STEVE INSKEEP, Host:
It's Morning Edition from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.
RENEE MONTAGNE, Host:
And I'm Renee Montagne. President-elect Obama won the White House on a promise of change. Now, he may have to deal with a Congress demanding more change than he is.
INSKEEP: Top lawmakers may belong to Mr. Obama's party, but they've got their own priorities. In a moment, we'll hear an alternative view of the president-elect's economic recovery plan.
MONTAGNE: We begin with a debate over some key policies of the Bush administration. Mr. Obama said over the weekend it may take time to close a prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He also played down possible legal probes into the Bush administration's interrogation policies. Democrats in Congress have their own plans, as NPR's David Welna reports.
DAVID WELNA: The interrogation policies the Bush administration has used in Guantanamo include the waterboarding, or simulated drowning, of three detainees. The new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, California's Dianne Feinstein, pointed out last week on the Senate floor that in the past, the Justice Department has actually prosecuted the use of waterboarding.
INSKEEP: The administration used what I believe to be faulty logic and faulty reasoning to say the waterboarding technique was not torture. In fact, it is.
WELNA: President-elect Obama also views waterboarding as torture. To find out who authorized its use in interrogations, House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has introduced a bill creating a bipartisan commission with subpoena power. But when Mr. Obama was asked on ABC's "This Week" whether he'd back such a commission, he was cautiously noncommittal.
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INSKEEP: We're still evaluating how we are going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions and so forth. And obviously, we're going to be looking at past practices, and I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.
WELNA: Some Democrats who strongly opposed the Bush administration's detention and interrogation practices say they agree with Mr. Obama's cautious approach. Among them is the Senate's number two Democrat, Dick Durbin.
INSKEEP: There's a big debate going on about holding the previous administration accountable for their actions. And I would say for the time being that the Obama team is focused properly on the future. Our economy is so weak. We're in desperate need of jobs. Before we start looking at the pages of history in the Bush administration, we should be looking at the obvious need to create jobs and create a new economic climate in this country.
WELNA: You might think such talk would be disheartening to those who've been pushing for probes into warrantless wiretapping and coercive interrogations. But the American Civil Liberties Union's Caroline Fredrickson says she still has faith that much done in the past will come to light.
MONTAGNE: Everybody knows that we've got an economy in the toilet and that that is the first order of business. But these things are not inconsistent, and certainly Congress can occupy itself with multiple tasks at any one time, as it always does.
WELNA: One Democratic senator who sits on both the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees says Congress does need to see the secret legal opinions drafted for Vice President Cheney by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Rhode Island's Sheldon Whitehouse considers those opinions a blot on the Justice Department.
INSKEEP: So I think that there's a lot that remains to look at. And I appreciate that President Obama doesn't want to make it his purpose as a new president, with America in real distress in many directions, to go back and look at all this. But I think we in Congress have an independent responsibility, and I fully intend to discharge that responsibility.
WELNA: Whitehouse says he expects that should Eric Holder be confirmed as the next attorney general, he, too, will quickly face many questions about the Bush administration's detention policies. David Welna, NPR News, the Capitol.