Pelosi: Of Hidden Memos and Covert Ops Hidden in Supplementals
I wanted to point out two more details from the Pelosi press conference the other day when she made her comments about briefings on torture (the complete transcript of this section is below).
First, Pelosi points out that one thing BushCo did was put intelligence-related appropriations through without telling the intelligence committee what they were putting through.
Q: Does this call into question the value of the briefing then, if they are not telling you fully…
Speaker Pelosi. I have questioned the values of the briefings over and over and over again. We only know what they choose to tell us and the manner and time in which they tell us. And that is why when people are talking about – whether they are talking about torture, or whether they are talking about wiretapping, or whatever you are talking about, we really have to have a change now in how Congress can do its oversight, because we expect and demand the truth.
And that’s why I, when I became Speaker, established this joint committee between the Appropriations Committee and the Intelligence Committee, because the fact is they really were not fully briefing the Intelligence Committee. And they have to answer to the Appropriations Committee because that’s where their funding comes from.
It is a long story, it’s an evolution. It used to be the Intelligence Committee – you couldn’t appropriate unless the Intelligence Committee authorized. It was almost effectively an appropriation. Over time the Intelligence in the Bush years became part of supplementals so there was absolutely no sharing of information. They would just stick the request in the supplementals. We said, "Okay, if they are going right to appropriations, we will have members of the Intelligence Committee serve in this hybrid committee, part Intelligence, part Appropriations." [my emphasis]
We know that BushCo briefed Toobz Stevens and Daniel Inouye on the warrantless wiretap program in December 2001. (Yeah, I know. There’s a twosome I want guarding my civil liberties.) I wonder if they got more substantive briefings than the Gang of Four?
And of course, we know the entire Iraq War was paid for on supplementals. So there were billions and billions of dollars to sneak illegal programs through.
And finally, a point klynn and Sara have been making–the guys who did this torture were contractors, not CIA officers. Which means they only had to get Uncle Toobz and his buddy Inouye to approve a contract in an emergency supplemental. And voila! We’ve got state-sanctioned torture!
Pelosi also referenced memos they had previously not known of:
When you are there, you only have the benefit of the information that they give you. You don’t even know if there are other opinions, and that’s what we wanted to find out, and now we are finding out that there were.
I don’t know if she’s referring to just the 2007 memo Spencer scooped, the 2003 memo described by the WaPo last year, or whether there are others. My guess, of course, is that there are more memos–and I’m betting that 2003 one includes reference to use of drugs in interrogation.
But one thing is clear: even Pelosi is still learning new details of the torture program. There’s a lot more to come yet.
Here’s the transcript:
Q: The Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday put out a timeline of sort of what went on with regard to the interrogation practices…
Speaker Pelosi. Dana, could you hold on?
Does anybody have a question on the agenda as we go from here? I am happy to change the subject if that’s what you want to do. Okay.
Q: And made clear that in the fall of 2002 key members of the Intelligence Committee, including yourself, were briefed on interrogation methods, including water boarding. At the time you were briefed, did you raise objections?
Speaker Pelosi. It is not appropriate for me to talk about what happens at briefings. It is very interesting that people are talking so freely. But I can say this: they have been talking about it for a while. At that or any other briefing, and that was the only briefing that I was briefed on in that regard, we were not – I repeat, we were not told that water boarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.
What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel – the Office of Legislative Counsel opinions that they could be used, but not that they would. And they further – further, the point was that if and when they would be used, they would brief Congress at that time, A.
B, I know that there are some different interpretations coming out of that meeting. My colleague, the Chairman of the committee, has said, "Well, if they say that it’s legal, you have to know that they’re going to use them." Well, his experience is that he was a member of the CIA and later went on to head the CIA. And maybe his experience is that if they tell you one thing, they may mean something else. My experience was they did not tell us they were using that. Flat out. And any – any contention to the contrary is simply not true.
Now, to your second point, there is no ability for Members to take this anyplace because you cannot even take it to your other colleagues on the committee. They are talking about what their certain legal opinions are. That’s what they’re telling you. However, what I have tried to do when I became – in the light of these things is to say that it’s the responsibility of the executive branch, which controls all of that, to inform the committee, the Intelligence Committee, because the Intelligence Committee has to vote on these issues, has to make important decisions about them, and they don’t even know it’s happening. And you can’t tell them. And I have always been truly faithful to never disclosing, because that is what the law is, what happens in those briefings.
And so, you know – flat out – they never briefed us that this was happening. In fact, they said they would if and when they did?
Q: This is obviously very important…
Speaker Pelosi. It is.
Q: In the filing that was released, it was by the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday – I am sure you are aware of it.
Speaker Pelosi. Yes.
Q: It does pretty specifically talk about the fact that Abu Zubayda, they started using these tactics, including water boarding in 2002 and continued doing it in 2003 and 2004.
Speaker Pelosi. I was not briefed on that.
