Just because he’s closing Guantanamo doesn’t mean the new president can reform all those real-world Jack Bauers. Or convict them. Or stop them from wiretapping your phone. The reckoning for the Bush administration’s interrogation memos may surprise you.

By John H. Richardson

Way back in November, before I even broke out the crystal ball on Barack Obama, I made something of a prediction in this column: “It may be time for Democrats to start slowly ratcheting back their outrage on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, alternative terrorism courts, and even some forms of aggressive interrogation. Otherwise, it’s going to be awkward for them to adjust to the realities of life under Democratic rule.”

And, verily, it has come to pass. Late last month, the Obama administration filed papers asking for a stay in the lawsuit over the legality of George W. Bush’s refusal, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, to request search warrants before wiretapping American phones. On the terrorism trials, President Obama has indicated more than once that he is considering the need for some kind of alternative court. And he has hedged on interrogation from the outset, limiting the Army to the Geneva Convention but holding open the door to the CIA’s use of more aggressive interrogation techniques. (At his confirmation hearing, CIA Director Leon Panetta made this explicit by saying if the Geneva-appropriate techniques proved insufficient, he would ask for “additional authority.”)

On top of all that, as Charlie Savage pointed out last week, Obama’s team has also supported the indefinite detention without trial of terror suspects in Afghanistan and the rendition of captives to other countries; taken the Bush position that at least one torture trial cannot proceed because of state secrets; and refused to give prisoners in Afghanistan the right to challenge the evidence against them in U.S. courts.

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