Civil Liberties Groups Prepare Delicate Message on CIA Probe

[babylonsister]

Civil Liberties Groups Prepare Delicate Message on CIA Probe

Anti-Torture Advocates Worry Holder Won't Go High Enough Up the Chain
By Spencer Ackerman 8/21/09 1:37 PM

Like many in the intelligence community, Tyler Drumheller is waiting to see if his former colleagues will be left holding the bag for the Bush administration.


As early as Monday, Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate acts of torture performed by the CIA as part of the Bush administration’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” program. Holder, initially reluctant to investigate for fear of stoking a political brushfire, reportedly considered pursuing inquiry after reading through a grisly 2004 CIA inspector general report about detentions and interrogations that the agency is scheduled to release on Monday. Reports to date have indicated that Holder is considering restricting the inquiry to low-level CIA interrogators who went beyond acting in what President Obama has called “good faith” to Bush-era Justice Department legal guidance that the Obama administration has revoked.

Drumheller, a retired chief of CIA operations in Europe — who was never an interrogator — said restricting an inquiry to CIA interrogators is unfair. “What happened is a reflection of policy” at the time, Drumheller said. “None of this stuff was done in a vacuum.”

It may be no surprise that a former senior CIA official doesn’t think CIA interrogators ought to fall on their swords for a torture policy concocted at the highest levels of the previous administration. Perhaps less intuitive is that Drumheller is aggressively seconded by the civil libertarian community. Civil libertarians are preparing the delicate message that Holder’s anticipated inquiry ought to go much further at a time when prominent Republican senators argue that any inquiry at all is going dangerously too far.

“Worse than doing nothing at all” was how Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, described Holder’s possible decision to stop an inquiry at low-level interrogators in a recent Los Angeles Times interview. The pungent quote struck some in the human-rights community as too real — an authentic expression of how the community feels that but one that nevertheless left Holder, a necessary ally for any thorough torture investigation, exposed.

Indeed, on Wednesday, nine GOP senators wrote to Holder to oppose any inquiry at all. “{T}here is little doubt that further investigations and potential prosecutions of CIA officials would chill future intelligence activities,” the senators argued. “The intelligence community will be left to wonder whether actions taken today in the interest of national security will be subject to legal recriminations when the political winds shift.”

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http://washingtonindependent.com/55979/civil-liberties-groups-prepare-delicate-message-on-cia-probe

[bobthedrummer]

1. Prosecute all the way to GONZALES, RUMSFELD, CHENEY and the DECIDER....