ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero has called on President Barack Obama to issue pardons to former President George W. Bush and other senior officials involved in so-called "torture" — enhanced interrogation techniques used against three of the most senior al-Qaida terrorists.
In a New York Times op-ed, Romero praised Obama for disavowing torture and instructing his Justice Department to withdraw the memorandums which provided legal backing for these interrogation methods.
But he lamented that neither Obama nor the Justice Department "has shown any appetite for holding anyone accountable. When the department did conduct an investigation, it appeared not to have interviewed any of the prisoners who were tortured. And it repeatedly abused the 'state secrets' privilege to derail cases brought by prisoners — including Americans who were tortured as ‘enemy combatants,'" Romero writes.
The ACLU leader adds that the administration "could still take measures to hold
accountable the officials who authorized torture."
According to Romero, the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report by Sen. Dianne Feinstein and other committee Democrats "provides a blueprint for criminal investigations, even if that's not what the intelligence committee set out to do."
But Obama opposes prosecution because of the political fallout, and will not prosecute those involved. So Romero suggests that the president pardon former CIA chief George J. Tenet "for authorizing torture at the C.I.A.'s black sites overseas," former Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld "for authorizing the use of torture at the Guantánamo Bay prison," senior officials David S. Addington, John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee "for crafting the legal cover for torture, and George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for overseeing it all."
Likening the decision to (among others) those of President Lincoln to pardon Confederate soldiers after the Civil War, Romero concludes that while "granting pardons to torturers still makes my stomach turn," it would establish that "the individuals who authorized and committed torture were indeed criminals, and that future architects and perpetrators of torture should beware."