Political Fireworks Over Torture Prosecutor: Report Reveals Threats to Kill Children, CIA Director in 'Screaming Match'

AlterNet. Posted August 25, 2009.

The New York Times reports: "The Justice Department released a long-secret report Monday chronicling abuses inside the Central Intelligence Agency’s overseas prisons, showing how interrogators choked a prisoner repeatedly and threatened to kill another detainee’s children. In response to the findings, Attorney General Eric H Holder Jr. chose John H. Durham, a veteran prosecutor from Connecticut who has been investigating the C.I.A.’s destruction of interrogation videotapes, to determine whether a full criminal investigation of the conduct of agency employees or contractors was warranted. The review will be the most politically explosive inquiry since Mr. Holder took over the Justice Department in February."

It has already been an explosive issue for CIA director Leon Panetta, who got in a "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House about the investigation, according to ABC news: "Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, ... insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials. According to intelligence officials, Panetta erupted in a tirade last month during a meeting with a senior White House staff member. Panetta was reportedly upset over plans by Attorney General Eric Holder to open a criminal investigation of allegations that CIA officers broke the law in carrying out certain interrogation techniques that President Obama has termed 'torture.'"

The Washington Post reports that Holder selected Durham for the inquiry "in part because of his role as prosecutor in an ongoing investigation of the destruction of CIA videotapes in late 2005, expanding his mandate to cover additional agency conduct." The Post also reports that "Durham's mandate ... will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees."

There is the potential that the investigation could expand, as the Post reports:

"Legal analysts said [Durham's] review, while preliminary, could expand beyond its relatively narrow mandate and ensnare a wider cast of characters. They cited U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's identity, which culminated with the criminal conviction of then-Vice President Richard B. Cheney's chief of staff. ... [T]he attorney general and his national security team appear to be staking out a middle ground -- rejecting a broad inquiry that could result in possible prosecutions of Justice Department lawyers in the Bush years as well as cabinet officers who developed counterterrorism policy; but giving civil liberties advocates at least part of what they wanted without supporting a full, independent truth commission to examine a host of Bush national security practices."

But elected officials and civil liberties advocates aren't satisfied. As TalkingPointsMemo reports, "Some top Democrats are expressing disappointment with Eric Holder's announcement of a probe into Bush-era torture, and specifically with Holder's apparent decision to ensure the probe doesn't look at the Bush officials who authorized the policy." Senators in opposition include Russ Feingold and Patrick Leahy. And human rights groups were quick on the offensive after Holder's plan emerged. Ari Melber writes for The Nation,

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