Almost every scandal produces unlikely heroes, workaday or even flawed men and women who don’t make headlines but perform courageous acts of conscience, often behind the scenes and in the face of enormous pressure. Several such characters emerged recently from what has otherwise been a disgraceful chapter of American history involving the abuse of foreign detainees held by U.S. forces in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq. An extensive report released last week by the Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General is the first official document to lay out in exhaustive detail the extent of the fissures created within the administration because of disagreements over interrogation and detention policies. The report depicts the struggles of several Justice Department and FBI officials to thwart interrogation tactics they considered ineffective at best and illegal at worst. In the process, they stuck their necks out by clashing with military and CIA interrogators and Defense Department and CIA higher-ups, and they pressed their case at the White House, even when that task seemed futile. It was Pasquale D’Amuro, chief of counterintelligence at the FBI, who first directed FBI agents based in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002 to have nothing to do with interrogations that […]