Message to Attorney General:To Restore U.S. Credibility, Hold Officials Who Authorized Torture Accountable



Interview with Christopher H. Pyle, professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, conducted by Scott Harris

According to news reports, President Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder is considering the appointment of a criminal prosecutor to investigate Bush administration officials who authorized the torture and abuse of U.S.-held detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and secret CIA jails.

A growing body of evidence exposing American torture includes the Obama administration's release of memos written by Bush administration lawyers authorizing torture, and a 2007 International Committee of the Red Cross confidential report documenting interrogation abuse at U.S. CIA-run secret prisons. The report condemned America's treatment of 14 "high-value" terrorist suspect detainees held at secret, "black sites," as torture and inhuman, violating U.S. and international law.

Despite President Obama's inclination to look forward rather than backward with regard to the Bush administration's torture program, many human rights groups support an investigation and prosecution of government officials who were complicit in ordering torture of American-held prisoners. Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said, "The United States can't truly claim to have repudiated these egregious human rights violations unless it returns to the day when it treated them as crimes rather than as policy options."

Between the Lines' Scott Harris spoke with Christopher H. Pyle, professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College and a former U.S. Army Intelligence officer that helped expose and end the U.S. military's domestic surveillance program in 1970. Pyle, author of a new book titled, "Getting Away with Torture: Secret Government, War Crimes and The Rule of Law," discusses the choices facing Attorney General Holder and the nation on prosecuting torture.

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