Q: And in the fall, 2002, after the use of interrogation techniques on Abu Zubayda, CIA records indicate that the CIA briefed the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Committee on Intelligence
Speaker Pelosi. They didn’t tell us that. They may have briefed us on something, but they did not brief us to that effect. They can say whatever they want, but the fact is they did not brief us in that regard.
Now, people hear things and say, "I would have concluded that they would have done that because the CIA, their business is deception." And if Mr. Goss read something into it from his experience in the CIA, or what he learned later when he became Chair – head of the CIA, that is something quite different than my experience, which is as a Member of Congress I expect when somebody tells me something, they are telling me the truth.
Q: Does this call into question the value of the briefing then, if they are not telling you fully…
Speaker Pelosi. I have questioned the values of the briefings over and over and over again. We only know what they choose to tell us and the manner and time in which they tell us. And that is why when people are talking about – whether they are talking about torture, or whether they are talking about wiretapping, or whatever you are talking about, we really have to have a change now in how Congress can do its oversight, because we expect and demand the truth.
And that’s why I, when I became Speaker, established this joint committee between the Appropriations Committee and the Intelligence Committee, because the fact is they really were not fully briefing the Intelligence Committee. And they have to answer to the Appropriations Committee because that’s where their funding comes from.
It is a long story, it’s an evolution. It used to be the Intelligence Committee – you couldn’t appropriate unless the Intelligence Committee authorized. It was almost effectively an appropriation. Over time the Intelligence in the Bush years became part of supplementals so there was absolutely no sharing of information. They would just stick the request in the supplementals. We said, "Okay, if they are going right to appropriations, we will have members of the Intelligence Committee serve in this hybrid committee, part Intelligence, part Appropriations."
But as we go forward, it is not just about torture. It’s about how we collect intelligence to protect the American people. And that is a very serious responsibility of Congress to do the proper oversight and to work with the administration, whatever the party, in a very nonpolitical way to get this done.
Q: At the time when you did receive these legal opinions, as you put them, did you raise any objections, legal, moral or otherwise?
Speaker Pelosi. That’s not the point, Mike. The point is they come in to inform you of what they are doing. What my point was, are they doing this? No, they’re not doing it. And then to leave there to see what recourse we had, which was none.
Q: But certainly you had the right and even responsibility to…
Speaker Pelosi. You would have to – you would have – same thing with wiretapping. This is what they’re doing. That’s all they do. They don’t come in to consult. They come in to notify. They come in to notify. And you can’t – you can’t change what they are doing unless you can act as a committee or as a class. You can’t change what they are doing.
Q: Going forward now, this information is in the public realm. How do you favor approaching any investigations on how this all came out?
Speaker Pelosi. I have always been for a truth commission, because I think this is very important. The question that was there was should there be immunity or not. I don’t think there should be total immunity. I think it should be a case by case basis. Maybe there are some cases where immunity is appropriate; maybe there are some cases where it is not. But I don’t think that we should just say everybody who comes into that room takes an immunity bath; just because they showed up that day, they have immunity.
Q: Are you talking about the Justice Department people that gave the opinions, or the people that carried out the actual enhanced interrogations?
Speaker Pelosi. I think the White House – the Administration and the Justice Department have been very clear. They have said those who acted upon these legal opinions by following orders would not be pursued, if that’s the word.
Investigated. Whatever.
My question is that’s one thing when you go down with the ruling and the direction. What is it about those who made those rulings? And what about those above who may have directed those rulings or acted upon those rulings? Those who are making policy? I think you have to make a distinction between those who are implementing the policy and those who are making the policy.
The President has said those who were implementing it on the strength of these legal opinions would not be pursued. I did not hear in that statement from the Attorney General that it applied to others above. I think that’s an appropriate pursuit for a commission.
But let me just be very clear about this. These are not glory days for our country in terms of this enhanced interrogation and the rest and in terms of how information is acquired in our country outside the law. It is clear now that that has happened. When you are there, you only have the benefit of the information that they give you. You don’t even know if there are other opinions, and that’s what we wanted to find out, and now we are finding out that there were.
The bigger point, the bigger point is not to absolve them by casting aspersions. The bigger point is how do we open this up so that Members are not actually more hamstrung by being briefed than they would be not briefed. You have more freedom to make inquiry, pursue questions, challenge decisions if you don’t have the briefing than you do if you do have the briefing. And that is what has to change.
As a member of the Intelligence Committee, I thought I was being briefed until I became a senior member, and then I realized that the members of the committee are not privy to a great deal of information. And that simply is not right, and we fought to expand that, which we have expanded a little bit now in this administration. Hopefully we can expand it further. We are looking to our legislative prerogatives to see if we can do that.
But don’t leave anybody with the impression that some of the things that they were doing, that there was something that was tacitly or in any way received approval from us because we were bound by our commitment not to speak outside the meeting.
And that really is not – it is a bad idea, and for that reason some Members don’t even want to be briefed because they want to make the fight. And they’re acting under the law. You should be able to operate under the law in other ways as well.
