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Marco Werman: The so-called Arab Spring has seen the toppling of dictators in Tunisia, Egypt and now, Libya.  The US has by in large hailed the popular uprisings in those countries and in the Middle East.  But the former head of the CIA unit in charge of pursuing Osama bin laden says the Arab Spring has created an intelligence disaster for the US. Michael Scheuer is at home in northern Virginia.  So, Mr. Scheuer, how much intelligence had Libya under Gaddafi for example, provided the US?  Are we really gonna be that worse off intelligence-wise without Gaddafi than with him?

Michael Scheuer: Well, I think that if you look at the cables that have been published in the Wikileaks series, Gaddafi was very important intelligence service…in terms of giving us information about al-Qaeda.  And I remember when I was running operations against bin Laden, certainly one of the most active Arab services in the field working against al-Qaeda, because there was such a high number of Libyans in it, was Gaddafi’s service. We didn’t have diplomatic relations with Libya at the time, but certainly Gaddafi’s intelligence service was very much active in working against al-Qaeda.

Werman: So if you look across north Africa where these uprisings occurred and were successful — Libya, Egypt, Tunisia — how did intelligence dry up there since the beginning of the Arab Spring?

Scheuer: Well, you know, American foreign policy in the Middle East along with most of our allies, Britain and France, the whole strategy has been based on the maintenance of tyranny.  And we worked with various governments in order to maintain adequate supplies of oil at a reasonable price to protect the Israelis to try and keep some cooperative government on Israel’s borders. As that came down of course, the nature of those governments changed.  We can see it in Egypt right now letting more and more stuff go through the Gaza border to help the Palestinians attack Israel. So, what happened is our relationships with intelligence services across north Africa have changed dramatically in the sense that many of the people we dealt with have been fired.  Many have fled.  And the new people coming in are certainly not as warmly attached to the United States as their predecessors.  And the result is, at least in terms of north Africa, and probaby Yemen, and certainly in Pakistan, is that much of the work against al-Qaeda and its allies, and the Islamist movement as a whole, that was being done by the tyrants or the tyrants’ radical government, now is not being done on our behalf anymore.

Werman: Well, if you’re saying that dictatorships are good for intelligence, does that necessarily mean that democracies are going to be bad for intelligence?

Scheuer: Well, there’s no democracy coming, sir, you know that’s been portrayed by the media from extrapolating from a few folks who are smart enough to say democracy to attract western air power.  And the few people who can use Twitter and Facebook are extrapolated to represent 85 million devout Muslims in Egypt. And I’m not saying dictatorships were good for the United States.  I’m saying that’s the horse we bet on and now that it’s gone, whatever follows in its wake is going to be less friendly toward the United States, less competent, and it’s just a zero-sum game.  What we lose from the former government we have to do ourselves.

Werman: Why are so determined that there won’t be any democracy in north Africa?  I mean what leads you to believe this drought in intelligence isn’t just a matter of disorganization in these new governments?  I mean in some cases there are no governments right now.

Scheuer: The question is less what kind of government evolves in these countries than what kind of government will be acceptable to kind of secular imperialists, like Cameron and Sarkozy, and especially Mrs. Clinton, and Obama…what will they accept?  If they will accept some kind of an Islamist government that has a semblance of representation, maybe it will be fine.  But if they’re expecting anything that looks like our government then we’ll be back at war with another bunch of Arab governments.

Werman: What advice would you give the White House, Michael Scheuer, on how to get along with these governments if that’s indeed what transpires in these countries?

Scheuer: Yeah, we have to get along with governments.  You know, that’s an issue that seems to be pretty apparent to everyone.  My advice is to tell the American people the truth and that’s we’re at war with increasing numbers of Muslims and Islamists; not because of how we elect people, or freedom or women in the workplace, but because of the way we’ve intervened, our government has intervened in the Muslim world for the past 30-40 years.  And until people understand that we’re being attacked because of what the US government does, and not just because we’re Americans, we’re gonna be on the short end of the stick, sir.

Werman: Michael Scheuer is a 22 veteran of the CIA.  He ran the counterterrorist center’s Bin Laden unit in the late 1990s.  Mr. Scheuer, thank you very much for your time.

