By Jason Leopold

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Wednesday he would back efforts by his Democratic colleagues to investigate the Bush administration’s torture policies to determine whether any officials violated federal and international torture laws.

Reid’s comments were made at the Senate Democratic Progressive Media Summit in response to questions about holding the Bush administration accountable for its interrogation practices that legal experts and human rights groups have said constitute war crimes.

In interviews with several media outlets over the past month, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney both said they personally authorized interrogators to waterboard alleged high-level terrorist detainees and they did so because they received legal authorization from Justice Department attorneys. Waterboarding, a drowning technique, has been regarded as torture since the Spanish Inquisition.

Additionally, retired Judge Susan Crawford, the head of military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, told the Washington Post in an interview that she would not permit an alleged high-level al-Qaeda detainee to be prosecuted because the evidence against him was obtained through torture.

“We tortured [Mohammed al-] Qahtani,” said Crawford, who was appointed convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

On Wednesday, President Barack Obama called for a 120-day suspension of war crimes trials at Guantanamo until he and his advisers have had a chance to review the cases and the strategy used to prosecute terrorists. In addition, Obama’s staff circulated Wednesday a draft executive order calling for the closure of Guantanamo within a year. 

Disclosures by Bush and Cheney that they authorized waterboarding and Crawford’s statement that a detainee met the legal definition of torture have fueled calls for criminal investigations.

Reid said Wednesday he would provide Senate Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin, who was also in attendance at the media summit, with funding and staff so he could continue probing the Bush administration’s torture policies that were undertaken by the Defense Department.

Levin said “there needs to be, I believe, an accounting of torture in this country” and that his committee will “continue to try and complete this investigation at least on the [Department of Defense] side.”
Last month, Levin’s committee released an unclassified executive summary of a report that traced the U.S. abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections.

The Senate Armed Services Committee’s report said Bush’s memo opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,” which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior officials.

Levin said he expects to release the full report of his 18-month investigation in about two or three weeks.

Levin also said he has encouraged Attorney General designate Eric Holder “that he select some people or hire an outside person whose got real credibility, perhaps a retired federal judge, to take all of the available information, and there’s reams of it” and launch a separate probe into torture practices that took place while Bush was in office.

“The previous administration acknowledges that it engaged in waterboarding,” Levin said. “The former vice president of the United States acknowledges that they engaged in torture. [Cheney] says waterboarding is not torture. He’s wrong. This administration and Eric Holder has said [waterboarding is torture].”

Moreover, Levin added that the Senate Intelligence Committee should hold similar hearings and investigations into torture as implemented by the CIA.

Over the past two weeks, the Democratic leadership in both Houses have said there needs to be an investigation into the Bush administration’s most controversial policies-a move that comes as somewhat of a surprise to progressives who wrote off the leadership long ago for abandoning calls to hold impeachment hearings against Bush.

Last Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who famously remarked in 2006 after Democrats won control of both Houses of Congress that “impeachment is off the table” indicated during an interview with Fox News she would support legislation proposed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers to create a blue-ribbon panel of outside experts to probe the “broad range” of policies pursued by the Bush administration “under claims of unreviewable war powers.”

But Pelosi did not indicate whether she would support Conyers’ efforts to investigate the Bush administration’s torture and rendition policies. Such an investigation could prove to be an embarrassment for the Speaker and other Democratic leaders who were briefed by the CIA about the harsh interrogation techniques–including waterboarding–used against detainees in the early days of the program, yet did nothing to stop it from continuing.

In her interview with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, Pelosi spoke specifically about supporting a probe into the politicization at the Justice Department.

When told by Fox News’ Chris Wallace that President Barack Obama has signaled an unwillingness to support efforts to investigate the Bush administration, Pelosi countered, saying, “I think that we have to learn from the past, and we cannot let the politicizing of the – for example, the Justice Department, to go unreviewed. Past is prologue. We learn from it. And my views on the subject – I don’t think that Mr. Obama and Mr. Conyers are that far apart.”

Pelosi said issues related to the politicization of the Justice Department would require Congress to “look at each item and see what is a violation of the law, and do we even have a right to ignore it.”

Conyers published a 487-page report entitled “Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush” that calls for the creation of a blue-ribbon panel and independent criminal probes into the Bush administration’s policies enacted in the global war on terror.’

One of the report’s 47 recommendations requests that Attorney General designate Holder “appoint a Special Counsel or expand the scope of the present investigation into CIA tape destruction to determine whether there were criminal violations committed pursuant to Bush Administration policies that were undertaken under unreviewable war powers, including enhanced interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and warrantless domestic surveillance.”

U.S. Attorney John Durham was appointed by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey last year as special counsel to investigate whether the destruction of CIA videotapes that depicted interrogators waterboarding alleged terrorist detainees violated any laws. Durham was not given the authority to probe whether the interrogation techniques used violated anti-torture laws.

“At present, the Attorney General has agreed only to appoint a special U.S. Attorney to determine whether the destruction of videotapes depicting the waterboarding of a detainee constituted violations of federal law. Despite requests from Congress, that prosecutor has not been asked to investigate whether the underlying conduct being depicted – the waterboarding itself or other harsh interrogation techniques used by the military or the CIA – violated the law…appointment of a special counsel would be in the public interest (e.g., it would help dispel a cloud of doubt over our law enforcement system).”

Conyers said Congress should also consider “extending the statute of limitations for potential violations of the torture statute, war crimes statute, laws prohibiting warrantless domestic surveillance, or for crimes committed against persons in United States military custody or CIA custody to ten years.”

“This criminal investigation should, for the first time, ascertain and critically examine the facts to determine whether federal criminal laws were violated,” Conyers report says. “It may be appropriate for certain aspects of the factual investigation by the prosecutor to await pertinent reports by the Inspectors General or information developed by any Blue Ribbon Commission or Select Committee. As part of this process, the incoming Administration should provide all relevant information and all necessary resources to outstanding Justice Department investigations, including with respect to the U.S. Attorney removals, the politicization of the Civil Rights Division, and allegations of selective prosecution.”

Meanwhile, Republicans have grown increasingly worried that Holder will launch a criminal investigation into Bush’s interrogation policies if he is confirmed and they have delayed a vote on his nomination until Holder responds to questions about whether he intends to investigate and/or prosecute Bush administration officials.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he wants to ask Holder whether he intends to investigate the Bush administration and intelligence officials for torture.

During his confirmation hearing last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee Holder said, “waterboarding was torture.”

Cornyn said Holder’s view means there is a possibility investigations might be on the horizon.

“Part of my concern, frankly, relates to some of his statements at the hearing in regard to torture and what his intentions are with regard to intelligence personnel who were operating in good faith based upon their understanding of what the law was,” Cornyn said Wednesday.

Constitutional law experts, however, said there is no debate about whether war crimes were committed by the Bush administration.

In an interview Monday with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown University, said Obama’s credibility could take a serious hit “if the first act he commits as President is to walk away from confirmed war crimes.”

“These are war crimes,” Turley said. “These are special categories. The downside to all the [inauguration] pageantry — and it is certainly well-deserved — is that it’s important for people who lift their hand in front of that building to understand the difference between the man and the mandate. And the mandate here, as far as I understood it, is that we were going to have a true change, where people would be held accountable. And all this talk about civility makes it sound like it’s just simply uncivil to investigate people for war crimes.

“All they have to do is say, “we’re going to allow the law to be enforced.” That’s not a very difficult thing to say. But it’s going to be inconvenient. But principles are always inconvenient. It’s never a good time for principle.”

Three DOJ attorneys said in an interview with me over the past week that “serious thought” is being given to Conyers’ recommendations.