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President Barack Obama has decided to set up a new, elite terrorist interrogation team, but will limit the techniques it can employ to those already approved for military use — a restriction sure to chafe some who believe tougher tactics should be allowed against America’s most determined adversaries. The announcement comes on the same day that the Justice Department is expected to release a CIA Inspector General report from 2004 that details some of the most extreme interrogation techniques used under the Bush administration, including the use of a mock execution and a power drill to intimidate Al Qaeda operatives....

In naming a special prosecutor to investigate the CIA's use of harsh interrogation tactics, the Obama administration has plunged into just the kind of controversy it said it wanted to avoid -- a polarizing, backward-looking fight over issues far removed from the president's top priorities. At a time when healthcare and other signature initiatives are in trouble on Capitol Hill and President Obama's approval ratings are slipping, he now faces the prospect of a long, distracting probe into policies of the Bush administration -- policies Obama has already denounced. And the furor is likely to be all the sharper because...

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A prominent Democratic strategist said Monday that the Justice Department probe of CIA interrogations during President George W. Bush's administration may turn into a political liability for President Obama. "This is terrible politics for the Obama administration and the Democrats," James Carville, a Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor, said Monday in an interview on 'The Situation Room.' "The country – like – really doesn't want this." But, Carville added that the decision to open the probe into Bush-era interrogations of terrorism suspects is being driven by a belief that "we are a nation of laws." Ed...

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to put a federal prosecutor on the CIA interrogation case is a game-changing move that could upend President Barack Obama's broader agenda. Holder on Monday asked Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham, who has been investigating the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, to look into whether the agency's methods for questioning detainees were illegal. Approved by Obama, the new scope of the investigation threatens to enflame still-raw tensions on both sides of a long-unresolved national security debate.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to ensure they are not tortured, administration officials said on Monday. The administration officials, who announced the changes on condition that they not be identified, said that unlike the Bush administration, they would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused. “The emphasis will be on insuring that individuals will not face torture if they are sent over overseas,” said one administration official, adding that...

Washington Post: Aug 24, 2009: "Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move." How many Trojan Horses will Obama ride?  This move to investigate how the CIA tortured detainees is obviously designed to take the focus off of Obamacare. Prior reviews by government prosecutors have found no cause for concern. But this diversion is necessary to move the debate from government takeover...

As approval ratings for President Obama and the Democrats' Congress continue to fall-with both independents and the Democratic Party base leaving the support column, the Obama Admin has turned to its old tactic of distraction by torture. That is to say, they've leaked to the press some new sort of report about allegations of torture conducted during the early years of the Bush Administration. In the past, President Obama chose not to allow pictures of "torture" to be published because his military commanders said it would endanger the lives of troops in the field by emboldening the enemy. However, his...

President Obama does not intend to voice his preference for whether anyone is prosecuted from prisoner abuse cases, a White House spokesman said Monday, and will allow Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to make the decision. The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended that prosecutors investigate nearly a dozen prisoner abuse cases, reversing the Bush administration and potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency workers to prosecution for their brutal treatment of detainees, according to a person officially briefed on the matter. “Well, as the president has said repeatedly, he thinks that we should be looking forward, not backward,” Bill Burton,...

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move. Word of Holder's decision comes on the same day that the Obama administration will issue a 2004 report by the then-CIA Inspector General. Among other things, the IG questioned the effectiveness of harsh interrogation tactics that included simulated drowning and wall slamming. A federal judge in New York forced the administration to release the...

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.” The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.’s inspector general but have never been released. When the...

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com. Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials. "You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama...

RAW DATA: Panetta Letter to CIA Staff on Release of Interrogation Report CIA Director Leon Panetta sent the following note to the agency's workforce Monday on the release of a report on interrogation practices. FOXNews.com Monday, August 24, 2009 Message from the Director: Release of Material on Past Detention Practices Today, as part of a number of Freedom of Information Act cases, the government is responding to court orders to release more documents related to the Agency's past detention and interrogation of foreign terrorists. The CIA materials include the 2004 report from our Office of Inspector General and two papers-one...

A "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta, and the expected release today of another damning internal investigation, has administration officials worrying about the direction of its newly-appoint intelligence team, current and former senior intelligence officials tell ABC News.com. Amid reports that Panetta had threatened to quit just seven months after taking over at the spy agency, other insiders tell ABCNews.com that senior White House staff members are already discussing a possible shake-up of top national security officials. "You can expect a larger than normal turnover in the next year," a senior adviser to Obama...

President Obama has approved the creation of an elite team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects, part of a broader effort to revamp U.S. policy on detention and interrogation, senior administration officials said Sunday. Obama signed off late last week on the unit, named the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG. Made up of experts from several intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the interrogation unit will be housed at the FBI but will be overseen by the National Security Council -- shifting the center of gravity away from the CIA and giving the White House direct oversight. (snip) Holder...

The Justice Department's ethics office has recommended to Attorney General Eric Holder that a number of alleged CIA prisoner-abuse cases that were closed under the Bush administration be reopened, FOX News confirms. Holder is considering the guidance as his department is set to make public a 2004 report by the CIA's inspector general detailing allegations of prisoner abuse. Several details in the report have already been reported, including claims that interrogators threatened at least one prisoner with a gun and power drill and also conducted mock executions to scare detainees. A source with knowledge of the Office of Professional Responsibility's...

The Daily Beast is a center-left/RINO news outlet, so for them to kneecap The One this way is nothing short of shocking. So awful that I don’t even know how to excerpt it. Arguably the most damning story to emerge about Obama’s administrative competence since the inauguration. Remember a few months ago when Panetta wet his pants about some supposed CIA plan to assassinate Al Qaeda leaders that Congress hadn’t been briefed on (but which had been public knowledge since 2002)? Funny thing: According to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level...

A few weeks ago, our friends in congress had a major fit about a secret Bush-era program that was revealed to them my CIA Director Leon Panetta: Congress originally authorized the CIA to develop the secret counter-terrorism program that is now drawing fierce criticism from House Democrats who say they were kept in the dark all along, a former senior intelligence official told FOX News on Monday. The program, which sources told FOX News was a plan to capture or kill Al Qaeda operatives, also never came close to being operational, the intelligence official said. "This was not a program....

Three former CIA directors have privately told their successor he had his facts wrong when he revealed an illegal assassination program, reports Joseph Finder, and his spies will suffer for it. according to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level officials from the Bush administration, the real story is at once more innocent—Panetta was mistaken; no law was broken—and far more troubling: an inexperienced CIA director, unfamiliar with how his vast, complicated agency works, unable to trust senior officials within his own agency, and desperate to keep his hands clean, screwed up....

Last month, at a meeting overseas of intelligence service chiefs, one of my counterparts from a major Western ally pulled me aside. Why, he asked, is Washington so consumed with what the CIA did in the past, when the most pressing national security concerns are in the present? It was a very good question. In fact, I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action. In our democracy, effective congressional oversight of intelligence is important, but it depends as much...

Political Payback Distracting CIA, Panetta Warns WASHINGTON – CIA Director Leon Panetta warned in an article published Saturday that the country's premier intelligence agency has been hurt by a climate of recriminations in Congress over its past practices. "I've become increasingly concerned that the focus on the past, especially in Congress, threatens to distract the CIA from its crucial core missions: intelligence collection, analysis and covert action," Panetta wrote in an op-ed piece published in the online edition of The Washington Post. Some members of Congress have pressed for a fuller investigation of the past practices of the intelligence agencies...