Bartender? Immunity, All Around

Immunity deals offered to Blackwater guards - 29 Oct 2007 at 8:15pm - State Department investigators offered Blackwater security guards immunity during an inquiry into a shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians, government officials said. The State Department investigators from the agency's investigative arm, the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, offered the immunity grants even though they did not have the authority to do so, the said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing. Prosecutors at the Justice Department, who do have such authority, had no advance knowledge of the arrangement, they added. Most of the guards who took part in the episode were offered what officials described as limited-use immunity, which means that they were promised they would not be prosecuted for anything they said in their interviews with the authorities as long as their statements were true.

Accountability? What's that?

U.S. struggles with taint of torture - 29 Oct 2007 at 5:52pm - Six years after the Bush administration embraced harsh physical tactics for interrogating terrorist suspects, and two years after it reportedly dropped the most extreme of those tactics, the taint of torture clings to American counterterrorism efforts.