Obama Reportedly Told CIA Brass He Won’t Launch Waterboarding Probe
The outgoing director of the CIA says Barack Obama has indicated he won’t pursue a legal probe into the agency’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation practices.
Outgoing director Michael Hayden said in a news conference that Obama was briefed on the CIA’s interrogation methods in a meeting last month, the Washington Post reports. Afterward Obama indicated he wasn’t interested in investigating the past, Hayden said. Instead, he plans to focus on protecting the country from terrorists.
“He’s looking forward,” Hayden said, “and that’s very appropriate.”
Obama voiced similar sentiments in an interview broadcast last Sunday when he was asked if he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Bush administration officials for harsh interrogations or domestic wiretaps. Obama said he had “a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
“My instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward, we are doing the right thing,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation’s going to be to move forward.”
Yesterday, Obama’s nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, said at his confirmation hearing that waterboarding is torture. The CIA has used waterboarding in interrogations of at least three suspects.
