White House fights back on torture flap

Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 9:20 PM Posted by Beijing News


The White House Wednesday rebuffed calls for an independent prosecutor to probe Bush-era terror interrogations and denied the Obama administration was tied up in political knots over the issue.

Controversy raged anew a day after President Barack Obama appeared to change policy by leaving the door open to prosecutions of officials under former president George W. Bush who devised legal cover for tactics critics have derided as torture.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said flatly that a flurry of news reports proclaiming the administration had switched course on delving further into those behind methods like near drowning, or waterboarding, were wrong.

Obama had said Tuesday it was up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide if former officials broke the law, though he had previously shielded CIA officers who acted under orders to carry out brutal questioning of Al-Qaeda suspects.

"The notion that the president is open to anything, I think, misses the point," Gibbs said.

"The president doesn't make a determination as to who broke the law," Gibbs said, as Obama flew to Iowa to tout his energy and climate change plan.

Obama's remarks caused a stir because his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had said on Sunday on ABC News that the president did not want to pursue those who "devised policy" and was interesting only in looking forward.

Gibbs drew a colorful analogy with what might happen to a reporter if he committed an act of vandalism aboard the presidential jet.

"If you spray-paint the back of this plane, if you tear up one of the seats, even though it's Air Force One, the president doesn't make a determination as to who broke the law," he said. "That's a legal official."

The spokesman also rejected calls by the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to probe the torture issue.

"The lawyers that are involved are plenty capable of determining whether any law has been broken," Gibbs said.

"I want to stress that that determination is not going to be made by the president, or the vice president, or anybody that works in the White House, because that's why many, many, many, many moons ago we created a Department of Justice."

The ACLU called on Monday for Obama to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate those who took part in "horrific acts of torture," as the political row deepened over Bush-era legal memos justifying the tactics released by the White House last week.

It seized on the memos and a new Senate report suggesting top Bush administration officials were behind interrogation practices that spread from Guantanamo Bay to Afghanistan to Iraq.

New evidence "makes frighteningly clear that some of the darkest moments in our country's recent past were choreographed at the highest levels of government," ACLU counsel Christopher Anders said.

"The people who were at the very top of the Bush administration and those at the top of the chain of command must be held accountable."

Three prominent US Senators meanwhile increased the pressure on Obama to rule out prosecutions of former Bush aides, in a letter to the president.

But the White House denied he was proposing some kind of investigation.





Edmonds

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