Holder move another reasons to distrust Obama

Julie Mason:

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.

"This could create a political problem for the president, who rightly understands that looking back will be politically explosive and has the potential to undermine progress on his top priorities," said Clark Ervin, a national security expert at the Aspen Institute and a former Bush administration official.

Holder's expanded probe appears destined to reawaken deep partisan divisions over the conduct of the war, and could alienate conservatives strenuously opposed to criminalizing interrogation methods.

The investigation could play havoc with Obama's efforts on health care reform by creating a political maelstrom in Congress. It also creates a tricky calculus for the president's war strategies -- some of which, such as rendition, are continuations of former President George W. Bush's policies.

"It has the potential to make it tougher to get funding for the war," Ervin said. "There is evidence of cold feet on that already."

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama still believes CIA inquisitors who acted "in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance" should not be prosecuted.

"Ultimately, determinations about whether someone broke the law are made independently by the attorney general," Gibbs said.

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One thing should be clear. No one at the CIA is going to stick their neck out to get information from captured enemy operatives. They will be turned over to the Justice Department read their rights, have a lawyer provided to tell them not to talk and whatever secrets they know will be hidden from us on the planned attacks of the enemy. It is a good way to lose a war. It is also not an intelligent way to deal with enemy combatants. If we go the full lawfare route we will be turning over more of our secrets to the enemy in trials while not getting any of the enemy's secrets. It is hard to imagine a worse way to manage intelligence in war time.