. Based on his review of the Torture Memos, Goldsmith concluded that they were legally defective and had to be withdrawn. In his book "The Terror Presidency" (2007), Goldsmith called them "cursory and one-sided legal arguments". Goldsmith says he had decided to revoke what the CIA had been calling its "golden shield" against prosecution six months before the abuses at Abu Ghraib were revealed. He was at work on the problem when the scandal and the leak of the memo precipitated the final decision.