Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that a two-year review by a specially appointed prosecutor, John H. Durham, had determined that any further investigation into that large group of cases “is not warranted.” The inquiry into the two deaths, though, could result in criminal charges against Central Intelligence Agency officers or contractors.
Intelligence officials saw the announcement as a vindication of sorts.
“I welcome the news that the broader inquiries are behind us,” Leon E. Panetta, director of the C.I.A., said in his last day in office before being sworn in Friday as defense secretary. “We are now finally about to close this chapter of our agency’s history.”
Still, the renewed attention to the volatile issue of C.I.A. interrogations — after the controversy had all but disappeared from public debate — is sure to set off a range of legal and political challenges for the Justice Department, the White House and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The Justice Department has faced years of criticism from the left for inaction on accusations of abuse by C.I.A. interrogators, while defenders of the C.I.A. have warned that any prosecutions would be deeply damaging to the agency. It will be left to Gen. David H. Petraeus, who was confirmed Thursday as C.I.A. director, to lead the agency through any turmoil from the criminal investigation.
The Justice Department did not identify the two detainees at the center of the criminal investigation. But government officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the continuing review, said the first case involved the well-publicized death of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in C.I.A. custody in 2003 at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. He became publicly known as the Iceman after his body was photographed packed in ice and wrapped in plastic.
The second case involves the death of Gul Rahman, suspected of being a militant, who died in 2002 after being shackled to a concrete wall in a secret C.I.A. prison in Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit, the officials said.
Beginning in 2002, Justice Department lawyers wrote a series of then-secret legal opinions authorizing intelligence officers to use increasingly harsh interrogation methods like sleep deprivation, slapping and waterboarding on dozens of terrorism suspects in an effort to elicit information about Al Qaeda.
Mr. Holder stressed Thursday in his statement, as he has before, that any intelligence officials who acted “in good faith” within the scope of the Justice Department’s legal guidance at the time would not face prosecution. The review that led to the full criminal investigations focused primarily on whether “unauthorized interrogation techniques were used by C.I.A. interrogators” and, if so, whether they amounted to criminal violations of statutes against torture or other measures, he said.
In a nod to the tensions surrounding the issue, Mr. Holder was careful to emphasize the “incredibly important service to our nation” that intelligence officials provide. “They deserve our respect and gratitude for the work that they do,” he said.
Civil rights leaders said Thursday that they were disappointed that Mr. Holder had not set a broader target for the current investigation by looking at the legality of the interrogation policies approved by senior lawyers and intelligence officials.
“With the approval of the Bush administration’s most senior officials, the C.I.A. operated an interrogation program that subjected prisoners to unimaginable cruelty and violated both international and domestic law,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union. “The narrow investigation that Attorney General Holder announced today is not proportionate to the scale and scope of the wrongdoing.”
But Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who leads the House Intelligence Committee, said the Justice Department’s decision to close the book on all but two of the remaining cases “has finally substantially lifted an undeserved cloud of doubt and suspicion from all of our intelligence professionals.”
President Obama signaled soon after his inauguration in January 2009 that he was reluctant to re-examine some of the most controversial counterterrorism tactics of the George W. Bush administration, including the treatment of prisoners and the use of harsh interrogation tactics.
Before Mr. Obama took office, though, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appointed Mr. Durham, a longtime organized-crime prosecutor from Connecticut, to examine evidence that the C.I.A. had improperly destroyed videotapes of interrogations in possible violation of court orders. The Justice Department declined to bring charges over the tapes’ destruction, but Mr. Holder, in 2009, expanded Mr. Durham’s inquiries to include possible mistreatment of prisoners.
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