TPMM reports:

"I don't believe they necessarily did think they did" had authority to torture, Feith said.

Data before the Senate Armed Services Committee shows (1) Addington, (2) CIA General Counsel Rizzo and (3) then-DOJ's Chertoff attended Guantanamo briefings in 2002. Someone must have reviewed something. Tellingly, there were no questions 12 of 63 at the Guantanamo briefing, suggesting Addington, Chertoff, and Rizzo knew what was going on; had no concerns; and were comfortable with the Geneva compliance program in place. Whether there was or wasn't a minimally acceptable Geneva compliance program is a separate issue.

It defies reason for Feith to argue that the authority was vague, unclear, or not delegated after the Vice President's legal counsel, the President's DoD legal counsel, and DoJ Staff counsel attended a briefing, but provided not adjustments; or essentially ratified the approved changes after their visit.

Events which happen after a major visit should be reasonably linked to an official policy, especially when White House counsel later says they were reading reports of interrogations. This implicitly suggests there was some sort of monitoring program, which Feith would have us believe is questionable or not linked with any oversight, direction, leadership, or monitoring.
 
Putting aside whether TPMM did or didn't quote Feith correctly, there are three important legal terms:

1. Believe, leaving open the claim that Feith's assertion about what he says he believed or believes does not match what he really believed then, when the decision were made.

Feith appears to have said at 6513 ("Feith wants to see anything we do and clear it first" in re the DoD emails and DoD policymaking) he and his office didn't have an official position on some DoD-connected information warfare issues; but he used the DoD analysts to promulgate that official position indirectly.

"Nor did the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy ever approve or
adopt any of the draft opinions or conclusions in any of the resulting
documents as OUSD(P) positions, views or conclusions." From

Feith's comment does not address indirect policy statements routed through DoD analysts. Accordingly, we don't know what other types of games he's playing with the word play on the POW abuse.

2. Authority, leaving open the question of who was in charge, who provided direction, and did Feith have any role by way of screening information that put him in a defacto decision making position.

3. Torture, we're not clear on whether Feith means "torture" to mean,

A. "We didn't authorize torture because the Convention Against Torture prohibits it," or whether he means,

B. "We know we weren't allowed to commit any abuse under Geneva; but we're going to distract attention from the Geneva legal issues in the DOJ OLC memos, and focus on the (irrelevant) issue whether POWs were or weren't tortured."