rssCIA Indictments: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don’t
Friday, June 18, 2010 at 12:45 pm
- 15 Comments
Ryan Reilly reports:
Assistant United States Attorney John Durham is close to completing a preliminary review of whether there is evidence that CIA agents violated the law when they used brutal methods to interrogate terror detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder said in speech Thursday night.
Holder, speaking in a question and answer session after his remarks at the University of the District of Columbia Law School, said Durham is ”close to the end of the time that he needs and will be making some recommendations to me.” Holder’s comments were his fullest status report to date on the one of the Justice Department’s most politically sensitive inquiries.
The question Durham’s investigating is ostensibly a narrow one: whether CIA interrogators acted outside of what Holder called the “pretty far-out OLC opinions” that justified torture. But there’s some room of interpretation of those strictures. A recently declassified CIA inspector general’s report from 2004 found that interrogators used mock executions and death threats with power drills and other gruesome techniques on detainees not explicitly outlined in even those “far-out” opinions. But they were operating in the spirit of those opinions, and most definitely with the sanction of policy from the Bush administration. So how will Durham calibrate what’s in and out of sanctioned boundaries?
Perhaps more saliently, what will Holder do in response? Indicting CIA interrogators without indicting the policymakers who put them in positions to break the law doesn’t exactly resemble justice. But neither does declining to indict torturers, especially when the Obama administration is trying to promote a rules-based international order more generally. Adam Serwer has a good post about the domestic politics the already-demonized Holder has to manage:
Of course, if there are prosecutable cases, and Holder chooses to pursue any of them, the GOP will paint the whole effort as a witch hunt against the CIA. That point if view is likely to draw more attention than the opposite one from the left, which is that the investigation didn’t go far enough in that it did not include those administration officials who authorized torture to begin with.
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15 Comments
Pingback posted June 18, 2010 @ 1:05 pm
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Comment posted June 18, 2010 @ 4:55 pm
Putting a hood on someone's head and hanging him on a wall such that he suffocates to death probably exceeds the limits of the Bush administration's legal opinions as well.
Comment posted June 18, 2010 @ 6:42 pm
Accountability is only for the “small people.”
Comment posted June 19, 2010 @ 6:43 pm
Tell me how some axx kissing lawyer's “legal” opinion of what torture is changes the law.
We prosecuted tortures after WWII. We condemned the Chinese for Brainwashing prisoners. We wrote and signed laws on torture. We signed the Geneva Conventions.
Either we are a nation of law or we are not. At present we are a nation of politically convenient law. The idea that “looking forward” is somekind of proper action is ludicrous. Why don't we apply that to all criminals? Because there would be no law at all if we did. The same is true for torturers
You can't argue that the torturers were just following orders. That is not an acceptable defense. Nor is the one that says the legal advice was sufficient to make the torturers actions legal. The Navy and the FBI refused to torture or participate in it.
I can guarantee this investigation will say the torturers (and maybe those that authorized it) were in error, but they did nothing we can prosecute them for.
Looking forward is in reality turning a political blind eye to the past.
Mr. President, sir, you can't change the minds of the world with words.
ACTA NON VERBA.
Comment posted June 20, 2010 @ 10:20 pm
If there were crimes PROSECUTE it is that simple, if attorneys gave UN-Constitutional advice and violated the standards of conduct they must operate under then Disbar them.
We do not as a nation have an 'we must torture' value, tell this to those who claim it is ok to torture because they want to do it that this is in a very real way Un-American.
Where are my previous posts and why have they disapeared?
Comment posted June 20, 2010 @ 10:39 pm
there are limits to how much legal cover they can get or expect and if they are placed under oath and asked if they as an individule know that it is wrong to torture and they are put on that spot so to speak how do you think they will answer?
Lawyers are expected to research and have knowledge of the area of law they are working in when given a legal position to determine, if they say they were un-aware of the laws and the obligations of the US in both custom and treaty then they are to be disbarred, thats in the rules so to speak and look how many lawyers when caught being in violation fight to keep their right to practice law when it is proven they violated the laws willfully and with intent.
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Pingback posted January 24, 2011 @ 9:02 pm
[...] CIA Indictments: Damned If You Do, Damned If You Don't « The …Indicting CIA interrogators without indicting the policymakers who put them in positions to break the law doesn't exactly resemble justice. … [...]
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