I'm shocked:

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move.

Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.

Durham's mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism suspects for four years or more.

Yep, they're going right down that yellow string in the middle of the road:

With Monday's looming public announcement, however, the attorney general and his national security team appear to be staking out a middle ground -- rejecting a broad inquiry that could result in possible prosecutions of Justice Department lawyers in the Bush years as well as cabinet officers who developed counterterrorism policy; but giving civil liberties advocates at least part of what they wanted without supporting a full, independent truth commission to examine a host of Bush national security practices.

Yay!

NOTE And so what if there were deaths? I'm sure nobody in the West Wing knew about them, let alone saw photos, or videos, and I can't imagine anybody watched it all on a live feed. Right?

UPDATE Meanwhile, Panetta seems to be irritated, though it's not clear by what. The investigations, mild as they are? Less clout than he thought he had? Buried bodies he didn't know about?