Leon Panetta
The good news:
The CIA is decommissioning the secret overseas prisons where top al Qaida suspects were subjected to interrogation methods, including simulated drowning, that Attorney General Eric Holder, allied governments, the Red Cross and numerous other experts consider torture, the agency said Thursday.
In an e-mail to the agency’s work force outlining current interrogation and detention policies, CIA Director Leon Panetta also announced that agreements with the private security firms guarding the so-called black sites will be “promptly terminated,” and contractors no longer will be used to conduct interrogations.
The bad news:
Panetta, however, said that CIA officers who were involved in interrogations using “enhanced” methods authorized by the Justice Department during the Bush administration “should not be investigated, let alone punished” [bold added].
The message: We’re going to curb our most abhorrent behaviors, but we’re going to give the Bush administration a pass on its illegal actions.
Translation of the message: The law does not apply to the powerful.