Thursday, June 30, 2011

Atty gen Holder comes to his sense and drops probe against Bush CIA officials over alleged torture


Now that the Obama administration has sucked up every bit of juice from getting Osama bin Laden to sleep with the fish, the least he could do was to stop harassing Bush CIA officials that got the actionable intelligence by using enhanced interrogation.

This investigation was never warranted in the in the first place and was only done to appease Obama’s kook Leftwing base.

I bet they’re crying in their wine glasses tonight on the Westside of New York!

National Journal

The Justice Department will end a wide-ranging probe into the CIA’s past interrogation, rendition, and detention activities, but it will launch a formal criminal investigation into agency officials involved in the deaths of two detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Thursday.

“The department has determined that an expanded criminal investigation of the remaining matters is not warranted,” Holder said in a statement.

Holder said he accepted the recommendation of longtime federal prosecutor John Durham to proceed with a criminal investigation into the deaths of the two detainees, adding that Durham’s team “reviewed a tremendous volume of information pertaining to the detainees” that included “both information and matters that had never previously been examined by the department.”

the attorney general tapped Durham in 2009 to review cases of alleged detainee mistreatment and death at the hands of CIA interrogators and contractors under the George W. Bush administration.

The probe has been hanging over the CIA, and Holder’s decision to end it was immediately welcomed by key officials.

Notably, Holder made his announcement only minutes before the Senate voted 94-0 to confirm Gen. David Petraeus as the next CIA director. The announcement was also made on the last day for current CIA Director Leon Panetta, who is heading to the Pentagon as the next Defense secretary.

“After extensive examination of more than 100 instances in which CIA had contact or was alleged to have had contact with terrorist detainees, [Durham] has determined that no further law enforcement action is appropriate in all but two discrete cases,” Panetta said in a message to CIA employees.

“No decision has been made to bring criminal charges,” added Panetta, who fiercely defended CIA agents during his tenure. “Both cases were previously reviewed by career federal prosecutors who subsequently declined prosecution. The agency will, of course, continue to cooperate fully in the remaining investigations.”

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