Obama shifts on torture cases
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Hurriyet Daily News
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Nisan 23, 2009 00:00
WASHINGTON - Less than a week after declaring it was time for the US to move on rather than ’laying blame for the past,’ Barack Obama envisages prosecuting former officials who authorized terror interrogations seen by critics as torture. It is up to the attorney general to decide whether to take legal action, says Obama, expressing concerns over a possible political witch hunt
Widening an explosive debate on torture, President Barack Obama opened the door to possible prosecutions of U.S. officials who laid the legal groundwork for harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects during the Bush administration.
Obama said Tuesday that his attorney general, Eric Holder, would determine whether anyone from the Bush administration broke the law by crafting a legal rationale for drastic, demeaning interrogation program that included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, shoving people into walls and other methods.
That marked a shift for the Obama administration, which has emphasized it does not want to dwell on the past with lengthy probes into policies put in place by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Answering a reporter's question Tuesday, Obama said it would be up to his attorney general to determine whether "those who formulated those legal decisions" behind the interrogation methods should be prosecuted.
"I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out national security operations," The Associated Press quoted the U.S. president as saying.
Rising pressure
Obama, who severely criticized the harsh techniques during the campaign, is feeling pressure from his party's liberal wing to come down hard on the subject. At the same time, Republicans including former Vice President Dick Cheney are insisting the methods helped protect the nation and are assailing Obama for revealing Justice Department memos detailing them.
Controversy has erupted across the political spectrum over last week's release by the Obama administration of classified memos detailing the program to question al-Qaeda suspects.
Obama said anew that CIA operatives who did the interrogating should not be charged with crimes because they thought they were following the law. Still, he suggested that Congress might set up a bipartisan review, outside its typical hearings, if it wants a "further accounting" of what happened during the period when the interrogation methods were authorized.
"With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said after meeting Jordan's King Abdullah. "I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there," Obama said, according to a report by Reuters news agency.
The comment seemed at odds with the position offered on Sunday by Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who told ABC that the president did not believe the authors of the legal opinions should be prosecuted. His aides later said Emanuel was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal memos allowing them.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs brushed aside questions about the contradiction. "Instead of referring to what anybody might have said ... it's important to refer to what the president said," he said.
The harsher methods were authorized to gain information after the 2001 attacks. The three men facing the most scrutiny are former Justice Department officials Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury. Bybee is currently a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Yoo is a professor at the University of California-Berkeley. It might be argued that the officials were simply doing their jobs, providing legal advice for the Bush administration. However, John Strait, a law professor at Seattle University said, "I think there are a slew of potential charges."
Obama said Tuesday that his attorney general, Eric Holder, would determine whether anyone from the Bush administration broke the law by crafting a legal rationale for drastic, demeaning interrogation program that included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, shoving people into walls and other methods.
That marked a shift for the Obama administration, which has emphasized it does not want to dwell on the past with lengthy probes into policies put in place by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Answering a reporter's question Tuesday, Obama said it would be up to his attorney general to determine whether "those who formulated those legal decisions" behind the interrogation methods should be prosecuted.
"I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out national security operations," The Associated Press quoted the U.S. president as saying.
Rising pressure
Obama, who severely criticized the harsh techniques during the campaign, is feeling pressure from his party's liberal wing to come down hard on the subject. At the same time, Republicans including former Vice President Dick Cheney are insisting the methods helped protect the nation and are assailing Obama for revealing Justice Department memos detailing them.
Controversy has erupted across the political spectrum over last week's release by the Obama administration of classified memos detailing the program to question al-Qaeda suspects.
Obama said anew that CIA operatives who did the interrogating should not be charged with crimes because they thought they were following the law. Still, he suggested that Congress might set up a bipartisan review, outside its typical hearings, if it wants a "further accounting" of what happened during the period when the interrogation methods were authorized.
"With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said after meeting Jordan's King Abdullah. "I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there," Obama said, according to a report by Reuters news agency.
The comment seemed at odds with the position offered on Sunday by Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who told ABC that the president did not believe the authors of the legal opinions should be prosecuted. His aides later said Emanuel was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal memos allowing them.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs brushed aside questions about the contradiction. "Instead of referring to what anybody might have said ... it's important to refer to what the president said," he said.
The harsher methods were authorized to gain information after the 2001 attacks. The three men facing the most scrutiny are former Justice Department officials Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury. Bybee is currently a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Yoo is a professor at the University of California-Berkeley. It might be argued that the officials were simply doing their jobs, providing legal advice for the Bush administration. However, John Strait, a law professor at Seattle University said, "I think there are a slew of potential charges."