Scheuer: You’re welcome, sir, thank you.

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• BBC coverage
• FAQ Jet bomber case
• Best of BBC: “I boarded a plane with an aerosol can”

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  President Obama says systemic failures in the intelligence community led to the attempted downing of a Detroit-bound airliner.  And tomorrow the White House is expected to release new details about that foiled attack. It plans to put out an unclassified version of a report into intelligence failures. That report is expected to include recommendations on how to fix those problems.  The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

MATTHEW BELL: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs today sidestepped a question about what new details might come out of the review being released tomorrow. But he said the President has been clear about one thing; this review will not be a pretty picture. It’s about an intelligence failure.

ROBERT GIBBS: We understand that this was a systemic failure. We understand that information we had in our possession, information that likely could have prevented or disrupted the incident on the 25th of December from happening.

BELL: Most importantly, Gibbs said the President is looking at necessary steps to prevent something like this from happening again. Intelligence Expert James Carafano at the Conservative Heritage Foundation says the Administration is missing the point.  He says it’s a mistake to go about fixing the intelligence system by trying to prevent the most recent style of attack. Carafano compares it to France’s attempt to fortify its borders against a German invasion ahead of World War II.  The network of trenches and fortifications failed, because the Germans simply went around it.

JAMES CARAFANO: It’s kind of this Maginot Line approach that if we build this perfect system, we’ll never get attacked again.  Well, if we build a perfect system, the day after it’s built it’s not going to be perfect any more.

BELL: Carafano says the key to success in the intelligence business is to constantly evolve and stay at least one step ahead of your enemy at all times. It’s a never-ending process, he says. The system will really never be entirely foolproof, and that doesn’t play well politically.

CARAFANO: This is a job you have to be on game on the time. And it’s not like you can make the sports analogy because in baseball and football you can lose a couple of games and still win a championship. You know, here you have to be like every single time.

BELL: The White House says President Obama was blunt when he spoke to his national security and intelligence team yesterday. This was a screw up that could have been disastrous, he was quoted as saying, and that is not acceptable. Former CIA official Paul Pillar says the President’s language might annoy some members of the intelligence community. But he says most professionals understand the politics of this issue. The real lesson here, Pillar says, should not be to launch another round of reforms in the intelligence system.

PAUL PILLAR: Reorganizations or trying to fix governmental systems or procedures is not going to prevent terrorist attacks or attempted terrorist attacks against Americans.

BELL: Pillar says things like aviation security, intelligence sharing and watch lists are all important, but they are only parts of an overall counter-terrorism strategy.

PILLAR: There are all the other things as well including policies and practices that affect the likelihood that people either at home or abroad will be radicalized, and will try to act out their anger against us. It includes the military action overseas. It includes countless other law enforcement, financial control and other measures that come under the heading of counter-terrorism.

BELL: Pillar says there’s no such thing as a systemic fix to prevent any and all terrorist attacks. But this specific case has some alarming elements to it, says Intelligence Expert James Lewis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

JAMES LEWIS: The fact that the fellow bought his ticket with cash should have been an immediate alarm bell. You know, putting aside his father coming in, which was also a good tip, but an international ticket with cash? Why wasn’t he immediately popped onto some secondary review list?

BELL: Experts say that information sharing among U.S. Intelligence agencies has improved since September 11, 2001.  But apparently not enough to prevent this latest attempt, and that’s raising tough questions about what needs to change.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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• BBC coverage
• Central Intelligence Agency

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MARCO WERMAN: Twenty-three Americans were sentenced to prison today in Italy. All but one of them work for the CIA and all were convicted of kidnapping. The case involves the abduction of an Egyptian-born Muslim cleric who was snatched off a street in Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt for interrogation. The cleric says he was tortured there. Though the Americans received prison terms they’re not likely to do any time. John Radsan served as a CIA’s assistant general counsel from 2002 to 2004. He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. Now the case relates to the seizure and then extraordinary rendition of a Muslim cleric. Tell us who this man was – this cleric – and where is he now?

