Holder to Appoint Torture Prosecutor

The big news of the day: Attorney General Eric Holder will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated torture laws. Holder will appoint John Durham, a veteran Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to head the inquiry. Durham will launch a full-scale criminal investigation into whether former and current CIA employees broke the law when interrogating suspects, and will work independently from the White House. The White House is also creating a separate detainee-interrogation unit which will be closely supervised, the Associated Press reports, though the CIA will still be questioning terror suspects. The news comes on the heels of a declassified CIA document that describes interrogators threatening to kill the children of a terror suspect.