Bush Doctrine Stalls Holder Confirmation
GOP Wants No More Investigations
By Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Even as Senate Republicans seek assurances that new leaders at the Justice Department will not prosecute former government officials over national security abuses, one of the highest-profile investigations of the Bush era is grinding to a close.
A little more than a year ago, then-Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey handpicked a prosecutor to investigate the destruction of CIA videotapes depicting harsh interrogation tactics used against two al-Qaeda suspects. The disclosure that the tapes, believed to portray the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, were destroyed in 2005 touched off an outcry from defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates who said the government should have produced the materials in lawsuits pending at the time.
Since then, the federal inquiry has proceeded mostly in the shadows. But prosecutor John H. Durham recently told a federal judge that he would wrap up interviews by the end of February -- a timetable complicated by the highly sensitive subject, the reluctance of current and former agency employees to cooperate and Durham's painstaking approach, according to court documents and three lawyers following the case.
The CIA tapes investigation illustrates a broader debate that is holding up the confirmation of Eric H. Holder Jr. to serve as President Obama's attorney general. Last week, leading GOP senators including John Cornyn (Tex.) demanded that Holder commit to not launching criminal probes of intelligence operatives, lawyers and high-level Bush advisers who took part in debates over warrantless wiretapping and detainee interrogations.
(More here.)
By Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Even as Senate Republicans seek assurances that new leaders at the Justice Department will not prosecute former government officials over national security abuses, one of the highest-profile investigations of the Bush era is grinding to a close.
A little more than a year ago, then-Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey handpicked a prosecutor to investigate the destruction of CIA videotapes depicting harsh interrogation tactics used against two al-Qaeda suspects. The disclosure that the tapes, believed to portray the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, were destroyed in 2005 touched off an outcry from defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates who said the government should have produced the materials in lawsuits pending at the time.
Since then, the federal inquiry has proceeded mostly in the shadows. But prosecutor John H. Durham recently told a federal judge that he would wrap up interviews by the end of February -- a timetable complicated by the highly sensitive subject, the reluctance of current and former agency employees to cooperate and Durham's painstaking approach, according to court documents and three lawyers following the case.
The CIA tapes investigation illustrates a broader debate that is holding up the confirmation of Eric H. Holder Jr. to serve as President Obama's attorney general. Last week, leading GOP senators including John Cornyn (Tex.) demanded that Holder commit to not launching criminal probes of intelligence operatives, lawyers and high-level Bush advisers who took part in debates over warrantless wiretapping and detainee interrogations.
(More here.)
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