Shifting ground in the face of a growing uproar, President Barack Obama opened the door Tuesday to possible criminal prosecution of senior Bush administration officials who provided the legal rationale for harsh interrogation techniques used against terrorism suspects.
And for the first time, Obama laid out a blueprint for using an independent commission, not congressional hearings, to examine the interrogation policies crafted by top officials in the Bush administration and carried out by CIA officers in secret prisons overseas.
While Obama again sought to reassure rank-and-file CIA employees that they would not face prosecution, the administration’s changing positions have heightened anxiety at the agency and raised the prospect that Bush administration officials tied to the interrogation program could remain under a cloud of scrutiny for months to come.
On Monday, Obama had offered personal assurances that there would be no prosecutions of officers who applied the rough techniques, which included striking prisoners in the face, confining them in coffin-size boxes and repeated waterboarding. And as recently as Sunday, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel declared in a television interview that no prosecutions were envisioned for those who provided the legal justification for the harsh tactics.
More broadly, the Obama administration’s change in its stance on prosecutions tacitly acknowledged that its original position has become untenable — trying to focus on the future and avoid miring the new presidency in what was likely to become a bitterly partisan fight.
Increasingly, human-rights groups and many liberal members of Obama’s base have been demanding investigation — and possible prosecution — of those involved in what these critics see as the illegal and immoral use of torture. The demands have only grown more intense since the administration’s release last week of memos prepared by the Bush Justice Department that set out in graphic detail what tactics were permissible.
The president, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he would not rule out prosecuting the architects of such memorandums. He said rank-and-file CIA officers who carried out interrogations based on the legal guidance they received should be immune.
At the same time, however, Obama said the whole issue would be handled not by the White House but by the attorney general and possibly an independent commission.
“With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that 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.
White House officials said that in raising the possibility of a blue-ribbon panel, Obama was not necessarily endorsing the idea of investigations. Rather, officials insisted, he was saying that if such an inquiry was necessary, a commission would be the best way to handle it.
During the presidential campaign and since occupying the White House, Obama had allowed for the possibility of prosecution where clear violations of law were found, but his emphasis was always on moving forward, focusing on the future and banning torture and harsh interrogation methods in his own administration.
With members of Congress stepping up plans to conduct their own investigations, Obama laid out a somewhat different way to proceed. The president suggested going outside the normal congressional hearing mechanisms, where partisanship inevitably would take hold, and handing responsibility to an independent panel whose members “are above reproach and have credibility.” That panel would be modeled after the special commission set up to examine the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Obama’s handling of the issue has always been less than satisfactory to his base of liberal voters.
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