I said downstairs, the “briefing” goss makes believe was the same type of “briefing” they used to get us into Iraq, this means “we tell you what we want you to hear, we do not tell give you the legions of information that say we’re wrong”
pelosi hits on that point here;
…
OT: Would someone speak about Friday’s Rasul v. Rumsfeld ruling? Corporations are persons but people who breathe (when allowed and not being waterboarded) are not persons…great way to run Bush/Cheney’s religious crusade. What was the Obama Administration thinking?
OT,but a subject made for EW. identical to your union point about US airways, except that here our hero is speaking out against Rush Limbaugh.
there is a diary presently by sara in seattle on dkos.
2nd in command alabama speak out vs. Rush/black teenagers calls it hate speech
this is the source.
http://www.thebostonchannel.co…..etail.html
2nd in command testifies before congress next week. he is impeccable also cute. also credits his union training for knowing what to do.
please help get this out.
back to silent lurking. hello to all.
her is the diary. she deserves the ht/credit not to mention that i got her handle wrong, too.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyo…..ch-Updated
But wouldn’t this still have to go through the Intelligence Committee…if there was any supervision of these contractors at all? Where did these “contractors” fit in the flow chart of command and control otherwise? Where did they supply the intelligence, get the doctors and psychiatrists? Arrange the flights on military aircraft? Why are the secret “off-shore” prisons and holding sites referred to as “CIA prisons”? I don’t get this? These guys are mercenaries but not run through any of the “official” Intelligence network, so are not supervised by them?
Wait…just flashed on this. Cheney’s group of “private assassins”…under the supervision of the Vice-President. Could that be how these guys were “run”?
Bingo! This is exactly what Seymour Hersch was talking about…it’s the group of contractors run out of Cheney’s office!!!!
This is why Cheney has a special file on “Detainees”. Perhaps he has records that are not even held by the CIA, NSA or other groups in there…or that he destroyed since there was no duplication and he was the original source of that intel.
Well I think there are two things going on.
First, they’re putting programs involving torture and illegal wiretap through contractors so they can run these programs withotu oversight from Congress
Now, as Pelosi said, she has made sure there’s SOME overlap on Appropr (and to be fair to Kit Bond, he’s been pushing this in the Senate). So it may be that Cheney couldn’t do just contractors anymore or it may be that actual killing seemed overboard for contractors or it could be that Prince and Blackwater were in a heap of trouble or it could be that the Courts ruled that contractors don’t have the immunity that Cheney promised them.
But JSOC is miliary–not contractor. So for some reason the assassination teams are actually employed by the USG.
No. Follow me through the weeds for a minute . . .
The regular appropriations process — the authorization to spend the on-budget money in each fiscal year — requires that each of the “committees of jurisdiction” signs off on their section of the budget. The ag committee signs off on agriculture programs, the transportation committee signs off on road programs, and the intelligence committee signs off on intelligence programs. Executive branch folks come to explain their budget requests to each committee, other testimony is gathered, and over the course of 8 months or so the entire budget gets approved — usually in a collection of a dozen or so different bills that cover all executive branch agencies and departments. The Appropriations committee presides over the whole thing, while the committees of jurisdiction tackle their own part.
The supplemental appropriations process goes around all this. In theory, it is to be used for emergency spending — the kinds of things that come up but were unforeseen in the regular budget. These supplemental bills do not get nearly the committee work as regular appropriations. They could be narrow supplemental bills — say, aimed at flood relief in Minnesota, for example — or wide-ranging bills with funds for a whole passel of unrelated projects.
Bush used supplemental bills to fund the entire adventure in Iraq. From his standpoint, it had two major advantages. First, it kept all the Iraq spending “off-budget,” meaning he could hold up the budget every year and say “look how great we are doing” which would have been impossible if he had to count all the Iraq expenditures. Second, supplementals were pushed through Congress with much less of the usual oversight, meaning he could slip things in via friends on the appropriations committee.
That’s what Pelosi is saying happened here:
For Pelosi — or any Speaker — to be talking like this is, AFAIK, unprecedented.
So where in the Iraq or Afghanistan Supplementals were these programs hidden? Were the funds for some $200 million for cantractors for constructing and staffing a “water-treatment facility” between Kandahar and Kabul the place it was put into?
Keeping clandestine spending out of public sight can be done in a bunch of different ways, depending on the kind of program you are trying to hide. Even when the Executive Branch and the Legislative Branch are not trying to hide things from each other, they try to work together to hide legitimate intelligence activities from our enemies.
If we’re talking about Afghanistan, I would imagine that there are a number of anti-opium programs in the bill, one or more of which could be in some respect cover for a CIA operation in Afghanistan.
If we’re talking about finding intelligence related to chemical weapons development, you might find laboratory funding tucked into an NIH-related bill, funding for certain CIA operatives overseas in the State Department budget, etc.
Hiding the money in an appropriations bill — regular or supplemental — is not all that tough to do.
I’m willing to bet that Cheney, Addington, & Eliot Abrams established funds while they were in office that they still have access to, for various purposes. I’ll bet Obama & Co. would find it useful to have the IRS keep tabs on these guys, y’know, like the way the CIA keeps tabs on its agents to note significant shifts in spending habits. After all, isn’t that how they caught Aldrich Ames?
