ATTORNEY GENERAL Eric Holder did the right thing yesterday when, responding to a recommendation from the Justice Department’s ethics office, he appointed veteran federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate up to a dozen cases of terrorist suspects being subjected to illegal abuse during CIA interrogations between 2001 and 2004. Despite pressure within his own administration to protect the CIA, President Obama - to his credit - is leaving to Holder any decision to prosecute interrogators. Whatever the complications, or the embarrassment, of a legal accounting for past violations of US torture statutes and the Geneva Conventions, a refusal to apply the law would only compound one betrayal of American values with another.
It is true that prosecuting old cases of torture runs counter to Obama’s wish to look forward rather than backward. Moreover, it would be wrong to prosecute low-level interrogators without bringing to justice the policy makers who may have authorized the illegal techniques. And there is a risk of harming morale at the CIA and discouraging other countries from cooperating with the agency in the future.
Still, the benefits of demonstrating a revived American respect for the rule of law outweigh all such concerns. If the rest of the world is left to conclude that torture and legal impunity for the torturers are the American answers to terrorism, Al Qaeda and its offshoots will have won a propaganda victory. But if the Justice Department affirms the principle of legal accountability - even for the torture of those suspected of vicious acts of terrorism - it may deter intelligence officers from using their shroud of secrecy to engage in torture in the future.
That is the right American way of looking forward.
