Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22161.html
By GLENN THRUSH | 5/6/09 4:18 AM EDT

Obama administration officials are backing away from prosecuting Bush administration officials over waterboarding — but Sen. Chris Dodd is rushing headlong in the other direction, citing his father’s experiences as a Nuremberg war crimes prosecutor.


The embattled Connecticut Democrat, speaking to home-state bloggers over the weekend, said the White House’s release of the so-called torture memos creates a moral imperative for a congressional investigation — or a criminal probe that could ensnare former Vice President Dick Cheney’s staff.

When a blogger asked Dodd about the memos, he took a swipe at Obama’s staff for declassifying the documents without a follow-up plan for dealing with the fallout.

“I don’t know who the genius was in the room that night,” quipped Dodd, whose stance is sure to endear him to his party’s left wing — which he’ll need to beat back a tough challenge from former Republican Rep. Rob Simmons.

Dodd said he supported Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy’s plan to create a “truth commission.”

“Even these thugs got a lawyer; even these thugs got a trial,” he said of the Nazi defendants at Nuremberg, adding: ”I know a lot of people don’t want to go back — and the president said to look [ahead]. ... But in a sense, not to prosecute people or pursue them when these acts have occurred is ... to invite it again in some future administration.”

When a questioner asked if such a probe should go “as high as Cheney’s office,” Dodd interrupted to say, “You gotta go where you gotta go.”

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Civil Rights Subcommittee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) have asked Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the possible authorization of torture.

But late Tuesday, The New York Times reported that an internal Justice Department inquiry found Bush administration lawyers who OK’d harsh interrogations were guilty of lapses in judgment but committed no crimes warranting prosecution.


Source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22161.html