Bob in HI
Actually, it’s much easier than that. SImply use a task order (TO) for a service on an existing Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract.
Okay, just got a chill. What exactly is meant by “water treatment” facility?
The doctors who came by March 2003 for KSMs waterboarding were almost certainly CIA office of medical services OMS, physicians who work for the CIA. I say this because KSM was waterboarded with a pulse oximeter and doctor monitoring it, and the doctor had authority to cancel the interrogation (citation ICRC report leaked to NY review of books). This also jives with the revised protocols for waterboarding described in Bradbury’s 2005 memo.
Some of the interrogators were likely contractors who were former SERE school instructors.
But the provenance of others is less clear. From the ICRC report, when KSM was waterboarded in what he thinks was Poland, there were 3 chief interrogators:
Unless they were faking accents they don’t sound like our former military. All I know is that to be actively torturing at 65 suggests an elite class of sadist and special helper.
I don’t think those doctors coudl have been OMS doctors yet, could they? Because the 2005 memo says that OMS got involved pursuant to the 2004 IG report, and report complaints from OMS that could barely–if at all–precede KSM’s waterboard bc the inquiry started in 2003.
I absolutely agree there was doctor or something there. BUt I don’t think it was OMS.
I am working on a post right now speculating on this, hopefully for tomorrow. But I am pretty sure it is OMS…. Don’t scoop me!!!! I only get one shot a day.
cool
blogger races
I got $5 on drational, anybody in ???
sorry ew, but I know you’ll take the dive …
(wink)
One thing I can tell you I am sure about is that I don’t want a race with Marcy Wheeler. I am pretty sure she spikes her pints with RedBull.
The ICRC report is from the detainee’s point of view, anyone with monitoring equipment would appear to be a medical professional. According to the Bybee Memo “…[the] procedure will be monitored by personnel with medical training and extensive SERE school experience“(P.15). This could easily refer to an outside contractor BTW.
I don’t know how the appropriations work, but I’ll bet anything that this was run through JPRA/SERE somehow. DemocracyNow did a report about the company Mitchell Jessen & Associates. They seem to be a lynchpin of sorts. If someone could FOIA a contract or the appropriations related to them, I’ll bet it would show how this torture thing was financed.
If I’m connecting the dots correctly, the guy who founded this company (Bruce Jessen) is the source of the SERE psychologist memo mentioned in several places. He had circulated a draft exploitation plan April 16, 2002 (source: Armed Services Committee report). I think he made up the plan, wrote the supporting documentation for the plan’s approval, and then created a contracting company to bill the government for implementing the plan and training personnel.
If this assessment is right, until OMS took over, Mitchell Jessen looks like the primary arbiter deciding if harm was being done to detainees. Wonder how well that pays?
(I’ve never commented before … hopefully the link works)
This is pretty much the scenario as I see it too. Not sure of the psychologist, but it looks like one or two (they are partners) designed, helped “legalize,” advertised, tested, and “proved” the torture program, which they then went on to teach and supervise. I’m beyond disgusted here.
EW has already had a lot of posts and commentary on this. But I really like your idea of requesting how the money was paid. For my part I’m more interested in seeing those psych “assessments” – which may be about as “professional” as the legal memos we’ve seen.
(p.s. I can vouch for kgb – he comments at TPM)
Hi there! Fancy meeting you here. (hey …. no winky emoticon)
Hi there KGB999 and welcome to EW. Mary is right, please do join us and comment often.
Nice to have you join us here in comments.
For you and TheraP and anyone else with background on Jessen:
How do we know with absolute certainty that Jessen is a psychologist?
We’re referring to him as “Bruce Jessen”, but his name appears to be “John ‘Bruce’ Jessen” depending on where we look for him.
I ask because this guy must have a history, and we need to follow it back, but we can’t do it if we are following the wrong person or if we are following a thread based on expectations rather than truth.
Going by the congressional report (p.16) ….
I started from there. And yeah, he appears to be going by John now. That’s something I’m noticing about these documents … they keep shifting the words used to describe the same people/entities/things. Anyhow, here are links to the business license/tax info on the company (UBI #602495307).
http://www.secstate.wa.gov/cor…..=602495307
http://dor.wa.gov/content/doin…..brdResults
I keep wondering if it’s a CIA front or a Halliburton/Blackwater-style profit scheme (or both).
I’m near Spokane, the plan is to go poke around the clerk’s office and try to see that older license and if there are other records … next free weekday. I’m really curious about records pre-2005.
Would be nice to know where Jessen is licensed as a psychologist, too…if ever…
The reference to his name appeared like so:
John “Bruce” Jessen
in one article I’d run across, can’t remember which one, suggesting that his middle name is NOT Bruce. I wonder if this is an op name rather like the op names given to the three abusers, I mean, interrogators who “quizzed” KSM.
