NEW SPECIAL PROSECUTOR SHOULD INVESTIGATE MORE THAN POSSIBLE TORTURE ABUSE

Even a "Pulitzer Prize" winner thinks that the Attorney General should not be held to a one issue investigation.

…The new US Attorney General, Eric Holder

As I´ve said in the past, "Yes Mr. President, I agree that, we need to be looking forward, not backward". However, as with most issues, when the law is broken "no one is above the law". And that includes "everyone" in the previous executive administration.

As the Pulitzer Prize winning author Eugene Robinson said recently in the Washington Post, "History's demands can seem inconvenient, unfair or unreasonable. But they can't be ignored. The Obama administration has a legal and moral duty to determine whether crimes were committed in the Bush-era detention and interrogation of "war on terror" prisoners -- and, if so, to prosecute those responsible."

Now in this case, Mr. Robinson has focused on the latest direction that President Obama has given Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder, which was if warranted, to prosecute "those that have broken the law by going beyond what had previously been determined was within the law". But Mr. Robinson and I are both hoping that the investigations go well beyond those that "broke the law" to those that gave the "orders" to break the law. And from my personal point-of-view, I don´t mean just the orders regarding the "torture" issues.

In making sure that the CIA is not allowed to investigate themselves for possibly breaking the law, the AG has now established a special prosecutor for the initial torture abuse inquiries. However, after reading the detailed confidential report on the torture abuses, the AG´s focus will this time be on possible prosecutions. Attorney General Holder has since selected the career federal prosecutor John Durham to lead the torture inquiry. The new, special prosecutor will eventually reopen nearly a dozen cases of alleged prisoner abuse by CIA employees and contractors.

If the results of the inquiry are strong enough, there will then be a full Justice Department investigation of each of the cases. The possible down side is that all of these abuses were done sometimes in secret and with few witnesses; they also occurred as far back as 2002 and some of the individuals and the contractors that were involved have disappeared or are no longer alive.

In another of President Obama's latest moves, he is giving the future responsibility for interrogating "high-value" insurgency suspects to a new unit that will report directly to the White House. In this situation, the president is seeking to offer further guarantees against future torture and abuse.

These actions reverse the previous decision by the Bush Justice Department for dropping these previous abuse cases. According to the Washington Post, this takes the control of the interrogations away from the CIA to ensure that they will be conducted under the strict rules of the Army Field Manual.

Today, President Obama is taking a low profile, hands-off position on the matter. Now this is an appropriate acknowledgement of prosecutorial independence. Unfortunately, in reinforcing his "looking forward" message at every opportunity, the president seems to be sending some mixed messages. (And some even say that perhaps the president would prefer that there NOT be any prosecutions....?)

I am aware that the president has chosen to have a very busy agenda and his plate today is very full, especially with the health care proposals. But there was a plethora of other issues where Bush, Cheney and many in the past administration continually placed themselves in positions that were markedly shown as placing themselves above the law. And these issues do not include any of the AG´s current cases regarding the torture abuse accusations.

For a nation that since its founding has stated that we are a "nation of laws", how can we now "look forward" if we ignore that the previous leader of the free world continually placed himself and his administration in positions for, and now it appears they probably did actually "break the law"?

It is crystal clear that torture abuse and cruel treatment are absolutely against the law. And the Attorney General is said to have been appalled upon reading the recently released classified version of the massive report on CIA torture abuses. If there is credible evidence that crimes were indeed committed, it will be imperative that the nation's chief law enforcement officer, or his commander in chief, NOT look the other way. But why should this only apply to the single issue of CIA torture abuse….?

As Mr. Robinson said in his article, "If [the AG] Holder's reported decision to reopen the CIA cases does lead to prosecutions, there is one possible outcome that everyone should find unacceptable: that only the hands-on abusers are charged and tried. Proper investigations must work their way up the chain."

But what if in these and in other issues, illegal acts apparently were approved at the highest levels? The special prosecutor and the investigators need to be allowed to follow the evidence all the way to the top and into the White House, if that is where the trail leads.

As with Mr. Robinson, I'm under no illusion that George W. Bush or Dick Cheney would actually be prosecuted by President Obama´s Justice Department. But Mr. Robinson and I both want to know, and we both believe the nation needs to know, the full, unvarnished truth of what the Bush administration and others did in our name.

It's probable that detailed scrutiny and lasting disgrace could be the only sanctions that Bush and Cheney ever face.

But doesn´t history demand at least that much?

Copyright G.Ater 2009

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