American Civil Liberties Union

Today, we sent a letter to the White House asking President Obama to formally honor the soldiers and public servants who opposed torture under the Bush administration.

Although senior Bush administration officials approved the torture of prisoners, there was dissent in every federal agency, and at every level. As observed in an ACLU/PEN American Center op-ed published by The New York Times recently, brave men and women throughout the military and the government challenged the Bush administration’s policies, called out abuses, and refused to participate in a torture program that they believed was illegal and immoral. But so far, our official history has honored only those who approved torture, not those who rejected it.

On the same day that President Obama announced the launch of his 2012 reelection campaign, he abandoned one of his major promises from 2008.

Today, the Obama administration announced that it will prosecute the suspects accused of planning the 9/11 attacks in the Guantánamo military commissions system. This is a reversal from Attorney General Eric Holder's November 2009 announcement that the 9/11 defendants would be prosecuted in federal courts.

Our January 29 staging of “Reckoning with Torture” at the Sundance Film Festival got a little more exciting when we learned that the Sundance Kid himself, Robert Redford, would be taking the stage.

Redford joined actors America Ferrera, Ellen Barkin and Michael Stahl-David; writers and artists Alex Gibney, George Saunders, Sandra Cisneros, Naomi Wolf, Annie Proulx, Esmeralda Santiago, Marilynne Robinson; former CIA field officer Jack Rice and former military interrogator Matthew Alexander, for a one-of-a-kind performance event combining readings from declassified government documents with video and visuals to expose the scope and human cost of the Bush administration’s torture program. You may recall that the ACLU and PEN American Center havestaged similar events in New York and Washington D.C.