Obama's Balance on CIA and Torture

I agree with this Washington Post editorial. If you care to read the memos, they are here.

The pair of decisions -- one essentially forgiving government agents who may have committed heinous acts they were told were legal, the other signaling that such acts must never again be condoned by the United States -- struck exactly the right balance.
The administration announced that it would not seek to press criminal charges against CIA operatives who participated in enhanced interrogations of terrorism suspects during the Bush administration. "It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement.

At the same time, the Justice Department released and repudiated four more Bush-era memos from the Office of Legal Counsel that provided the legal justification for such extreme interrogations. An Aug. 1, 2002, OLC memo endorsed the legality of 10 techniques the CIA considered for use against al-Qaeda leader Abu Zubaida. Some techniques were mild, such as holding the detainee's face or grasping him by the lapels to grab his attention. Others were despicable, such as waterboarding, in which water is poured over a prisoner's cloth-covered face to simulate drowning, or sleep deprivation for up to 11 days. Eleven days! A May 10, 2005, memo gave the legal thumbs up to confining a detainee in a cramped, dark box for up to eight hours at a time and up to 18 hours a day. Some techniques were simply bizarre, such as placing a caterpillar into a confined box holding Mr. Zubaida -- who was believed to be afraid of insects -- as long as the insect did not sting and Mr. Zubaida was not led to believe that it was capable of stinging.

CIA Warns Of Attacks on U.S. Via Britain

Telegraph: American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain.
They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil.
Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to monitor the 2,000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British security service.
A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering four out of 10 CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the US are now conducted against targets in Britain.