JOHN RADSAN: Based on the public record we believe that he was recruiting people to go and fight in Iraq against American forces. That he was a radical preacher in Milan. He’s of Egyptian origin. And he was stirring up people to fight against Americans and against western interests around the world. He’s not in prison right now. At the end of his rendition he was released and as I understand he’s in Egypt at this time.

WERMAN: And when he was extraordinarily rendered how actively do you think the US government actually participated in that?

RADSAN: From the public record it seems clear that the US was involved in his snatch in Italy. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. And that he was transferred. One of the questions was whether the Italian government knew about this. Was this a unilateral operation or was it a bilateral operation in Italy. I think it stands to reason that the CIA would not do something that is completely unilateral in Italy. That would make it very dangerous for the CIA officers. It would complicate the intelligence relationship between the CIA and the various Italian services. It would be bad at a political level. Of course if the CIA notifies its counterparts in Italy, they’re taking it on some sort of faith that the Italian authorities will in turn notify the political leaders in Italy. And it’s one of the questions we had in the trial and we still don’t know the level of Italian involvement and we don’t know the level of American involvement. But I don’t think any of these defendants has said that this did not take place – that the abduction did not take place. The defendants say that this was an authorized operation by the United States government.

WERMAN: And at the time what was the legal opinion relating to these kinds of operations in 2003? You were assistant general counsel for the CIA at the time.

RADSAN: I was assistant general counsel. I didn’t advice on this program. But I can speculate what the advice was. We comply with American law. We have to make sure that we comply with the American constitution, with the various statutes that apply to the CIA. When we do espionage in covert action we accept, as an unfortunate consequence, that in many situations we’re going to be violating international law and we may in many situations be violating the laws of other countries.

WERMAN: And for these 23 individual Americans who were sentenced today, are they going to have to be careful where they travel now? I mean would they want to avoid going on vacation in Italy for example?

RADSAN: That’s for sure. They’re not going to be going to Italy. They’ll also have to be careful about other countries that they go to. They’ll probably get legal advice. If they don’t they should to figure out what sort of extradition arrangements may exist between France and Italy, Singapore and Italy. I suspect that most of these people will be limiting their travel to within the United States. They’re not going to take the risk. We have examples of other people that have fallen in the international target. Henry Kissinger was careful about his travel because of various allegations. So these defendants will be in a similar category.

WERMAN: So what next? Will the US try to appeal this in any way?

RADSAN: I think the lawyers that are representing these people, they will appeal. At the end even if these convictions stand I don’t think we’re going to have American officers serving sentences there. In that sense the sentences are symbolic. I think it’s possible the Italians will ask for the extradition but I think it’s next to impossible that the Americans will extradite CIA officers – these are people that were serving their country – back to Italy to serve prison sentences. There’s an irony in this case. And that is that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, was one of our important colleagues in counterterrorism and continues to be. He might have been coordinating with other parts of the American government beyond the CIA but he is the one that has been leading the charge and getting over these hurdles to bring this case. So in that sense it’s one part of the counterterrorism community indicting and convicting another part of the international counterterrorism community.

WERMAN: That’s interesting. I mean briefly, if these sentences are symbolic as you say, what do you think is the one-line message from them?

RADSAN: The CIA got in trouble for arguably violating Italian law and the CIA lives in a murky world of having to violate the laws of other countries to do espionage and conduct covert action.

WERMAN: Well John Radsan, former assistant general counsel for the CIA. Thanks very much.

RADSAN: Thank you.

WERMAN: And the State Department said today it’s disappointed by the Italian court’s decision.

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Human rights advocates in EUROPE are calling for countries there to look into their own role in CIA prisoner abuse. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush administration. The World’s Gerry Hadden has the story.

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JEB SHARP: Human rights advocates in Europe are pressing for some action. They’re hoping the Obama Administration’s investigations into alleged CIA prisoner abuses will move Europe to do some self-examination of its own. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush Administration. But so far no one’s been held accountable. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN: Europe has been through all of this before. In 2007 Dick Marty, a Swiss member of the Council of Europe, led an investigation into Europe’s role in America’s fight against terrorism. His findings? Several EU states let the US use their airports to move terrorism suspects around the globe. Some helped the CIA abduct targets. And some countries likely hosted secret CIA prisons. But most European governments simply ignored Marty’s report. The question is whether that will change now that the Obama Administration has released an internal CIA report on the agency’s interrogations and with the Justice Department investigating. There’s been some movement in Europe this week. Lithuania says it will investigate reports that it, like Poland and Romania, may have hosted a secret prison during the Bush era. Guilietto Chiesa is a member of the European Parliament from Italy. He says Europe can no longer remain quiet.

