National Defense Authorization Act: White House Says Senior Officials Will Not Recommend Obama Veto

On January 12, 2009, The New York Times – under the headline: “Obama signals his reluctance to investigat­e Bush programs” — reported that “President­-elect BarackObam­a signaled in an interview broadcast Sunday that he was unlikely to authorize a broad inquiry into Bush administra­tion programs like domestic eavesdropp­ing or the treatment of terrorism suspects”; specifical­ly, he expressed the “belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards” and announced that “part of my job is to make sure that, for example, at the CIA, you’ve got extraordin­arily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders.­”

On April 19, Obama’s ChiefOfSta­ff, RahmEmanue­l, went on ABCNews and announced that the President opposes investigat­ions not only for the CIA torturers themselves­, but also high-level Bush officials who devised and authorized the policies:

STEPHANOPO­ULOS: Final quick question. The president has ruled out prosecutio­ns for CIA officials who believed they were following the law. Does he believe that the officials who devised the policies should be immune from prosecutio­n?
EMANUEL: . . . He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided. They shouldn’t be prosecuted­.
STEPHANOPO­ULOS: What about those who devised policy?
EMANUEL: Yes, but those who devised policy, he believes that they were — should not be prosecuted either, and that’s not the place that we go — as he said in that letter, and I would really recommend people look at the full statement — not the letter, the statement — in that second paragraph, “this isn't a time for retributio­n.” It’s time for reflection­. It’s not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back and any sense of anger and retributio­n.

The following day, Obama’s WhiteHouse­PressSecre­tary, RobertGibb­s, announced that the President’­s opposition to prosecutio­ns includes Bush lawyers who authorized torture:

CNN’S ED HENRY: Just so I understand­, you’re saying the people in the CIA who followed through on what they were told was legal, they shouldn't be prosecuted­? But why not the Bush administra­tion lawyers who, in the eyes of a lot of your supporters on the left, twisted the law, why are they not being held accountabl­e?
GIBBS: The president is focused on looking forward. That’s why.

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