AN ECHO CHAMBER

That's the term one should use to describe a major symptom of the dysfunctionality in the Executive Branch, noted previously in other contexts here and here, that led to the creation of the torture memos. Jack Goldsmith, a real conservative, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and although the transcript isn't currently available, his prepared testimony is.

In my opinion, the Bush administration was excessively secretive
inside the Executive branch when it came to the production and receipt of legal advice. For example, the controversial interrogation opinion of August 1, 2002, was not circulated for comments to the State Department, which had expertise on the meaning of torture and the consequences of adopting particular
interpretations of torture.

This extreme internal secrecy was exacerbated by the fact that the
people inside the small circle of lawyers working on these issues shared
remarkably like-minded and sometimes unusual views about the law.
Close-looped decisionmaking by like-minded lawyers resulted in legal and political errors that would be very costly to the administration down the road. Many of these errors were unnecessary and would have been avoided with
wider deliberation and consultation.