Priority #1: Gutting the Gitmo Gulag.

“Announcing the closure of the controversial detention facility would be among the most potent signals the incoming administration could send of its sharp break with the Bush era, according to the advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for the president-elect. They believe the move would create a global wave of diplomatic and popular goodwill that could accelerate the transfer of some detainees to other countries.” In the WP today, unnamed Obama advisors make the case for the president-elect closing the Gitmo gulag next-to-immediately. (The ACLU has echoed similarly, and the UN Human Rights Commission suggested thus back in 2006.)

Nevertheless, while agreeing Gitmo is a catastrophic mistake that needs to be rectified pronto, Slate‘s Jonathan Mahler and Newsweek‘s Dan Ephron sense some implementation problems ahead. “[T]he prisoner mess created by Bush with the stroke of a pen in November 2001, and made messier over seven years, will take time and resourcefulness to clean up…[T]he controversial facility will probably still be open for business a year from now.“

However the national embarrassment at Guantanamo is handled by the new administration, it seems a safe bet that some of the intelligence officials that have carried water for Dubya on Gitmo, torture, warrantless wiretaps, and other issues will soon be sent packing, namely Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA head Michael Hayden. “McConnell and Hayden, both career intelligence professionals, interpret the Obama team not reaching out to them as a sign that they will not be kept on, intelligence officials said.” But, hey, heck of a job, Mikeys.

U.S.: We Waterboarded.

“Hayden said Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003. Hayden banned the technique in 2006, but National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell told senators during the same hearing Tuesday that waterboarding remains in the CIA arsenal — so long as it as the specific consent of the president and legal approval of the attorney general.“

Not to be lost in the Super Tuesday shuffle (as intended): CIA Director Michael Hayden admits that we’ve waterboarded at least three high-level detainees. “Human Rights Watch, which has been calling on the government to outlaw waterboarding as a form of illegal torture, called Hayden’s testimony ‘an explicit admission of criminal activity.’”

Musical Chairs for Team Dubya.

In not-unrelated news, the Dubya White House shuffles its deck to make ready for divided government, replacing failed Supreme Court bid Harriet Miers as White House counsel (likely in favor of someone more aggressive, so as to counter Dem subpoenas), kicking national intelligence director Nicholas Negroponte over to State (to be replaced by Vice Admiral Mike McConnell), appointing Thomas D’Agostino as new nuclear chief (the old one, Linton Brooks, seems to have been of the “Brownie” school of management), putting Iraq ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in John Bolton’s former position at the UN (his job goes to Ryan Crocker), and overhauling their top military team in Iraq. As the WP‘s Dan Froomkin reads the tea leaves, “I see a possible theme: A purge of the unbelievers.”