Obama Faces a New Push to Look Back

President Obama is facing new pressure to reverse himself and to ramp up investigations into the Bush-era security programs, despite the political risks.

Leading Democrats on Sunday demanded investigations of how a highly classified counterterrorism program was kept secret from the Congressional leadership on the orders of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who is the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Fox News Sunday called it a “big problem.” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, on “This Week” on ABC, agreed that the secrecy “could be illegal” and demanded an inquiry.

Mr. Obama said this weekend that he had asked his staff members to review the mass killing of prisoners in Afghanistan by local forces allied with the United States as it toppled the Taliban regime there. The New York Times reported Saturday that the Bush administration had blocked investigations of the matter.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is also close to assigning a prosecutor to look into whether prisoners in the campaign against terrorism were tortured, officials disclosed on Saturday.

And after a report from five inspectors general about the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping said on Friday that there had been a number of undisclosed surveillance programs during the Bush years, Democrats sought more information.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/us/politics/13intel.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

somewhat insulates him from the political slings and arrows that are coming... the thugs can't say he is pushing a witch hunt if he has nothing to do with it.
It is, after all, in the purview of the department of justice and not the executive branch.