GUILIETTO CHIESA: The question now is to have the list of the people who have been detained in Lithuania. And probably there there have been torture, illegal interrogation, and very serious violation of human rights there. That means there are political and penal responsibilities.

HADDEN: Lithuanian denies it hosted a CIA prison and says it’s only investigating to clear its name. Gabriele Betchkaypeeteh is an editor at the Lithuanian daily paper Lietuvos Rytas. She says there’s no way her country could have hosted such a prison without word getting out.

GABRIELE BETCHKAYPEETEH: Technically it’s very difficult to have that prison in a country which has 3.5 million people and the place mentioned of the possible prison is quite small and we believe that local residents probably would have noticed any secret activities.

HADDEN: Romania also denies it hosted a prison. Same with Poland. Although that country says it’s investigating. Reed Brody, with Human Rights Watch in Brussels, says he was hoping that the CIA’s internal report on prisoner abuse would shed some light on this but he says it hasn’t.

REED BRODY: There were 23 pages of information in the CIA report on detention sites that were completely redacted. And obviously the CIA or whoever was involved here was afraid that if information about those sites were disclosed it could lead to further criminal investigations and prosecutions.

HADDEN: There’s also new pressure this week on some European governments to come clean on secret rendition flights. Amnesty International in Ireland says Shannon International Airport was used to move suspects. It’s calling for the Irish government to look into it. Reed Brody says if Europe doesn’t own up to its own role in the US-led war on terrorism it will lose credibility. And worse, quipped someone at the council of Europe today, Europe this person said has been criticizing the States for years on this but not only did Europe aid the effort it may now fall behind the US in investigating it. For The World I’m Gerry Hadden.

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Scientists in Canada whose research in surviving cold water is aimed saving lives have learned that the CIA used their work to develop an interrogation technique. The World’s Carol Hills has details.

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KATY CLARK:  Canada has a scientific feather in its cap. That cold northern country boasts several world-renowned experts in surviving cold temperatures.  Their groundbreaking research has improved the odds of survival for people like sailors, fishermen and those who happen to drive off of bridges into frigid water.  So it came as some surprise to one of those experts that his research has been used by the CIA to develop an interrogation technique.  The World’s Carol Hills reports.

CAROL HILLS: The report released this week by the Justice Department showed that in 2003, CIA officers began using a technique called ‘water dousing’. Not to be confused with water-boarding which is essentially controlled drowning, water dousing involves laying a detainee on a plastic sheet and pouring cold water over him for 10 to 15 minutes.  According to the report, an interrogator believed this was an effective technique, and sent a cable back to CIA headquarters requesting guidelines.  The return cable explained that a detainee, quote, “must be placed on a towel or sheet, may not be placed naked on the bare cement floor, and the air temperature must exceed 65 degrees,” if the detainee isn’t dried off immediately.  Gordon Geezbrecht is a thermophysiology professor at the University of Manitoba.  Yesterday he received an email from a colleague about how the report showed that the CIA had consulted Geezbrecht’s published research in developing the idea of water dousing

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: That was yesterday and today I’ve got a copy of this Red Cross, international Red Cross report, that actually interviews former detainees who actually report that some of these techniques were used on them.  So it became, it moved from theoretical to actual.

CAROL HILLS: His reaction:

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: It is a bit disturbing, for sure.

CAROL HILLS: Geezbrecht knows what it’s like to be immersed in cold water; he’s rendered himself hypothermic more than 40 times in his career.  His most famous immersion was on the David Letterman show in 2004, when he was plunged into a vat of ice water for 15 minutes.  Since then he’s been known as Dr. Popsicle.

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: We were able to take a two or three-hour experiment and condense it into one hour on national television and tell people that yes, cold water is dangerous, but you can survive it as long as you don’t panic.

