During the American War on Terror, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld issued a set of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" that authorized conduct widely considered to be torture. This authorization was based on a series of controversial legal memos authored by the Office of Legal Counsel that sought to define torture far more narrowly than before. These authorizations were highly controversial, particularly in the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. Various revisions of the extended techniques were issued.