Attorney General Eric Holder has announced he’s going to appoint a prosecutor to investigate CIA interrogations of terrorism suspects, as a prelude to possible “full scale” criminal investigations.

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.

UPDATE at 8/24/09 11:40:29 am:

This text message just came in over my iPhone:

Breaking (2:32pm EDT): An internal CIA report says interrogators threatened to kill 9/11 suspect’s children.