Attorney General Eric Holder

Post your comments below

Attorney General Eric Holder’s appointment of a special prosecutor to inquire into CIA torture of terrorism suspects is:

1) Wrong, and a betrayal of the people charged with protecting American lives? Or 2) Needed, because these methods present one of the darkest chapters in American history — and besides that, critics charge, they don’t work.

The attorney general has stirred a political hornets nest. Former Vice President Dick Cheney calls it a politically motivated move that will have a “devastating effect” on national security. Critics on the left say Holder isn’t going far enough. Somewhere in the middle is the White House and Commander in Chief.

This hour, On Point: A special prosecutor, rule of law, and torture.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jacki Lyden, guest host

Guests:

Mark Mazzetti, national security correspondent for The New York Times. He has covered the Obama administration’s internal battle over investigating the CIA.

Mark Danner, professor of journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Rights and Journalism at Bard College. His articles in The New York Review of Books last April on the leaked Red Cross torture report triggered the disclosure of memos on prisoner abuse. He’s the author of “Torture and Truth: America, Abu Ghraib, and the War on Terror.” His new book, “Stripping Bare the Body: Politics, Violence, War,” will be published next month.

Reuel Marc Gerecht, former specialist at the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, where he focuses on terrorism and intelligence. He’s a contributing editor for The Weekly Standard, a correspondent for The Atlantic, and author of the books “Know Thine Enemy: A Spy’s Journey into Revolutionary Iran (1997) and “The Islamic Paradox: Shiite Clerics, Sunni Fundamentalists, and the Coming of Arab Democracy” (2004). His recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal was headlined “Interrogating the CIA.”

In a photo released by the semi-official Iranian Fars News Agency, an unidentified defendant speaks in a court room in Tehran, Iran, on Sunday, Aug. 16, 2009. On Sunday, Iran put 25 more activists and opposition supporters on trial for their alleged involvement in the post-election turmoil. (AP/Fars News Agency)

Post your comments below

The whole world was watching in June as giant crowds poured into the streets of Iran to protest what they cried was a blatantly stolen presidential election.

Then came crackdown in the streets — and worse for those swept up and imprisoned.

Tehran has been rocked by allegations of rape and torture — “Worse than Abu Ghraib,” has been the critique from within. By mass trials, with threats of more to come. And a boiling standoff among elites now about the way ahead for the Islamic Republic.

This hour, On Point: Looking through the crackdown in Iran.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Beirut, Lebanon, is Borzou Daragahi, Middle East correspondent and Beirut bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times.

From New York, we’re joined by Hooman Majd, author of “The Ayatollah Begs to Differ: The Paradox of Modern Iran” (2008). Born in Iran and educated in England and the U.S., his father was a diplomat under the shah and his grandfather was a prominent ayatollah. He reported from Iran in April for Newsweek and remains in contact with people in Iran. He has also written for GQ, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New York Observer, Salon, and the Huffington Post.

President Barack Obama listens as he is introduced before speaking at the Arizona State University commencement ceremony at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz., Wednesday, May 13, 2009. (AP)

Post your comments below

News popping on many fronts this week. In Afghanistan, a top U.S. commander is fired. In Tehran, journalist Roxanna Saberi is freed.

In Detroit, Chrysler announces it will close nearly 800 dealerships. In the future, we’re told, Medicare and Social Security will go broke sooner than we thought.

In Washington, President Obama reneges on releasing photos of detainee abuse. Nancy Pelosi says the CIA lied to her on torture. And the health care industry says it will cut its own costs, big time.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from Washington is Karen Tumulty, national political correspondent for Time magazine. She’s reported extensively on health care, and wrote this week about the way costs are driving the debate.  She also blogs at Time.com’s “Swampland.”

Also from Washington we’re joined by Gerald Seib, executive Washington editor and “Capital Journal” columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He’s co-author of “Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power.”

And from Hanover, N.H., is Jack Beatty, On Point news analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney appearing on the CBS News show "Face the Nation" on Sunday, May 10, 2009. (CBS/AP)

Post your comments below

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was the most bunkered leader of the George W. Bush era.

Now, out of office, he’s the most public. In attack mode. Going after the Obama administration on national security. Aggressively defending coercive interrogation. Insisting it wasn’t torture. Suggesting that if it was, it was necessary.

He told Face the Nation’s Bob Schieffer this past Sunday: “If I don’t speak out, then where do we find ourselves? Then the critics have free run, and there isn’t anybody there on the other side, to tell the truth.” You can almost hear the former vice president saying, “The truth? You can’t handle the truth!”

