Holder drops CIA criminal investigation

by: jim kouri | published: 09 09, 2012

After more than three years, agents from the Central Intelligence Agency are discovering that they can breathe easier after Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama Justice Department dropped its far-reaching investigation of CIA interrogators who aggressively questioned terrorist detainees without bringing criminal charges against them, a national security source told the Law Enforcement Examiner early Friday morning.

The termination of the Obama administration's CIA probe was announced late-Thursday/early-Friday to coincide with the much-anticipated GOP convention speeches by mega-star Clint Eastwood, Sen. Marco Rubio and GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney. "It's another embarrassment for the Obama-Holder attack team and they wanted to avoid full media coverage," said political consultant Michael Baker.

One of his first acts by Holder as the nation's Attorney General was to appoint a federal prosecutor to probe the interrogation practices utilized during the presidency of George W. Bush. Ironically, it is believed that such interrogation methods -- including the controversial waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique -- helped the Navy SEALs, during the Obama administration, locate al-Qaeda's supreme leader Osama bin Laden.

Even after boasting about his "getting" bin Laden, President Barack Obama refused admit that it was the use of the Bush Administration interrogation policy that helped in locating and killing bin Laden. For more than 44 months, the Obama Justice Department investigated the treatment of terrorism suspects in U.S. custody going all the way back to Sept. 11, 2001, when al-Qaeda terrorists launched the most deadly attacks on American soil in U.S. history.

In August 2009, Attorney General Holder expanded his CIA investigation to include a complete probe of the CIA’s interrogation of detainees overseas. Holder's expansion followed the public release of an inspector general’s report that claimed CIA interrogators threatened to kill a suspected terrorist's family and told another detainee he'd be forced to watch his mother raped.

On Thursday, Holder stated, "Based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt.” In other words, Holder had no case to begin with.

In a message to employees, also on Thursday, CIA Director David Petraeus said, “As intelligence officers, our inclination, of course, is to look ahead to the challenges of the future rather than backwards at those of the past. Nonetheless, it was very important that we supported fully the Justice Department in its efforts.”

Officials at the American Civil Liberties Union called the outcome of the investigation a scandal and that the CIA undermined the universally recognized prohibition on torture and other abusive treatment.

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