In a statement, Obama said the tactics adopted by the administration of his predecessor George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks in 2001 "undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer."
He said he was releasing the documents to avoid "an inaccurate accounting of the past" which would "fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about actions taken by the United States."
He also said the CIA people who participated in this will not be punished because they acted in good faith from legal counsel during the Bush administration that they would not be punished. (Funny. I saw the movie The Nuremberg Trial-someone doing evil because they are told to or assured it's okay is not a defense.)
Speaking of torture memos, here's Kennedy in 2005 asking John Ashcroft about one.