As Republicans work to find a post-Bush/Cheney public image, and Obama works to make a new way, Cheney’s out there fighting for his legacy and his view of the world.

This hour, On Point: Dick Cheney, out of office and on the warpath.

You can join the conversation. Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Washington we’re joined by Bart Gellman, diplomatic and Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Post. He is author of “Angler: The Dick Cheney Vice Presidency.”

Joining us from New York is Jane Mayer, staff writer for The New Yorker, where she writes on politics and the war on terror. She is author of “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.”

And from Great Falls, Va., we’re joined by Mona Charen. She’s a nationally syndicated columnist and author of “Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got it Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America First” and “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Harm Those They Claim to Help — and the Rest of Us.”

Gergen, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and advisor to four presidents, said he saw the need for a “thorough airing” on the torture issue – and potentially for more information and memos to be released. But he believed prosecution went too far.

In terms of actually going after people, I think we should be moderate in doing that. It does seem to me it was right…to say that CIA employees should not be prosecuted in any fashion. And I have serious, deep reservations about launching some sort of prosecutorial special investigative effort by the Justice Department about lawyers who rendered their opinions. We have not done that in the past. It is going to have a hugely chilling effect. And it will destroy any semblance of bipartisanship in Washington, if a new administration is seen to use prosecutorial powers to go after a preceding administration.

Calls for prosecution have been coming from many quarters, particularly from liberals (just today, see Paul Krugman of The New York Times and Glenn Greenwald of Salon; also hear law professor Jonathan Turley on our show Monday.) Though President Obama has said he ruled out prosecuting CIA officials, he said he was leaving it up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether or not to pursue higher-ranking Bush administration officials.

Gergen said that such a prosecution effort could spin out of control:

…We’re talking now about going after lawyers who rendered their legal judgments and talking about putting them in the dock as potential criminals. And by the way, are we then also going to go after the President and Vice President who signed off on this? And very importantly, are we going to go after the Congressional leaders who signed off on these procedures, some of whom are leading Democrats? And if we’re going to be fair about this…This path is going to take us where it leads. It leads to many, many different people. And do we really want to have now a whole set of criminal prosecutions in Washington over this issue or not? I think that’s very much what’s at stake here.

It remains unclear what Democratic lawmakers knew about the specifics of tough interrogation tactics such as waterboarding. Media reports have suggested some knew of the methods used. Former Florida Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat, said yesterday on On Point that he was not briefed on methods, despite his position as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2002 when the interrogration programs began.

President Barack Obama speaks at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va., Monday, April 20, 2009. (AP)

A gut check for America this week, as debate over torture burns up the air, partisan sparks fly, and the White House struggles to control the fire.

In Detroit, Chrysler prepares for bankruptcy. In Pakistan, the Taliban closes in on the capital — and alarms go off in Washington.

A green energy bill heats up on the Hill. A member of Congress is wiretapped – and the House Speaker knew.

Jobless claims are up — again. A Freddie Mac suicide. A Craigslist killer. And another Earth Day comes and goes.

This hour, On Point: Our weekly news roundtable goes behind the headlines.

You can join the conversation. What’s your take on the torture debate this week? Do you want investigations? Prosecutions? Or is it time to move on?

 Tell us what you think — here on this page, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

-Jane Clayson, guest host

Guests:

David Gergen, Director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and CNN commentator. He served as a presidential advisor in the administrations of Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton.

Andrea Seabrook, congressional reporter for National Public Radio.

Jack Beatty, On Point News analyst and senior editor at The Atlantic Monthly.

Graham said those allegations that he knew about the rough tactics by the CIA were false, and he suggested it may be appropriate for a grand jury to look into the program.

“Speaking for myself as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from mid-2001 to the end of 2002, I was not briefed on these interrogation techniques,” he said.

He continued:

“…[I] am frankly very frustrated that there are these allegations made that everybody knew about it. I think the policy of the Bush administration was to try to bring as many people into the net when they were going to engage in some questionable activity in order to give them cover. In this case, I was not in the net.”

On the question of whether he favors prosecution of Bush administration officials responsible for the interrogation policies, Graham said that should be decided by the judicial branch, with a jury making the final call on whether to prosecute. He said it was appropriate to let judicial institutions weigh the evidence.

“I think they will serve us well in this instance,” he said.

