Special Investigations, the CIA, and Torture

The news is good -- Justice Department Michael Mukasey has named an outside investigator -- John Durham -- to look into the reasons for destroying CIA videos that apparently showed CIA agents using water boarding to get information from Al Qaeda suspects.

This decision has been greeted favorably by Patrick Leahy and Ted Kennedy, so I will accept it as a way forward. But we need to keep in mind that while the destruction of the tapes may have criminality, more importantly there is the question of the methods of interrogation used and who ultimately authorized them. If all we get out of this is that the tapes were unlawfully destroyed without getting to the broader issue of torture the process will be poorly served. To punish someone for destroying the tapes without examining what was on them is not going to settle the issue.

But, we'll wait to see what happens. In the end we must as a nation come to the position that we're not well served by leaders who would condone torture.