For immediate release: May 12, 2009
Contact: david@davidswanson.org

Two hundred organizations, including Mobile Broadcast News, After Downing Street, Democrats.com, the Robert Jackson Steering Committee, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the National Lawyers Guild, the Society of American Law Teachers, Human Rights USA, the American Freedom Campaign, and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, have signed a joint statement urging Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor for former top officials of the Bush Administration.

The complete list of organizations can be found at http://specialprosecutor.us

The complete statement reads as follows:

We urge Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a non-partisan
independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes of former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Richard B. Cheney, the attorneys formerly employed by the Department of Justice whose memos sought to
justify torture, and other former top officials of the Bush Administration.

Our laws, and treaties that under Article VI of our Constitution are the supreme law of the land, require the prosecution of crimes that strong evidence suggests these individuals have committed. Both the former president and the former vice president have confessed to authorizing a torture procedure that is illegal under our law and treaty obligations. The former president has confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

We see no need for these prosecutions to be extraordinarily lengthy or costly, and no need to wait for the recommendations of a panel or “truth” commission when substantial evidence of the crimes is already in the public domain. We believe the most effective investigation can be
conducted by a prosecutor, and we believe such an investigation should begin immediately.