Democratic Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy praised Holder’s decision but renewed his call for a nonpartisan commission to look into “what happened and why,” including a look at the Bush White House.
The CIA, meanwhile, denounced an ABC News report that agency Director Leon Panetta engaged in a “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House when he learned of the Justice Department’s plans as “wrong, inaccurate, bogus and false.”
The new team of terror interrogators will be based at the FBI but will be overseen by the National Security Council out of the White House.
The move, recommended by an inter-agency task force set up by Obama, solidifies his bid to frame new legal guidelines for interrogating, detaining and trying terror suspects after the planned closure of Guantanamo Bay.
The team will follow interrogation guidelines based on the Army Field Manual, unlike many methods used by Bush’s administration.
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