There have been comments suggesting CIA personnel started this and stepped aside, leaving interrogation to contractors, but my gut tells me that an ACCM was set up to pay contractors through DoD, the contract was extended through CIA to Mitchell Jessen, and once in the payables system as a vendor under CIA, DoD could pay via supplemental.
– Uses the secret, internal to DoD approach Cheney used in Operation Scorpion;
– As an ACCM, no Congressional oversight, highly compartmentalized so nobody in CIA or DoD could get to it.
– Does NOT use CIA personnel, but leaves the dirty laundry with CIA;
– Is NOT military personnel, so no good doobie inside DoD could stop it;
That’s most of the key learnings from Iran Contra which Elliot Abrams shared right there:
– can’t trust our friends
– CIA has got to be totally out of it
– can’t trust the uniformed military
– got to be run out of the OVP
Cheney probably scripted the whole thing, but we won’t find fingerprints on this unless he gets arrogantly stupid and leaves us discoverable notes.
The only remaining question is who were “friends”, but they are probably glad to be well out of this so far.
Age 65 suggests that during the Reagan era they were age 45. Just some WAGs of nations of origin:
Latin American – Argentina, Chile
Morocco – that seems reasonable
Eastern Europe – Romania, Bulgaria
Would be interesting to cross-check these hints with some Amnesty International information from the Reagan-Bush I era.
And it would suggest they were of an age during Vietnam.
I mentioned the Phoenix Program today already, and it sure looks like they are calling up seasoned veterans of something like that.
How much you wanna bet these superannuated Abus are retired folks – maybe with experience from Vietnam-era ops like Phoenix called back in to lend their special expertise?
CIA did a lot of torturing in Vietnam….
and angola, bolivia, rhodesia
Like the two guys from outside Tillman’s company that appeared firing wildly, running up the hill for the kill then they disappeared before they were IDed. I’m betting they were out of the country in hours.
you’re gonna love this from talk left commenting on goss’s rediculous statement that the appropriations bills could have stopped the cheney/bush torture program;
that’s too funny, then he gives a hat tip to marcy;
marcy is teh bomb
To be fair, Laura had that angle first, and drational has been hitting it consistently all week.
Thanks for the H/T. I celebrated the CQ story for 12 hours then realized something was amiss. I’d invite folks to look at the comment thread of my “Horsehead” diary from Tuesday morning. I doubled down on this being a CIA hit job in the middle of the “she had it coming to her” frenzy whipped up by Glenn and others.
Here are some choice comments from the rational left:
“THIS DIARY IS BULLSHIT”
“Yeah, I would like to believe this theory Except that, you know, it’s based on bullshit.”
” This post is more bullshit.”
” Another conspiracy theory hits the recommended”
” Looks like a conspiracy theory to me.”
OT – has to do with comments I made in the last thread: Just looking at it from a distance, what the heck is (was? I’m not up to date.) Liz Cheney doing in the State Department and on the Middle East desk? What can she be except a mole?
And her husband is a piece of work: Philip Perry of Latham & Hawkins, at present. Liz is a convenient little conduit, isn’t she?
Liz Cheney
1. Building her resume for some future Republican administration position (hereditary rule, you know)
2. Making sure that Condoleeza Rice did not start being honest with Congress (ha!) or undercutting Daddy’s operations.
3. Putting State on notice that Daddy’s watching.
It might be helpful to look at the timing of the appointment in the context of the relationship between the OVP and State.
Inouye is one of my senators. Time to get busy.
Bob in HI
It doesn’t look like they were really ‘Briefings’ – it looks more like they were ‘Dupings’ – designed to ‘expose’ the Members to enough information to make them Complicit with the Administration’s Policy, without revealing the depth of Bush’s Depravity embodied in the Policy.
“Speaker Pelosi. I have questioned the values of the briefings over and over and over again. We only know what they choose to tell us and the manner and time in which they tell us. And that is why when people are talking about – whether they are talking about torture, or whether they are talking about wiretapping, or whatever you are talking about, we really have to have a change now in how Congress can do its oversight, because we expect and demand the truth.”
This doesn’t pass the smell test – Bush was acting like a Shameless Tyrant with the Cowering Congress. The ‘Briefings’ only provided a veneer of ‘cover’ for those Congressional ‘Leaders’ who were too afraid to challenge the Legal Foundation of Bush’s Napoleonic Megalomania – and they simply just caved-in to his demands – as opposed to ‘demanding the Truth’ that she says the Members expected.
(Btw, I suspect that somewhere – perhaps in a man-sized safe? – there is a photograph of Bush wearing the military uniform of the Unitary Executive – with more gold brocade than even Musharraf’s get-up – wouldn’t the smirk in that photo say a lot? I’m sure, too, that the photo, if it exists, is stamped “Treated as Top Secret/SCI”.)
The problem I see for Pelosi is that her line of “We were Duped” argumentation does nothing to explain her taking Impeachment off the table – except to put an exclamation point on just how Weak she is as a Leader whose Primary Responsibility here was Over-Sight – providing the Check and Balance – of an Administration that she helped to give Extraordinary Power.
