A.G. Eric Holder
The Washington Post is reporting that Attorney General Eric Holder plans to name a prosecutor to investigate certain elements of torture questions surrounding the CIA. [This is a good thing, and Adam Serwer already is up with his take.
Spencer Ackerman calls Holder's statement "exactly civil libertarians hoped" for because it "did not rule out any course of investigative or prosecutorial action," while Greg Sargent writes unapprovingly that "only the conduct of low-level alleged torturers will be looked at here" and concludes:
Nothing here at all about examining the legal justification of such techniques, and no look at why Bush lawyers subsequently gave them a pass.
Hmmm. So, yeah, the liberals don't agree on what this means. Shocking.
The great news, however, is that The Washington Independent, has scanned "CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s 2004 report into the CIA’s Bush-era interrogations operations" and made it available to me -- and you -- via Scribd. So, it's half-redacted, but get at it below the jump.
Now, back to my original, if small and relatively insignificant, point.]
Carrie Johnson, however, pushes an angle in her report with no attribution — either on- or off-the-record — that is emblematic of a the type of statement that finds its way into a news story, then onto cable news, then into public discourse and does not help the public discourse in any way. She writes:
It also could complicate the Justice Department’s relationship with the White House, where President Obama has repeatedly expressed a desire to move forward from the national security controversies of the Bush administration. In a briefing with reporters Monday, deputy White House press secretary Bill Burton said that the president had complete faith in Holder and that the decision whether to launch an investigation was the Attorney General’s sole prerogative.
“The White House supports the attorney general making the decisions on who gets prosecuted and investigated,” Burton said.
Yes, it also could lead to rainbows, unicorns and golden treasure. But it shouldn’t show up in The Washington Post’s breaking news report without any attribution.
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The 2004 CIA IG Report:
Popularity: 7% [?]
Chris Geidner is the award-winning senior political editor at D.C.'s Metro Weekly and has written for The Atlantic Online, The American Prospect, Advocate.com, Salon and other publications, as well as at his blog, Law Dork. In 2011, he received the Excellence in News Writing Award from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association for his coverage of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" repeal. Prior to moving to D.C. in 2009, he served as an attorney on the senior staff at the Ohio Attorney General's Office and had earlier worked for a leading Columbus law firm. An extended biography can be found