American Civil Liberties Union

A pair of developments Monday made abundantly clear the lack of accountability for U.S.-sponsored torture after 9/11.

In a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department, former CIA officer John Kiriakou was charged with disclosing classified information to journalists and lying to the CIA’s Publications Review Board. ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero declared, “It remains troubling that the government has failed to indict the CIA agents who participated in torture and who have thus far not been held accountable for these atrocities.”

Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) is pursuing a deeply misguided effort that threatens to reopen the door to torture.

Many people saw the torture and abuse of prisoners and indefinite detention at Guantánamo Bay in the wake of 9/11 as a fall from grace. Harvard Historian, Jonathan Hansen disagrees. “America,” he says, “scarcely has any grace to fall from.”

In this episode of ACLU Studio, ACLU National Security Project Litigation Director, Ben Wizner talks with Hansen about his new book, Guantánamo, An American History. Listen and learn how Guantánamo is a reflection of America; revealing the good, the bad and the ugly.

Almost ten years after 9/11, in May of this year, a majority of the US House of Representatives voted to give President Obama — and all future presidents — more war authority than Congress gave to President Bush two days after the 9/11 attacks: a president would no longer have to show a connection to 9/11, or even any specific threat to America, before using military force anywhere in the world that a terrorism suspect may be found, including within the United States.