Pelosi, for years now, has given the exact same account of what they were and were not told. Without us knowing why she stripped the powerful Harmon of her powerful chair. Few other Dems, including the Lieberman puppet Harry Reid, have such cajones.
I’m strangely beginning to trust her -and wouldn’t doubt she has more concrete reasons for removing impeachment, temporarily.
And I would note the future importance and power of her independence – even from Obama, with the dead silence of hack Steny Hoyer combined with Rahm’s absence.
so, yer gonna, what ???
FOLLOW THE MONEY ???
(SMILE)
go get em, guys
this is gonna be fun
(makes popcorn)
this person is the Speaker Of The House ???
has she ever read the fucking constitution ???
she can’t do ANYTHING ???
she has complete immunity from arrest or detainment
That is the most pathetic piece of shit abdication of power I have ever seen
She wasn’t, then. She was a ranking minority member of a committee. She didn’t get briefed again on this–nor did she become Speaker–until 2006.
she had the same immunity then as now
and when she became speaker, she promptly took impeachment off the table
knowing that this was happening
I knew
You knew
no way Pelosi didn’t know
And Pelosi should be grilled relentlessly on this:
“Knowing what you knew, why did you take impeachment off the table?”
Bob in HI
Actually, the question should be:
I have always thought there was a threat – explicit or implicit – from Bush/Cheney to Congress that either (1) they would simply dissolve Congress and wheel up troops to back it up or (2) whack or arrest and hold incommunicado those members of Congress who dared to move on impeachment. One has to remember that through all this time, the Padilla/al-Marri precedent (which allowed indefinite, incommunicado military detention on the President’s whim) was the law, at least in the Fourth Circuit. Even assuming Bushco would respect the distinction in the law between the Fourth Circuit and DC (A big assumption, seeing as how they grabbed Padila in Chicago, took him to NY, then to SC), you can’t get into or out of DC without going through the Fourth Circuit.
As Pelosi noted, Congress can only act through committees and that takes time. The Executive has a heirarchical chain of command, and moves much more quickly.
Well that would be interesting. Especially if it contradicts the guidance provided on page 12 of the Aug 1, 2002 Bybee memo where it is asserted that “the administration or application, or threatened administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality” would be a predicate act under 2340.
Let’s remember – Padilla (and, IIRC, others) has alleged that he was drugged at various times during his incommunicado captivity.
He went into captivity in 2001.
Ms. Pelosi may have correctly stated Obama’s political intent, but she is being loose in her language describing the de facto amnesty Obama issued.
He limited it to those who acted in good faith and in “reasonable reliance” on the opinion of counsel as expressed in the torture memos. That requires having seen the opinion, that the opinion on its face appears valid, and the person who acted stayed within the factual limits specified in the opinion, or facts reasonably inferred from facts in the opinion. (You can do A or B, but not both together, nor can you do C.)
It also requires not being in possession of facts that refute the facts or assumptions upon which the opinion relies for its conclusions of law. My guess is that senior figures involved at those serial NSC meetings, many of whom were lawyers or had advanced degrees and substantial governmental experience, and who saw the torture tapes, failed to meet that test.
As for those below them, who actually saw the opinions? Very few, we hear. They were locked up, in part, because Addington, et al., knew they were poorly drafted and would not hold up if subjected to lay scrutiny, let a lone an opposing lawyer’s scrutiny. In other words, the opinions are so flawed (though imposing in form, like a loan document), that no officer could have reasonably relied on them as justification to commit an otherwise illegal act.
If people relied on their boss’ word and not these opinions, how does that establish good faith reliance down the chain of command? I don’t think it does.
Was that scheme intentional? That is, to keep first-hand readers to a minimum, in part, so as to limit those who could reasonably rely on these opinions (assuming that was even possible). It puts lower ranks in an impossible position: everyone is relying on opinions they haven’t seen as justification to follow an otherwise illegal order. Cascading groups of people acted in reliance on their boss’ order, who relied on his boss, who relied on her boss, etc.
Prosecutors hate a tangled web, it makes it hard to prove guilty knowledge, and this is a doozy.
Haven’t checked to see if this has already been posted (it’s been a long day); if so, apologies.
LA Times:
“The CIA used an arsenal of severe interrogation techniques on alleged Al Qaeda prisoners for nearly seven years without ever seeking a rigorous assessment of whether the methods were effective or necessary, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/na…..ory?page=1
http://tinyurl.com/db86lg
So do we know when she was briefed, other than fall of 2002? It seemed before taht there was a specific briefing date for the Senators mentioned, but not Pelosi.
21/24 – she wasn’t speaker in 2002, but I think fp’s point is still as valid, that as a member of Congress she ahd absolute immunity for statements on the floor, and she could have even said on the floor that she was getting briefings she thought were incomplete, had questionable legal basis, excluded the remainder of the Gang of 8 and full intel committees, etc. And So I think the sequence of fp’s comment is if she, even now, doesn’t seem to know or acknowledge the power she had under the Constitution as a member of Congress (I’m thinking she was alive during the Pentagon Papers leak for example) then it’s kind of a sad commentary that someone who wants to pretend a lack of awareness of things like her power to engage in immunized speech on the floor is who we ended up with as Speaker.
