The Obama team has indicated that it does not want to prosecute intelligence officers or former administration officials for their conduct during the Bush years.
Dawn Johnsen, the incoming head of the Office of Legal Council, has called for a Truth Commission-esque accounting of everything that's gone on.
Obama's nominee for Attorney General, Eric Holder, pointedly would not tell Senators whether he would prosecute intelligence officers; this drew the ire of Sen. John Cornyn, who, as a former Texas Supreme Court judge, ought to be wary of prosecutors who DO announce their intention to prosecute anyone before they have all the facts.
The continium is long: the administration could do nothing and say nothing and let things be, hashing out their differences in private as all the facts come to light.
Or -- they could order the DoJ to investigate the programs and prosecute however many lawbreakers come to light.
Or -- they could do something in the middle -- a Truth Commission -- although, as I've argued, it might be more disruptive than a series of prosecutions.
The Intelligence and Judiciary Committees in the Senate will have intellectual jurisdiction over how the Obama administration makes these choices.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is a member of both committees. On Wednesday, he gave a little-noticed floor speech entitled "As We Go Forward, We Must Also Look Back." The message:
As the President looks forward and charts a new course, must someone not also look back, to take an accounting of where we are, what was done, and what must now be repaired.
Our new President has said, "America needs to look forward." I agree.
Our new Attorney-General designate has said, we should not criminalize policy differences. I agree.
And I hope we can all agree that summoning young sacrificial lambs to prosecute, as we did after the Abu Ghraib disaster, would be reprehensible.
But consider the pervasive, deliberate, and systematic damage the Bush Administration did to America, to her finest traditions and institutions, to her reputation and integrity.
I evaluate that damage in history's light.
....
[W]hen you have pervasive infiltration into all the halls of government - judicial, legislative, and executive - of the most ignoble forms of influence; when you see systematic dismantling of historic processes and traditions of government that are the safeguards of our democracy; and when you have a bodyguard of lies, jargon, and propaganda emitted to fool and beguile the American people...
Well, something very serious in the history of our republic has gone wrong, something that dims the light of progress for all humanity.
As we look forward, as we begin the task of rebuilding this nation, we have an abiding duty to determine how great the damage is. I say this in no spirit of vindictiveness or revenge. I say it because the thing that was sullied is so, so precious; and I say it because the past bears upon the future. If people have been planted in government in violation of our civil service laws to serve their party and their ideology instead of serving the public, the past will bear upon the future. If procedures and institutions of government have been corrupted and are not put right, that past will assuredly bear on the future. In an ongoing enterprise like government, the door cannot be so conveniently closed on the closets of the past. The past always bears on the future.
Does this call for a little sunshine, a call to "show where the tunnels were bored, when the truth was subordinated; what institutes were subverted" mean that Whitehouse supports an investigation, an accounting, a Truth Commission, or something else?
A spokesperson said that his words speak for himself, but that Whitehouse does not consider the past "over." Indeed, ongoing investigations remain by several inspectors general; those reports might increase the pressure for Congress and the White House to open the books.
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