Democrat and leftist lies.

Stephens: Eric Holder's Gritted Teeth

Who knew Team Obama was shilling for Dick Cheney?

It must be tough on the left, not being able to trash John Durham.

Mr. Durham, recall, is the special prosecutor appointed in 2008 by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate allegations that the CIA had illegally destroyed videotapes of CIA detainee interrogations. The prosecutor's mandate was expanded in 2009 by current Attorney General Eric Holder to look into allegations that CIA officers and contractors had abused and, in some cases, tortured and killed, as many as 101 detainees thought to have been in U.S. custody.

When Mr. Durham was first appointed, the Los Angeles Times called him the "second coming of Patrick Fitzgerald," reflecting a wish that the Connecticut prosecutor's investigation would do as much political damage to the Bush administration as the witch-hunting Chicago prosecutor's had. Encomia for Mr. Durham's competence and rectitude poured in from all quarters; the liberal New Republic called him "an effective mafia-busting prosecutor" who had "earned a nonpartisan, camera-shy, 'white-knight' reputation."

Mr. Durham, it turned out, was all those things, which is another way of saying he's the exact opposite of the ambitious, media-obsessed and unscrupulous Mr. Fitzgerald—the man who convicted Scooter Libby of not being the man who leaked Valerie Plame's CIA identity to the media.

What followed was an investigation that led to one exoneration after another. No criminal charges were filed in the videotape destruction case. In 2011, Mr. Durham concluded that no further investigation was warranted in all but two of the 101 detainee cases.

The last shoe dropped on Aug. 30, when Mr. Holder announced that the final two cases—involving the death of one detainee in Afghanistan and another in Iraq—would be closed once and for all. His statement praised Mr. Durham and his team for conducting an "extraordinarily thorough" review, ranging over "information and matters that were not examined during the Department's prior reviews."

Getty Images

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

Mr. Holder underscored that Mr. Durham had "fully examined a broad universe of allegations from multiple sources." He noted that Mr. Durham had found that some of the 101 detainees had never been in CIA custody to begin with.

Bottom line: "The Department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt."

You have to marvel at the gritted teeth through which those words somehow passed. It had been Mr. Holder, after all, who decided to expand Mr. Durham's inquiry despite the prior conclusions of Justice Department officials that it wasn't warranted. He did so, also, over the tacit objections of the White House and the vocal objections of seven CIA directors, including then-director Leon Panetta.

In other words, this was an ideological vendetta that Mr. Holder pursued right to the end. No wonder he announced the decision on the last day of the GOP convention and the eve of Labor Day weekend. No wonder he also went out of his way to say Mr. Durham's conclusion "does not resolve broader questions regarding the propriety of the examined conduct."

To the army of the obsessed who take it as a given that the Bush administration operated a vast torture archipelago, all this amounts to a giant government whitewash, bordering almost on conspiracy. If that's true, it must rank as the most politically incompetent and ideologically bizarre whitewash in history. Who knew Team Obama was shilling for Dick Cheney? And what about Mr. Durham: Was he part of the whitewash, too?

So far I haven't seen anyone make that accusation, probably because it just won't wash. Instead, the prosecutor's final determination is being treated as a legal technicality, not determinative of probable guilt or innocence. To the true believers, the Bush administration isn't even guilty till proven innocent. It's simply guilty. Think of Casey Anthony in a trench coat.

Then again, at least Ms. Anthony's case was put to trial by prosecutors who believed they could win a conviction. It says something about the inherent weakness of Mr. Holder's case that he wouldn't risk even that. Reports of torture are always shocking, when they're true. But no less shocking is when such reports are thrown around on a dubious evidentiary basis in fits of partisan animadversion.

Today is Sept. 11—the 11th anniversary of the second-greatest intelligence failure in American history. U.S. intelligence officers took seriously their responsibility to prevent a subsequent attack by every legal means at their disposal, and so far they've succeeded. As thanks, they've been accused of being a caste of 21st century Torquemadas by much of the media, and put in legal jeopardy by their own Justice Department.

"Which office do I go to get my reputation back?" former Labor secretary Ray Donovan famously asked after being acquitted of larceny and fraud in the 1980s. More than a few current and former CIA officers must now be asking themselves the same question. Judging from Mr. Holder's begrudging concessions, it won't be the Justice Department.

The Alinskyites lie, mock, falsify and do anything to win. It's not for nothing that the left has a group called "by any means necessary"