And she is skipping over the fact that Harman did paper an objection at least, as did Rockefeller on the wiretapping. fwiw. Which is why she becomes totally nonresponsive in this part of the questioning
IOW – I don’t look good when I answer your question, so let me change the subject.
Towards the point in the exchanges about contractors and appropriations, though, I thought I’d resurrect this piece of info. Remember after Abu Ghraib some of what was coming out was info about CACI and Titan etc. and there were some requests by Congress for info about the contractors “we” had in Iraq. And somehow, the list Rumsfeld (well, the Coalition Provisional Authority – but Rumsfeld basically) produced didn’t include the contractors who were involved in the torture allegations. They were “ghost” contractors.
http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Research/2004PMC.htm
Congress still hasn’t really clarified the situations under the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA) to address the issue of contractors employed by a “made up entity” like the CPA that is basically the US, but denominated with a different title.
18 – but it isn’t mutually exclusive to think that she did have it coming to her, and also that the people orchestrating the attacks on her have more coming to them too. That’s what has been nibbling on the perimeters of all these unConstitutional acts as we all tried to rally behind “the Dems” to get them to act and let them know they had support and yet, when the did act, it was always to help the torture agendas and cover up agendas and illegal wiretap programs along. Whether it was Reid and MCA Kabuki, or Pelosi and taking impeachment off the table, or Harman and shrilling at the NYT, not for holding their story but for releasing it, or Greg Craig making relentlessly inaccurate observations on why Obama “had” to vote for telecom immunity.
I think the Dems need a leadership overhaul. The entire “Gang of 8″ needs to be replaced. That might be change I can believe in. Well, the Democratic half of it, anyway.
Bob in HI
Pelosi may not have been briefed, and the Bush administration may not have made any effort to do so.
Remember some news in early 2006 about Special Access Programs (SAPs) when DoD changed some rules about them?
There was discussion about the same time regarding the use of a signing statement on a supplemental spending bill H.R. 3338 (included funding for “providing support to counter, investigate, or prosecute domestic or international terrorism”). Bush was going to do whatever he damned well wanted with the money.
There was also discussion at the same time in 2006 about Alternative or Compensatory Control Measures (ACCMs), another alternative used to bypass Congressional approvals. We were looking at these recently after new revelations from Russell Tice on domestic spying — but these ACCMs are relevant to bypassing Congress for ops like anti-terrorist activities, too. Here’s a repost of what I believe to be William Arkin’s Early Warning blog post from WaPo, provided here because links to the original article have conveniently come up 404:
[It’s not my intent to violate a copyright, but somebody made this content unavailable at WaPo — very unusual, in my experience.]
Further, we have both a VP and a SecDef who are experienced in circumventing both DoD processes as well as the Executive office; take a look at both the “Halloween Massacre” of 1975 in which both Cheney and Rummy basically cleaned out Ford’s administration, and Operation Scorpion of 1991 Gulf War, in which Cheney managed to set up an op secretly inside DoD (although it was later terminated for its lack of merit before it could get off the ground).(1)
We have some money from 2002 appropriations.
We have Bush’s signing statement thumbing his nose at Congress.
We have two characters with chops at bypassing all kinds of rules/committees.
We have methods, through SAPs and ACCMs.
And we have members of Congress who’ve been told all manner of different things, who know they’ve been wiretapped, who’ve been threatened in an oblique manner (see Harman).
(1) Sidney Blumenthal, Salon.com. “THE LONG MARCH OF DICK CHENEY” 24 November 2005
Your comment brings me back to EW’s astute comment about the role of Sens. Inouye & Stephens in all this, which prompted me to write a short Oxdown piece that basically wonders about Sen. Inouye’s role in all of this. I have a suspicion that he knows a lot more than is currently on the record. He may be one of those “complicit” Democrats. As a WW II veteran with a Medal of Honor for his sacrifices (e.g, he lost an arm), and having first-hand memories of Pearl Harbor, he’s been somewhat hawkish on defense, and has gotten a lot of Defense-related monies for Hawaii. He was a member of the Gang of 14, and has a Blue-Doggish voting record. If anyone knows about his attitude towards torture, or warrantless wiretapping, I’m interested.
Bob in HI
42 Comment more, that was interesting and well written. There have been some other posts and comments along those same lines and there is even some hints at that in the Vanity Fair article that refers to his roles in the program. It really is worth fleshing out.
How much of Bush and Cheney’s $9 Billion in palletized Cash – Iraq Walking-Around Money – was Never Accounted for?
Yeah, there is that…$9B can buy a lot of covert ops.
But there were so many other opportunities to fund ops, a la Iran Contra.
Do you recall Blackwater getting smacked up for noncompliance with export laws with regards to shipment of “more than 100” silencers into Iraq?
This particular shipment was only one of at least 900 export violations.
Some of them may have been innocuous, but a shipment of more than 100 silencers looks more like arms trading (if not supplies for a cover JSOC hit team).
