Inquiry on abuse pits Justice Dept. against the CIA
In recent weeks, Panetta had tried to head off move
WASHINGTON - With the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate detainee abuses, long-simmering conflicts between the CIA and the Justice Department burst into plain view this week, threatening relations between two critical players on President Obama’s national security team.
The tension between the agencies complicates how the administration handles delicate national security issues, particularly the tracking and capturing of suspected terrorists overseas. It also may distract Obama, who is trying to move beyond the battles of the Bush years to focus on an ambitious domestic agenda.
The strains became evident inside the administration in recent weeks. In July, CIA Director Leon Panetta tried to head off the investigation, administration officials said. He sent the CIA’s top lawyer, Stephen W. Preston, to the Justice Department to persuade aides to Attorney General Eric Holder to abandon any plans for an inquiry.
Preston presented what was, in effect, a closing argument in defense of the CIA, contending that many potential cases against intelligence operatives were legally flawed and that they had already been investigated, some more than once. In none, he said, had prosecutors found grounds for charges.
But the Justice Department was unmoved, officials said. Despite the CIA pressure and the stated desire of the White House not to dwell on the past, Holder went ahead with an investigation that will determine whether agents broke the law in their brutal interrogations.
On the day the decision was announced, Panetta phoned Holder, according to people familiar with the call. In the conversation, the CIA director told the attorney general that the agency would cooperate but expressed his displeasure.
Holder and Panetta are each confronting difficult balancing acts. Holder inherited a dispirited department accused of carrying out the political wishes of the Bush White House, and he now must show independence while continuing to work with the rest of the administration.
Panetta, who is also new to his job and lacks an intelligence background, must carry out White House orders to make a clean break with some of the Bush administration’s intelligence policies, including ending the CIA’s harsh interrogations. At the same time, he must soothe frayed nerves at the CIA.
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, said that reports of shouting matches were overblown and that the protagonists were simply advocating for their agency’s viewpoints in robust discussions, as they should.
