Grand Jury Probes CIA in Abu Ghraib's 'Iceman' Killing

Steve Stormoen supervised 'ghosting' program

(NEWSER) - A federal investigation into a potential war crime committed at Abu Ghraib is closing in on the man who ran the CIA’s “ghosting” program. In the hush-hush program headed up by now-retired agent Steve Stormoen, the CIA interrogated prisoners without ever having noted their presence in Army logs, the AP reports. That’s illegal under the laws of war—which say that the military must lead all interrogations—and the CIA itself officially prohibited ghosting. More»

Holder orders pair of inquiries but drops nearly 100 others

(NEWSER) - The is-it-torture debate is probably going to rev up again: The Justice Department says it will launch criminal inquiries into the deaths of two detainees in US custody in 2002 and 2003, reports the Washington Post . Eric Holder gave the green light on the recommendation of federal prosecutor John Durham, who has been looking into CIA interrogations for two years now. Durham, however, said no charges were warranted in 99 other cases. More»

Report from ethics groups says docs in interrogation program guilty of war crimes

(NEWSER) - CIA doctors who monitored the agency's "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects may be guilty of war crimes linked to human experimentation, according to a new report from a medical ethics group. The report from Physicians for Human Rights accuses the doctors and psychologists of being involved at every stage of the interrogation, the Guardian reports. It labels their recording of information on the effectiveness of the techniques as human experimentation, outlawed after the prosecution of Nazi doctors at Nuremberg. More»

(NEWSER) - Leon Panetta couldn't stop the Justice Department's widening inquiry into the CIA's interrogation policies, but the agency's director can make sure his employees don't go broke paying legal fees. The agency will see to it that case officers caught up in the investigation have representation, the Washington Post reports. Most "don't have much money and could go into debt to hire a good lawyer," says one attorney. More»

(NEWSER) - AG Eric Holder today named a special prosecutor to investigate allegations of torture against CIA operatives who interrogated terror suspects during the Bush administration, the Washington Post reports. John Durham, who is currently probing the destruction of interrogation tapes, will look into fewer than 12 cases detailed in a CIA report released today and determine if a full-scale investigation is warranted. The Bush-era Justice Department investigated and dismissed the cases. More»