U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, is proposing a "truth commission" to investigate abuses of detainees and politically inspired firings at the Justice Department during the Bush administration.
Leahy says the commission’s primary goal would be to learn the truth rather than to prosecute former officials. But he says the commission could be modeled after a similar panel that investigated apartheid in South Africa.
He says federal officials should conduct a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened with detainee abuse and the Justice Department under former President Bush.