Way To Go

Attorney General Eric Holder has decided to appoint an investigator to look into CIA interrogations of terror suspects. I have no idea what the investigator will conclude, but I can guess how it'll play politically.

There are two ways to do this. It can be done quickly, furtively and in a partisan manner. Or it can be done proudly, openly and with everyone given a chance to explain themselves.

If it's done the first way, the White House will get away without too much damage. If it's done the second, this could truly hurt them.

PS Here's a sentence in the Washington Post story I linked:

During the Bush years, a team of more than a half-dozen career prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia, which is renown for its expertise in probing clandestine operations, reviewed about 20 cases of alleged prisoner abuse after receiving referrals from the military and then-CIA Inspector General John Helgerson.

"Which is renown"?