And this was just Blackwater; who knows what Halliburton/KBR and other contract firms were doing that we haven’t heard about.
I am one who believes Nancy Pelosi. George Bush & Dick Cheney wanted torture and needed it to justify their illegal war in Iraq, so it makes sense that they would cherry pick the intelligence to show the Senators & Congressmen/women to get their way.
Did Pelosi vote FOR the war?
-G
She voted against the authorization to use force against Iraq didn’t she?
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2002/roll455.xml
I hope I’ve linked to the correct vote! LOL Anyway, I’m positive she voted against it. Both Democratic Maine Congressmen also voted against the use of force in Iraq.
The right wingers so badly want to put all the blame about torture on the shoulders of Nancy Pelosi. This is just outrageous.
Dancin’ Dave cherrypicks pro-torture apologia in grilling Robert Gibbs. Gibbs pushing back strong.
Commented on an earlier thread about the host using technique of totally ignoring what’s already in the public record to press the R’s spin. So far, King Hands does it, Dancin’ Dave does it.
Going back to reread Frank Rich now. Maybe these guys should have read it, too.
I have not read all above, but we have not mentioned recently teh claim by Cheney that he was NOT part of teh executive. So while Pelosi seems to be clear on how the stuff was not (she says) reported accurately (from exec to legislative, and the bounds of secrecy in briefings, apparently not conveniently extending to members of the family (lil’cheney) of the VP in their 4th branch operation), we know the Bushies were hellbent on maintaining their executive privilege. So once again, Cheney operates outside the lines, because he was not part of executive but of a fourth branch of government, I guess the part that the framers left vague so as to give him the authority and cover the office of the VP requires.
If the Bush administration relied so much on the Appropriations Committees, why were they willing to sacrifice Ted Stevens in the end? Had he crossed them in some way?
The question could be posed is who would take that appropriations position if Ted were ousted?
-G
this diary from prostatedragon excerps commentary he found in 2006;
that’s what porter goss uses as his excuse for budget allowances from the democrats
that’s just an example, the democrats were shut out of the process plain and simple
that coupled with the FACT that “information” shared with democrats (and republicans) was redacted of all information that demonstrated what they were doing illegal, inefectual and COUNTER productive
as pelosi documents and is quoted in marcy’s main text;
Bush lawyers read Pelosi into only what Pelosi’s aide-de-camp wanted her to know – for plausible deniability.
First there’s a briefing about the briefing. Then there’s the actual briefing….etc.
(Aides-de-camp would not be subpoenaed for testimony. It is expected that they would perjure themselves, if necessary.)
That scenario presupposes the Bush people would limit the second briefing as per the request of the aides de camp. I can’t imagine the Bush people not snickering and telling Pelosi et al all the gory details to ensure whatever degree of complicity that ensures.
Can you?
From the Spokesman Review, August 2007:
The former president of the American Psychological Association is a partner in a Spokane-based firm linked to the CIA’s reported use of harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists at secret detention centers around the world.
Joseph Dominic Matarazzo, an 81-year-old former psychology professor at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, said in a statement Friday that he serves on the board of Mitchell Jessen & Associates and owns 1 percent of the firm.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com…..?ID=204358
Sickening.
Yes, that report combined with the followup report here certainly makes it look like Mitchell Jessen was a proto-typical CIA-type front company with a nominal amount of white washing in the form of minority ownership.
Cripes, Matarazzo is 81-years-old. Not exactly the kind of minority owner one worries about for very long…
Joseph Dominic Matarazzo is no longer listed as a part of the company. It looks like they changed the business licensing Aug. 19 2007 – less than a week after the article Rayne linked was published. Department of revenue records still show a date of April 2005, which is also the period several articles indicate is on a business license. It seems the association was broken in 2007 (or at least the records were updated to make it appear so).
Matarazzo’s area of study was in the impact of disease/fear of infection on the mental state(very rough description). Intuitively, there seem to be ways his experience could be used in detainee exploitation … I can also see how his credentials could simply be used to lend credibility to the endeavor; his involvement is a question mark to me.
I sure would love to see KSM, AZ and Al-Nashiri in real time and have the Broders and Frums and Krauthammers fall over themselves trying to explain how the terrorists used to be lucid and coherent in 2002 when they gave all that good info.
new poster up at the mothership, come on up
Jeff Kaye
Washington Post Helps JPRA Cover Up Complicity in Torture Program
I’d add a finer touch to the picture, to round it out. First you have CIA or Special Operations interrogators, then they resign and become contractors who go to work for CIA and SMUs (Special Mission Units — special operations).
So the guys who did the torture were CIA, Pentagon, etc., in the guise of contractors. The better to game the system, both re deniability and for the big bucks!
Can you imagine the despair those of us in Hawaii feel at having Fool-for-Life Inouye as our Senator?
Pelosi obviously knew torture was happening.
We all knew, and it was her job to know.
She took impeachment off the table in 2006!
If she didn’t know then, she’s beyond stupid.