CAROL HILLS: What he’s demonstrated, on Letterman and in his experiments, is that people can survive longer than they think in cold water.  He calls it the one-ten-one principle.

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: In ice water you have one minute to get your breathing under control, so don’t panic, and you have about ten minutes of meaningful movement, so you have time to figure out what to do to get out.  But then you do have to get moving, and you have an hour or more, one hour or more before you become unconscious due to hypothermia.

CAROL HILLS: But he says he meant his advice to be used to save people, not interrogate them.  For The World, I’m Carol Hills.

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If the U.S. abused and tortured terrorist suspects, and broke the law, why shouldn’t the Obama administration expand its investigation into who was responsible? The World’s Matthew Bell looks at the implications of investigating a former president.>>>The BBC’s Kevin Connolly on President Obama’s dilemma

The possible presidential implications of the CIA interrogations probe; also, the story of a former student democracy activist in China; plus, remembering Ted Kennedy’s fight against apartheid.

If the US broke the law by abusing terrorism suspects under President Bush, should the Obama Administration expand the investigation all the way to the former president? The World’s Matthew Bell reports on the implications of investigating a former president.

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KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark.  This is the World.  An investigation is under way into alleged CIA abuses terrorism suspects.  We’re still a long way from finding out whether the probe will produce any indictments, but the following question is already out there.  How high up the chain of command will the investigation go?  So far President Obama has appeared reluctant to start a process that could lead to his predecessor.  Here’s more from The World’s, Matthew Bell.

MATTHEW BELL: Newly unclassified documents from the CIA show that the aggressive techniques used during the interrogations of terrorists suspects were closely monitored by officials back in Washington.  These do not appear to have been the actions of a few rogue agents acting on their own.  Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said as much.  He has repeatedly defended so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.  But President Obama disagrees.  He has banned coercive interrogations.  Back in April, the President was asked if he believes that the Bush administration sanctioned torture by green lighting the practice of water boarding which has long been considered an act of torture under international and U.S. law.  The President began his answer with a heavy sigh.  “What I’ve said and I will repeat is that water boarding violates our ideals and our values.  I do believe that it is torture.”  Boil it down and what the President was saying there was that people broke the law, but Mr. Obama went on to show how reluctant he is to open up an investigation that has the possibility of bringing criminal charges against a former president.  “I believe that water boarding was torture, and I think that the – whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.”  In other words, the President seemed to suggest mistakes are things to be forgiven, not investigated.  “There is no good reason not to launch an investigation.”  Steven Waltz of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard says President Obama’s unwillingness has everything to do with politics.  “Obama has lots of alligators to wrestle with right now, and any investigation is going to be you know, politically very charged.  But the whole reason you have a criminal justice system and that you have the rule of law is precisely to prevent politics from interfering with the process of justice.  You don’t want crimes to go uninvestigation or unprosecuted for purely political reasons because once you open that door you can drive an enormous amount of wrongdoing right through it.”  There are two conflicting impulses at work here, says political scientist Robert Gervais of Columbia University.  One is the principle that no one, not even a former president is above the law and the other, Gervais says is the idea that American leaders who made tough, on the spot decisions during wartime should not be second guessed years later.  “You want to literally shot through.  You don’t even want the public debating and discussing this.  It not only weakens our resolve if we have to face you know, terrible situations in the future, but it sort of weakens the body politic – it implicates the whole country in crimes and you don’t want that.  You want leaders who will take if you will the guilt on themselves.”  Gervais says it’s not entirely Machiavellian to believe that bad things happen during wars and there’s a danger of creating paralysis by investigating mistakes of the past.  Presidential historian Robert Dalleck says there’s another tradition in American politics that adds to the pressure on Mr. Obama to back away from investigating his predecessor.  “As soon as a president leaves office, to some degree there’s a halo over his head and the incumbent president is very reluctant to point the finger at a former president and perhaps the most striking example of that was when John Ford excused Richard Nixon’s violations of the law in the Watergate scandal.”  But there is no small amount of pressure to do more about torture allegations than just going after low-level officials.  David Cole is a professor of law at Georgetown.  “If we don’t acknowledge in some official way that what was done was wrong and illegal and not just a mistake and a policy difference, then torture becomes a policy option.”  Cole says this might be accomplished with something less than a full blown criminal investigation.  He suggests creating a 9/11 commission style panel to conduct an official enquiry and come up with recommendations for the future.  For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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Anchor Katy Clark speaks with John Nichols, author of an unofficial biography of former Vice President Dick Cheney, about allegations of Cheney’s role in authorizing the CIA interrogation techniques now under investigation.

