Nadler on torture investigations: 'There can't be a compromise'

One of the leading voices in Congress for investigating former Bush Administration officials said the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee wouldn't quiet the calls for prosecution.

John Podesta's letter to John Conyers today calling for impeachment marked the shift of a close White House ally away from calls not to look backward and toward taking action, though action short of an investigation by a commission or by a special prosecutor; some have speculated that it was a compromise effort to satisfy some Democrats' calls for justice without bogging down the White House agenda.

"That's nice, but I don't think one thing has anything to do with the other," said New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, who has pushed both for Bybee's impeachment and for a Justice Department investigation, in response to Podesta's letter. He dismissed the notion that "Bybee's impeachment should take care of everything."

"It's not a question of a sacrificial lamb," said Nadler, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, to whose chairman Podesta addressed his letter, and chairs its Constitution subcommittee.

"I think in the due course of events he probbaly ought to be impeached," Nadler said, citing a forthcoming report from Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility.

Nadler also dismissed the notion that the Obama Administration -- which at first seemed determined to move rapidly beyond alleged Bush Administration crimes -- could have controlled the torture story.

"I don't think it is controllable. I don't think it was ever controllable. The law is what the law is," he said. "You've got to follow where the facts lead. They may very well wind up with Dick Cheney. They may wind up with Rumsfeld."

"There can't be a compromise -- you have to follow the law," he said. "If the facts say that some former high-ranking official should be prosecuted, the fact people will get angry should be irrelevant."

"If we do not investigate the torture that is clear that it occured, and if the evidence is there prosecute, not only are we disobeying the law, not only are we being immoral, but we are inviting torture of our people in the future," he said. "I've heard all the discussion -- 'Could this hurt the administration? Could this hurt the Democrats?' All that is secondary."