The White House believes it does make a difference. On ABC’s “This Week,” Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, defended the administration’s decision to release the so-called torture memos along these lines. He said the information was already in circulation, and cited by name The New York Review of Books. Emanuel was referring to, among other things, Mark Danner’s new article.

In fact, if you were looking for chapter and verse on the torture question prior to Obama’s moves last week, you could go straight to The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, who has published some of the facts now retroactively confirmed and supplemented by the government memos. Her book, “The Dark Side,” is a scathing indictment of the whole “war on terror” legal apparatus.

By the way, one of the legal architects of the early “war on terror”  interrogation techniques is John Yoo, who has appeared on On Point. He told Tom Ashbrook, “The original vision of the US Constitution is very flexible in wartime.” And he defended his gloves-off legal views: “The way we approach war has to change because the nature of war is new.”

Army Military Police escort a detainee to his cell in Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on Jan. 11, 2002. (AP)

Post your comments below

It was seven years ago this month that the first prisoners arrived at Guantanamo Bay.

The images are seared in the mind of the world, from the earliest days of George W. Bush’s war on terror. Hooded prisoners, black goggles, orange jump suits, in chains, in chain-link cages at Guantanamo.

The White House called them the “worst of the worst.” And some were. But most, apparently, were not. Hundreds have been released. Human rights and torture accusations swirled.

Today, word is coming from Barack Obama’s administration that the detention camp at Guantanamo — “Gitmo” — will be closed, shut down, along with a shadowy global network of CIA secret prisons. Also to be ended: the interrogation methods that brought charges of torture.

Gitmo became a symbol of American rage. Closing it is complicated. This hour, On Point: Shutting down Guantanamo.

You can join the conversation. Is this a weight off your shoulders? A step toward getting right with the world? With the law? Is it a danger? A worry? Share your thoughts.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

From Charlottesville, Virginia, we’re joined by Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor and legal analyst for Slate.

And from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, we’re joined by Carol Rosenberg, reporter for the Miami Herald covering Guantanamo and Camp X-Ray. She reports today on Obama’s move to close Guantanamo.

From Washington, we’re joined by Major David Frakt, Air Force Reserves judge advocate and defense counsel in the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions. He is representing Guantanamo detainees Mohamed Jawad and Ali al Bahlul. He is also Director of the Criminal Law Practice Center and professor of law at Western State University.

Joining us from New York is Matthew Waxman, professor of law at Columbia University. He held several positions in the Bush administration, including deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, special assistant to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, director for contingency planning & international justice at the National Security Council, and principal deputy director of policy planning at the State Department.

President Bush speaks at the White House prior to signing the Military Commissions Act of 2006. From left are Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the president, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Vice President Dick Cheney. (AP)

Former congressman and White House chief of staff Leon Panetta has been tapped by Barack Obama to be the next head of the CIA.

But a loud chorus is still looking back at what happened in the Bush administration — and charging that torture, eavesdropping, and more, demand an accounting: legal accountability, criminal charges that could go as high as Vice President Cheney — and maybe the president.

Critics call it a smear and a partisan crusade. Supporters call it a vital defense of the constitution.

It is a loaded subject. This hour, On Point: We listen to the case for prosecution — and the case against it.

You can join the conversation. Where are you on this? Was it all just part of the nasty reality of unorthodox war? Or were actual crimes committed in your name? Do you want to see Rumsfeld, Cheney, Feith, Addington, maybe even George Bush, sitting one day in a courtroom? In the dock? Or would that just tear the country apart?

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Joining us from New York is Scott Horton, a contributing editor at Harper’s Magazine and a distinguished visiting professor at Hofstra Law School. His article “Justice after Bush: Prosecuting an Outlaw Administration” appeared in the December issue of Harper’s.

Also from New York, we’re joined by Andrew McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor and a regular contributor to National Review. His article on the question of Bush administration prosecutions, “The Myth of Bush’s Torture Regime,” appeared in December. As Assistant United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, he led the prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case.

And from Washington, we’re joined by Charles Homans, an editor at The Washington Monthly. His article on this subject, “Last Secrets of the Bush Administration: How to find out what we still don’t know,” appeared in the November-December issue.

Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General looked like a sure thing. Now, with the legal definition of torture in the balance, Democrats aren’t so sure.

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Charlie Savage, reporter for The Boston Globe, is author of “Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy.”

John McGinnis, professor at Northwestern University School of Law and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

Laurence Tribe, professor at Harvard Law School.