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KATY CLARK: Many of the questions surrounding the use of enhanced interrogation techniques lead back to former Vice President Dick Cheney.  John Nichols is the author of an unofficial Cheney biography.  He’s also Washington correspondent of the magazine, The Nation.  John Nichols what do you believe Cheney’s role was in authorizing or pushing these techniques?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, there’s very little doubt at this point that Vice President Cheney, when he was in office, was a passionate advocate for an aggressive approach to gathering intelligence and he himself has said that he encouraged the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which is of course the euphemism used by members of the administration, or what an awful lot of people call torture.  So, I think it would be almost comic at this point to suggest that he was anything but a driving force in initiating discussions about using enhanced interrogation.  Promoting the authorization of that enhanced interrogation by the Whitehouse and by legal counselors, and finally making sure that it was implemented, encouraging the CIA to do so.  So, I think it would be fair to say he was the central figure.

CLARK: As we hear more learn and learn more about these techniques they seem to have taken place as a result of the slow considered steps of a very vast bureaucracy.  How fair is it to say that all roads lead back to Dick Cheney?

NICHOLS: Of course we have to be careful about assuming that he hatched every plan, came up with every plot.  We don’t need to make him ino the ultimate Machiavelli.  What we do need to find out is the extent to which he was actively engaged at many, many different levels of

bureaucratic and legislative, official and unofficial in promoting the use of what most people in the world would describe as torture.

CLARK: Mr. Cheney has been pretty vocal in defending the Bush administration’s record using enhanced interrogation techniques saying that they delivered intelligence success.  How do you argue with that?

NICHOLS: Well, it’s always very, very important to look at Dick Cheney’s statements.  He is a master communicator of ideas that he wants to get across, but that are carefully plotted so that he doesn’t necessarily have to take responsibility.  And if you look at some of his recent statements about the successes of enhanced interrogation, they’re a little bit vague in the area of whether it was the enhanced interrogation that actually got the intelligence that people are talking about, and this is very, very important.  There is no question that some people on whom enhanced interrogation techniques were practiced did provide intelligence that may have been quite useful to the United States, but neither Cheney nor anyone else that I’ve seen so far, has successfully made a clear linkage between the water boarding, the enhanced interrogation, the torture, and the accessing of that information.

CLARK: Would that be some of the information that would come out in an investigation.  I mean do you think that would be more of what we would find out?

NICHOLS: Well, of course that’s what we want to find out.  And the important thing about this discussion is that we have two roles.  One, in an investigation let’s find out what the United States did.  Were lines crossed, why were they crossed, how were they crossed, what was done that was irresponsible, wrong-headed, potentially illegal?.  And then once you’ve discovered that the much more important question becomes, who made this the case.  Those who promoted those actions are the ones who need to be held to account, and yet it’s very, very silly frankly to fret about the CIA operatives at the low level.  If somebody did something that is grossly illegal, of course they should be held to account, but really what we want to know, who was telling that low level officer what to do, and again there’s an awfully lot of evidence that suggests that Dick Cheney or at least people around Dick Cheney had some role in that telling.

CLARK: Given how much Dick Cheney has really been out there speaking about things that the Bush administration did, do you get a sense that perhaps in some way he is setting himself up as the fall guy here.

NICHOLS: No, I don’t think he’s setting himself as the fall guy.  I think there’s another strategy altogether and that is to win the public relations war, i.e. to keep pushing the idea that the use of these techniques gained intelligence that protected America, to fight, if you will, above the level of the investigation so that even if an inquiry ultimately does point fingers of blame at Dick Cheney, the average American may not view him as an evil player.  They might view him as perhaps and overzealous defender of the safety and good of the nation.

