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After months in eye of storm, White House is counsel out
Gregory Craig was at the center of administration debates on overturning Bush-era policies on Guantanamo and torture.
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WASHINGTON - White House counsel Gregory Craig said on Friday that he would resign at the beginning of next year, ending a sometimes tumultuous tenure as President Obama's top lawyer after 10 months at the center of some of the toughest issues and stormiest internal debates that have confronted the administration.
The announcement was timed to coordinate with a Justice Department decision that five terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay will be taken to New York to face trial.
That decision was a milestone in the effort led in part by Craig to figure out what to do with prisoners held for years without charges and then close Guantanamo by January.
In an interview, Craig sidestepped the question of whether he was pushed to leave because of unhappiness within the White House over the handling of Guantanamo and other thorny issues involving interrogation and detention of terrorism suspects. Although he said last month that he had "no plans to leave whatsoever," he said he had always intended to stay for only a year and would return to private practice.
Craig was handed one of the most difficult portfolios in the West Wing. He drafted executive orders banning torture and ordering the Guantanamo prison closed within a year. Over the objections of the CIA, he recommended releasing Justice Department memos describing aggressive interrogations. But when he tried to release photos of detainee abuse, an eruption of opposition within the administration led the White House to reverse course and order them withheld.
Civil liberties advocates called his departure a triumph of politics over principle because Craig was a strong proponent of reversing Bush-era policies.
In a White House that has had little turnover and few publicized episodes of infighting, the counsel's office has been an exception. Craig was the second lawyer to leave in the last week, after the resignation of the deputy counsel, Cassandra Butts.
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