Marcy Wheeler reports that Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham, assigned by Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate cases in which CIA interrogators may have gone beyond the "legalized" torture guidelines established by the Bush administration's office of Legal Counsel, has recommended investigations of two cases in which detainees died. The original mandate for the investigation was " whether any unauthorized interrogation techniques were used by CIA interrogators, and if so, whether such techniques could constitute violations of the torture statute or any other applicable statute." As Ryan J. Reilly noted, rather than mere violations of the guidelines, the Department seems to have decided that only cases in which violations of the guidelines lead to detainee deaths were cases worth recommending for criminal investigation.
I don't have access to the information Durham did, so it's hard for me to second-guess his decision. But based on what was revealed about the CIA interrogation program through the Inspector General's reports, it sounds to me like the Department decided to pursue a bare minimum of accountability for only the worst possible cases of misconduct. Regardless, we will doubtless soon hear from conservatives about this "attack" on the CIA and how national security officials should have defacto immunity from criminal prosecution even when they might have killed someone.