CLARK: John Nichols is Washington correspondent of The Nation and author of Dick, the Man Who is President. Thanks.

NICHOLS: It’s a pleasure.

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The Obama administration is setting strict new standards for treatment of terror suspects, as the Justice Department launches a criminal probe of past interrogation tactics during the Bush administration. The publication of harsh CIA methods has raised questions about how U.S. authorities should best go about conducting interrogations of terrorism suspects. The World’s Matthew Bell reports. (photo: Associated Press)>>>Click here for BBC coverage.

The Obama administration is creating a new system for conducting interrogation of terrorism suspects. It’s supposed to be a way to look forward, and avoid mistakes of the past, as The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

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JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World. Previously classified details of the CI-’s treatment of terrorism suspects were made public this afternoon. They are not pretty. One interrogator apparently told a suspect that, if any attacks happened in the U-S, quote, “We’re going to kill your children.” Another interrogator allegedly tried to convince a suspect that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him. We’ll have more on the implications of the report in a moment. First, The World’s Matthew Bell tells us about a related announcement from the Obama administration, on how it plans to revamp the system of interrogating detainees.

MATTHEW BELL: The White House says President Obama will create a new multi-agency unit for interrogating so-called high value terrorism suspects. The unit will be based at FBI headquarters in Washington, led by an FBI official, and it will include US intelligence officials. The team will be overseen by the White House. It will also follow the rules for interrogations laid out in the US Army Field Manual. Those rules prohibit torture, along with some of the harsh interrogation techniques used in the past, such as water boarding. White House spokesman, Bill Burton, made the announcement today.

BILL BURTON: The President’s view is that intelligence gathering is best left to the intelligence community, and this is a way that the intelligence community can best operate, especially in these high volume instances.

MATTHEW BELL: Former CIA official, Robert Baer, says the Obama administration has been slow to end bad intelligence practices from the Bush era. But he says this is a step in the right direction, because it would take the main responsibility for interrogations and give it to the FBI.

ROBERT BAER: You can count on FBI agents going into an interrogation, and following the rule of law. That’s what they do, that’s what they get hired for. There would also be closer supervision, direct supervision from the department of justice. So, any tendency to resort to torture, were morel likely not, that not to happen.

MATTHEW BELL: The White House said the new interrogation’s unit does not mean that the CIA is being cut out of the interrogations process. But Baer, who served in the CIA for 21 years, says the agency has no business being involved in the questioning of suspects.

ROBERT BAER: It’s not what the CIA does, is interrogations, police forces do that, foreign intelligence services do that. The CIA runs what we call Clandestine Sources, informants overseas, and that’s its core business, and that’s what it should’ve been doing all along. When you the CIA into some sort of pera-military organization that interrogates prisoners of war. So it was just a dumb idea in the first place.

MATTHEW BELL: According to former vice president Dick Cheney, however, the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program disrupted terrorist plots and saved American lives. President Obama has said he would rather look forward than go back and examine whether or not harsh interrogation techniques during the Bush years amounted to torture. But that might be unavoidable, as new details of alleged CIA abuses are coming out. Today, the justice department announcement the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into those allegations. Political science professor, Michael Desch, at the University of Notre Dame says it’s understandable why the Obama administration would prefer to look forward, but Desch says, these issues should not be swept under the rug.

MICHAEL DESCH: Without making a version of the Nuremberg defense, you know it does seem to me that lower level people that were following orders, should not be the primary focus in our assessment to these abuses. I would focus at a much higher level, or at least prefer that the focus be there.

MATTHEW BELL: And when you say, higher level, what are you talking about?

MICHAEL DESCH: I’m, you know, talking about senior policy makers at the department of justice, and in the white house.

MATTHEW BELL: CIA director, Leon Panetta, today sent an email message to agency personnel to help relieve concerns they might have. Panetta said the latest allegations of CIA abuses are part of an old story, and that he intends to quote, “Stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given.” Panetta said “That is the president’s position, too.” For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Columbia law school professor Scott Horton about the Attorney General’s reported plans to recommend re-opening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases.

