No Charges for CIA Interrogators in Barack Obama's Administration

Advisers to President-elect Barack Obama say that the incoming administration is not likely to pursue charges against terrorist interrogators from the CIA and other federal agencies for alleged instances of torturing terrorist detainees. The move by the Obama could be an early test of his support from radical anti-war activist groups like Moveon.org and civil-liberties groups like the ACLU which overwhelmingly supported Obama in the general election.

Robert Litt, of the liberal Brookings Institution, said that the move by the incoming administration, if confirmed, is a politically wise one. "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. "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, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a far-left wing civil-liberties group, disagreed. Ratner wants the interrogators and members of the Bush Administration brought up on charges for alleged illegal activities in the interrogation of terrorist detainees.

"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. 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."

At least one high profile supporter of Obama's, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) has said that charges for former administration officials are not in the offing. "In the United States, no," Leahy said. "These things are not going to happen."

Obama has said that he will name a commission, styled on the 9/11 Commission, to investigate the CIA's interrogation program. But the commission could unearth information embarrassing to Democrats as well as Bush Administration officials. The CIA has stated publicly that three terrorist detainees in its custody were subjected to waterboarding between 2002 and 2003, including the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. The agency has said that it discontinued the practice, and has revealed that top Congressional Democrats, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, were briefed about the details of the interrogations program while they were occurring.

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