Politics at Justice

Putting politics before common sense, the U.S. Justice Department has set its sights on the Central Intelligence Agency.

And before this is over, the relationship between the two agencies could disintegrate. That won't be good for either, and it will be positively dreadful for the country. We count on these agencies to work hand-in-glove to fight terror, not fight each other.

Yet, last week, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder named a special prosecutor to investigate about a dozen allegations of CIA prisoner abuse after the Justice Department's Office of Personal Responsibility — which serves as the department's watchdog — recommended considering prosecution of CIA employees or contractors for interrogations in Iraq and Afghanistan that allegedly went beyond approved limits. The investigation will be lead by career federal prosecutor John Durham.

Holder is said to be troubled by allegations that the CIA mistreated prisoners, including how interrogators in 2002 supposedly threatened al-Qaida prisoner Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri with a gun and an electric drill. Al-Nashiri is accused of plotting the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer Cole, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead. Details of his alleged treatment surfaced after a federal judge ordered the release of a redacted version of a report by the CIA's inspector general.

To prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future, the administration announced last week that the CIA would no longer interrogate terror suspects.

This chore will now be carried out by a newly convened group of interrogators overseen by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

That's fine. That's an example of looking forward, which is what President Obama has said he wants to do. It might make sense to let professional law enforcement officers handle future interrogation of terrorism suspects.

More troubling is the decision to investigate abuse allegations. That seems tantamount to doing the one thing that Obama said he wouldn't do: look backward. The president said this was a time for "reflection, not retribution." This sounds like retribution.

The American people don't want any part of that sort of thing. Last spring, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found that 57 percent of respondents didn't want Congress to investigate former Bush officials who authorized harsh interrogation procedures. Only 42 percent felt otherwise.

Americans don't like the idea of one administration investigating another, especially when the people likely to bear the brunt are low-level agents who acted in good faith with only one motivation: to spare American lives.

We expect laws to be followed, and we don't want to see terror suspects mistreated. But we have deep reservations about how the Obama administration plans to drive home that point. The idea is to solve a problem, not create new ones. An investigation like this only makes matters worse.

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