Many Americans tend to look down our noses at younger democracies like Poland. But news reports this week indicate that, in at least some ways, Warsaw is ahead of us.
Polish newspapers report that the former head of Poland’s intelligence service has been charged with aiding the Central Intelligence Agency in setting up a secret prison to detain suspected members of Al Qaeda. The Gazeta Wyborcza said that Zbigniew Siemiatkowski faces charges of violating international law by “unlawfully depriving prisoners of their liberty,” in connection with the secret C.I.A. prison where Qaeda suspects were subjected to brutal interrogation methods.
As the New York Times has pointed out, when President Obama took office in 2009, he said he wanted to “look forward, as opposed to looking backward” and rejected calls for a broad investigation of C.I.A. interrogations and other Bush administration counterterrorism programs.