Appoint a special counsel (by John Conyers)

The potential obstruction of justice alleged in the controversy over the CIA's detainee torture tape destruction is a serious matter. Unfortunately, by assigning this investigation to a Justice Department employee, who works for the administration he is investigating, Attorney General Michael Mukasey seems only to be reinforcing the Bush administration's failed accountability record ...

To be clear, no one wants a return to the days of "independent counsels" — such as Ken Starr — who run amok as investigators in search of non-existent crimes, with the taxpayers left holding the bill. Fortunately, Congress wisely allowed the statute that gave Starr his authority to expire.

In its place, the Justice Department imposed its own regulations allowing the appointment of "special counsels" from outside the government to conduct investigations where the attorney general and other department officials have a conflict of interest. Unlike the independent counsel statute, the attorney general has oversight authority to prevent special counsels from unilaterally expanding their investigations, and counsels must follow department ethics rules ...

After the Watergate scandal, a consensus emerged that safeguards were needed to ensure outside independent investigation of the politically powerful. After the Starr investigation, a consensus also emerged that no prosecutor should be given unchecked power. Appointing an outside special prosecutor attempts to balance these needs.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20080104/cm_usatoday/opposingviewappointaspecialcounsel

Conyers is mistaken: if Congress had fixed the independent counsel statute and made it permanent, rather than allowing the statute to expire, a number of abuses by the current regime would have been exposed earlier and would have been prosecuted