The New AG Gets a Test
Despite his clear declaration during his confirmation hearing that "waterboarding" is torture, new Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has seemed reluctant to order criminal probes into alleged rough treatment of detainees during the Bush presidency. His rationale: CIA interrogators who used the simulated drowning technique believed the Justice Department had given them the green light.
But one particular case could leave Holder with little choice: that of Mohammad al-Qatani, a Guantánamo detainee and alleged 9/11 conspirator who was in U.S. military—not CIA—custody. Last month, Susan Crawford, the convening authority for the U.S. military commissions, told The Washington Post that she refused to bring charges against Qatani because his interrogations "met the legal definition of torture." (Crawford, who last week also withdrew charges against accused USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, did not respond to requests for comment. A Pentagon official said her comments about Qatani were her "opinion.") According to a senior Justice Department official, who asked not to be identified in order to speak candidly, Holder believes Crawford's comments can't be ignored and he's "wrestling" with what to do about it. One option, the source said: dispatch FBI agents to grill Crawford.
Government lawyers, though, are worried about how such a move would affect the more sweeping review of Gitmo detainees ordered by President Obama, which Holder will oversee. More than 30 "high value" detainees at Gitmo were subjected to similar "enhanced" interrogation techniques—such as cold temperatures and sleep deprivation—as Qatani. A criminal probe of Qatani's treatment could complicate efforts to bring the others to trial. In the meantime, Holder has directed aides to begin the process of releasing a trove of secret Justice memos regarding Bush interrogation policies. The memos, long sought by Congress, could be disclosed within "weeks," said the Justice official. "The American public deserves to know what was done in their name."
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Michael Isikoff has been an award-winning investigative correspondent for Newsweek since 2004. He has written extensively on the U.S. government's war on terrorism, the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, presidential politics and other national issues. His book, "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," co-written with David Corn, was an instant New York Times best-seller when it was published in September, 2006. The book was hailed by the New York Times Book Review as "fascinating reading" and "the most comprehensive account of the White House's political machinations" in the run up to the war in Iraq. Since January 2009, Isikoff has been an MSNBC contributor, making regular appearances on the Rachel Maddow Show and Hardball w/ Chris Matthews.
Ever since the events of September 11, Isikoff has broken repeated stories about the U.S. government's war on terror and won numerous journalism awards. His blog "DeClassified: Investigative Reporting in Real Time," which appears regularly on Newsweek's Web site and is written with MarkHosenball, has become a must-read for senior U.S. intelligence officials. Isikoff and Hosenball won the 2005 award from the Society of Professional Journalists for best investigative reporting online.
Isikoff's June 2002 Newsweek cover story on U.S. intelligence failures that preceded the 9-11 terror attacks, along with a series of related articles, was honored with the Investigative Reporters and Editors top prize for investigative reporting in magazine journalism. He was honored, along with a team of Newsweek reporters, by the Society of Professional Journalists for coverage of the Abu Ghraib scandal. For that coverage, Isikoff obtained exclusive internal White House, Justice Department and State Department memos showing how decisions made at the highest levels of the Bush administration led to abuses in the interrogation of terror suspects. Isikoff was also part of a reporting team that earned Newsweek the National Magazine Award for General Excellence in 2002, the highest award in magazine journalism, for their coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.
Isikoff's exclusive reporting on the Monica Lewinsky scandal gained him national attention in 1998, including profiles in The New York Times and The Washington Post and a guest appearance on "Late Show with David Letterman." His coverage of the events that lead to President Bill Clinton's impeachment earned Newsweek the prestigious National Magazine Award in the Reporting category in 1999. Isikoff's reporting also won the National Headliner Award, the Edgar A. Poe Award presented by the White House Correspondents Association and the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize for Reporting on the Presidency. In 2001, Isikoff was named on a list of "most influential journalists" in the nation's capital by Washingtonian magazine.
Isikoff is the author of "Uncovering Clinton: A Reporter's Story," a book that chronicled his own reporting of the Lewinsky story and was hailed by a critic for The Washington Post-Los Angeles Times news service as "the absolutely essential narrative of the scandal with revelations that no one would have thought possible." The book, also a New York Times bestseller, was named Best Non-Fiction Book of 1999 by the Book of the Month Club.
Isikoff came to Newsweek from The Washington Post, where he had been a reporter since September 1981. There he covered the Justice Department and the Persian Gulf War, reported on international drug operations in Latin America and worked on the Post's financial news desk. Isikoff graduated from Washington University with a B.A. in 1974 and received a Masters in Journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism in 1976.
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