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Gold9472
11-17-2008, 08:07 PM
Obama advisers: No charges likely vs interrogators

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jNJh9ZFMqkoehf9byAYKGnm-EKYQD94GV6202

By LARA JAKES JORDAN – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama's incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government workers who authorized or used harsh interrogation techniques during the George W. Bush presidency. Obama, who has criticized the use of torture, is being urged by some constitutional scholars and humans rights groups to investigate possible war crimes by the Bush administration.

But two Obama advisers said there's little — if any — chance that the incoming president's Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage.

The advisers spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are still tentative. A spokesman for Obama's transition team did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Additionally, the question of whether to prosecute may never become an issue if Bush issues pre-emptive pardons to protect those involved.

Obama has committed to reviewing interrogations on al-Qaida and other terror suspects. After he takes office in January, Obama is expected to create a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to study interrogations, including those using waterboarding and other tactics that critics call torture. The panel's findings would be used to ensure that future interrogations are undisputedly legal.

"I have said repeatedly that America doesn't torture, and I'm going to make sure that we don't torture," Obama said Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes." "Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America's moral stature in the world."

Obama's most ardent supporters are split on whether he should prosecute Bush officials.

Asked this weekend during a Vermont Public Radio interview if Bush administration officials would face war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said, "In the United States, no."

"These things are not going to happen," said Leahy, D-Vt.

Robert Litt, a former top Clinton administration Justice Department prosecutor, said Obama should focus on moving forward with anti-torture policy instead of looking back.

"Both for policy and political reasons, it would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time hauling people up before Congress or before grand juries and going over what went on," Litt said at a Brookings Institution discussion about Obama's legal policy. "To as great of an extent we can say, the last eight years are over, now we can move forward — that would be beneficial both to the country and the president, politically."

But Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy.

"The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it," Ratner said. "I don't see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable."

In the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the White House authorized U.S. interrogators to use harsh tactics on captured al-Qaida and Taliban suspects. Bush officials relied on a 2002 Justice Department legal memo to assert that its interrogations did not amount to torture — and therefore did not violate U.S. or international laws. That memo has since been rescinded.

At least three top al-Qaida operatives — including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed — were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003 because of intelligence officials' belief that more attacks were imminent. Waterboarding creates the sensation of drowning, and has been traced back hundreds of years and is condemned by nations worldwide.

Bush could take the issue of criminal charges off the table with one stroke of his pardons pen.

Whether Bush will protect his top aides and interrogators with a pre-emptive pardon — before they are ever charged — has become a hot topic of discussion in legal and political circles in the administration's waning days. White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto declined to comment on the issue.

Under the Constitution, the president's power to issue pardons is absolute and cannot be overruled.

Pre-emptive pardons would be highly controversial, but former White House counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. said it would protect those who were following orders or otherwise trying to protect the nation.

"I know of no one who acted in reckless disregard of U.S. law or international law," said Culvahouse, who served under President Ronald Reagan. "It's just not good for the intelligence community and the defense community to have people in the field, under exigent circumstances, being told these are the rules, to be exposed months and years after the fact to criminal prosecution."

The Federalist Papers discourage presidents from pardoning themselves. It took former President Gerald Ford to clear former President Richard Nixon of wrongdoing in the 1972 Watergate break-in.

Gold9472
11-18-2008, 08:43 AM
Obama advisers: Bush era war criminals will walk

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Obama_admin_wont_prosecure_Bush_war_1117.html

11/18/2008

Even as President-elect Obama vowed "to regain America's moral stature in the world" during Sunday's 60 Minutes appearance, two of his senior advisers confessed there is no intent to pursue those in the Bush administration who engaged in torture, a war crime.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to the Associated Press, the advisers said that the plan is to put a stop to current interrogation methods and to "look forward" as opposed to focusing on prior transgressions.

The Obama campaign did not offer a response before the report was published.

Human Rights Watch, a non-profit watchdog group, is lobbying the President-elect for fast action on the abuses of the Bush era.

"For far too long, the United States has undermined its ability to fight terror by adopting short-sighted policies that allowed torture and indefinite detention without charge," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, in a Sunday release. "The United States urgently needs President-elect Obama to live up to his commitment to right the wrongs of the last seven years, and to regain the moral high ground in the fight against terrorism."

The group is pushing for Obama to bring Guantanamo detainees into the United States court system, and admit released prisoners into the country if it is feared they may be subject to torture upon returning home. They are also calling for an executive order to require the CIA to follow the US military's interrogation rules, and the establishment of an investigatory "truth commission" with subpoena power to enforce standing laws against US war criminals.

However, if the top candidate for Obama's Central Intelligence Agency is any indication, the activists may soon be disappointed. The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, citing a report by Mark Ambinder that Obama is close to appointing John Brennon, who served under former CIA Director George Tenet, Sullivan decried it as, "change we cannot believe in."

"Appointing Brennan to the CIA does not mean change from Bush," he wrote. "That was absolutely a critical part of Obama's message. With Brennan, we get the taint of a Bush and two-facedness of a Clinton. We need to say goodbye to all that, not perpetuate its double-speak."

Tenet was director of the agency when it was admitted that several prisoners were subjected to waterboarding: a form of torture that simulates the experience of drowning.

"[Obama believes] torture not be allowed in any form or fashion in any part of the federal government, and he would make sure that was the case," said Brennan to CQ Politics. "Whether the Army field manual is comprehensive enough to cover all those tactics and techniques, that’s something I think he’d look to his national security advisers for."

Blogger and filmmaker Glenn Greenwald is skeptical too.

"Brennan has been and continues to be an extremely important adviser for Obama on intelligence issues," he wrote. "His views on past administration conduct are, in many important instances, clearly disturbing and bear watching."

Alleged 9/11 'mastermind' Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one such prisoner that was admittedly tortured. The American Civil Liberties Union warned Monday that Bush may try to "sabotage" Obama by "ramming through" the Mohammed tribunal. On Saturday it was also revealed that senior intelligence officials are lobbying President Bush to preemptively pardon intelligence agents who committed war crimes: an unprecedented act.

Nevertheless, one campaign meme -- "hope" -- has yet to flicker out for human rights activists.

"We are confident that consistent with his message of change, his actions and his criticism, he is going to repudiate the abusive counterterrorism policies of the Bush administration," Joanne Mariner with Human Rights Watch told IPS News.