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JEB SHARP: As we just heard, the Attorney General is recommending the re-opening of nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, a reversal of Bush administration policy. Scott Horton is a Professor at Columbia University Law School. He says at this point, there aren’t too many details on those prisoner-abuse cases.

SCOTT HORTON: The best known, by far, comes out of Abu Ghraib, and it relates to a prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi, who was also known as the Iceman. He’s someone who was delivered Abu Ghraib, [INDISCERNIBLE] was stored in ice. We know that he was handled by a group of navy seals, but that he died in CIA custody, and there was a military inquiry involving the fields that resulted in some disciplinary action, but certainly no homicide prosecution. And we know there are roughly a dozen other cases that involve people dying while they were in custody.

JEB SHARP: So, what are the implications of these cases being re-opened? And does it mean talking about only CIA interrogators being investigated, or could the investigation go further up the food chain?

SCOTT HORTON: Yeah, well those are the two major questions. First of all, why is a decision being taken now on the investigations? Well, we know that the CIA inspector general Henderson identified each of these cases, and insisted that they go to the justice department for proper criminal investigation. So, the CIA inspector general effectively did his work. What happened to the justice department? All these cases were sent to the eastern district of Virginia, which has a long special track record of dealing with CIA cases. And what happened there? Not much evidently. In fact, here we had one member of the staff there referring to their function as a dead leather office, that is, they received these complaints, but really didn’t take any action on them. And now, the justice department, after reviewing what happened, has decided that, you know, that’s really not acceptable. There does have to be a proper homicide investigation.

JEB SHARP: What do you think is at stake here in reopening these cases?

SCOTT HORTON: Well, I think the attorney general wants to put blinders on the special prosecutor, to vary narrowly circumscribe it. But can he do that? No, he can’t. A special prosecutor whose worth [INDISCERNIBLE], is going to go fully investigate these cases, and follow the factual leads wherever they take him. And that my very well wind up implicating senior officials, the administration indeed, even people in the White House. So, I think all of these questions will wind up being examined by the special prosecutor, which is not to say, necessarily, that charges are gonna be brought in the end of the day, but I think certainly there’s at least an outside chance that we’ll see prosecution of administration officials, based on advice they gave, or actions they took.

JEB SHARP: So, why is this change happening now? You know, is it simply a case of new administration, new people in positions making fresh decisions? I mean, how arbitrary is this?

SCOTT HORTON: I really don’t think it’s arbitrary at all, in fact it’s almost the other way around. It’s in the last administration, basically a stick was put in the wheel, to stop the wheel of justice from turning. Basically, political decisions were made to stop criminal investigations from happening. The ethics office at the justice department has looked into what happened, they’ve pretty clearly have made that call right now. And I think what Holder is saying, you really can’t do that, we have to take the stick out, and now the investigation has to occur.

JEB SHARP: And what about the new CIA Chief, Leon Pinneta? How’s he reacting to all of this?

SCOTT HORTON: Well, it’s clear that he didn’t wanna see a criminal investigation occur, but in fact today, he’s just issued a statement to his staff, in which he’s telling them that this report’s being issued, and he’s really preparing them to expect that there’s gonna be a criminal investigation coming out of this. So, while he’s working hard to build report within the organization, he’s also trying to reconcile them to a new regime, and a new way of doing things, and on much higher degree of accountability.

JEB SHARP: Scott Horton is a contributing editor at Harpers Magazine, and a law professor at Columbia University. Thanks so much for talking to us.

SCOTT HORTON: Great to be with you.

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The head of MI6 Sir John Scarlett

BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera looks inside Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service. He talks to senior intelligence officers, agents and diplomats as well as their former arch enemies about the shadowy world of espionage. Exploring the role of MI6 in the 21st century. The head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, John Scarlett, talks for the first time about the interrogation of terrorist suspects and MI6′s role in the run-up to the war in Iraq. We speak with the BBC’s Gordon Corera about his three-part documentary “MI6: A Century in the Shadows.”

Click here to go to the homepage for “MI6: A Century in the Shadows.”

Click here to read Gordon Corera’s article “MI6 ‘is not complicit’ in torture.”

Click here to visit the official MI6 website.