Did CIA’s Handsomely Paid Contractors Doctor Its Log Books, Again?
I wanted to return to one other detail of John Brennan’s (designed to be made public, I believe) January 27 letter to Dianne Feinstein explaining the urgent need to continue the “investigative, protective, or intelligence activity” targeted at CIA’s overseers.
In the letter, Brennan describes the original basis for CIA’s claimed suspicion into SSCI this way:
CIA maintains a log of all materials provided to the Committee through established protocols, and these documents do not appear in that log, nor were they found in an audit of CIA’s side of the system for all materials provided to SSCI through established protocols. Because we were concerned that there may be a breach or vulnerability in the system for housing highly classified documents, CIA conducted a limited review to determine whether these files were located on the SSCI side of the CIA network and review audit data to determine whether anyone had access the files. [my emphasis]
The original basis CIA used to justify investigating their overseers was a log purportedly recording which documents they had been given.
Recall that CIA worked with contractors — SAIC, as I understand it — to review and re-review each document before they turned it over to SSCI.
CIA insisted that the Committee review documents at a government building in Virginia. Once the CIA produced relevant documents related to the CIA detention and interrogation program, the CIA then insisted that CIA personnel—and private contractors employed by the CIA—review each document multiple times to ensure unrelated documents were not provided to a small number of fully cleared Committee staff.
This process accounts for much of the $44 million cost of the report.
The log must have come out of this process: contractors, being paid handsomely by the CIA to slow the investigation, recording each document that they claimed to hand over to investigators.
So at the base of Brennan’s claim is a log, made by self-interested contractors employed by CIA, about torture.
The CIA’s contractors don’t have a very reliable history recording issues relating to torture.
Recall that — contrary to much of the public reporting on the matter — the destruction of the torture tapes did not just destroy ugly images of torture inflicted on Abu Zubaydah.
In addition, by destroying the torture tapes, CIA destroyed evidence that:
- The CIA’s contractors used torture on Abu Zubaydah that exceeded the guidelines provided by DOJ
- The CIA’s contractors’ descriptions of those torture techniques — in written cables and logs — did not match what they had actually done to Abu Zubaydah
- By the time CIA shut down the Thai black site and decided to stop taping their torture, someone (the CIA’s contractors?) had already destroyed or sabotaged a number of the torture tapes, including ones depicting waterboarding
That is, one of the likely reasons why CIA destroyed the torture tapes is that their handsomely paid self-interested contractors produced a substantively inaccurate log about torture.
And at the base of the CIA’s witch hunt into SSCI staffers is a log about torture presumably made by handsomely paid self-interested contractors.
Brennan’s own words, at a minimum appear to put the lie to Brennan’s claim that they did a “limited review” but might also put the lie to everything Brennan is trying to claim, “Because we were concerned that there may be a breach or vulnerability in the system for housing highly classified documents, CIA conducted a limited review to determine whether these files were located on the SSCI side of the CIA network and review audit data to determine whether anyone had access the files.”
Brennan could not know what existed on the SSCI side, and who accessed it, that was not on the CIA side, unless they did a complete audit of every file on both sides. And yet Brennan says “these files” not “any files” indicating he knew what files he was looking for, even when they did not exist on the log nor on the CIA side. How could he possibly know the full range of files he was looking for on the SSCI side that should be removed before he found them?
His whole argument is backwards.
Files they claim were inappropriately on the SSCI side where not on the log and not on the CIA side, so how did they know what files to look for before they started looking? How did they even know that they should start looking unless they knew that files existed on the SSCI side that shouldn’t be there?
Liars always fuck up, and I think Brennan has done so big time!
I’m using a slightly different approach in questioning some of the purported “facts” in Brennan’s letter.
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He states :
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“nor were they found in an audit of CIA’s side of the system for all materials provided to SSCI through established protocols.”
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My questions are:
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1. Whether the audit of CIA’s side of the system was auditing just the CIA and contractor people who had access to that side of the system?
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2. Or whether the audit of CIA’s side of the system was auditing file access?
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If the audit of CIA’s side of the system was auditing only the CIA and contractor people who had access to that side of the system rather than auditing file access, then it necessarily limits itself to the CIA and contractor people who were supposed to be there, and misses entirely the universe of CIA and contractor people who “weren’t” supposed to be there.
I also believe that the audit of CIA’s side of the system was not auditing file access because if it was, they would have known who had touched each and every file provided to SSCI.
The means that there is a loophole in the CIA’s auditing process that you could drive a Mack truck through.
Hi Bmaz, Thanks for your work on the redesign. I’m still not getting the enhanced editing tools, but no big deal. It comes under the heading of “Is that a bug or a feature?”. It is good for me to stop, take a deep breath and reread my deathless proz(ak) before hitting the post button.
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The comments section is usually interesting. Bright, knowledgeable and insightful folks hang out here, some of whom I agree with, but usually learn something from. Comments can amplify points in the blog. Recently there have been clusters of more or less unhinged posts/rants from individuals. It’s not that I haven’t had my moments, but I realize that can pretty much crumb up a thread for everyone else.
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Any thoughts on requiring us to wait until there’s another post, or a time out, or something, whichever comes first, to keep any one of us from running roughshod over a thread? Or, is it just the price of unfettered speech and I should suck it up and quit whining?
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F1 is great, and for those of us in the south, it’s possible to appreciate Grand Nationals and other round track racers too. There’s something to be said for big cars with big torque to go with high horsepower. The idea that they’re all left turns is appealing too. It could be a model for the country.
“.. Recently there have been clusters of more or less unhinged posts/rants from individuals. It’s not that I haven’t had my moments, but I realize that can pretty much crumb up a thread for everyone else…”
agreed!
some recent comments have been uninterpretable and inte sely annoying.
hopefully, bmaz has a small “contract” with, say, saic to rendition and re-educate these folk.
or just to dissappear them.
Truth.
I apologize. I logged in, came back and got in the wrong blog. Meant to be in F1 open topic. DUH!
if much of the torture were done by contractors, i would think that fact would greatly change the political rhetoric which pols routinely attached to any defense of secrecy.
it’s one thing to protect misconduct and illegality by decrying the “exposure” of a cia employee (“one of our brave men and women on the front line of…”);
it’s another entirely to protect misconduct and illegality by decrying the “exposure” of one of our brave, highly paid contractors (who do work that even we can’t bring ourselves to do).
We know, or believe we know, that the initial torture of Abu Zubaydah, for which OLC provided legal cover, was run by contractor James Mitchell, later joined by his partner contractor Bruce Jessen. Still, too often forgotten is that Mitchell’s company had CIA on its governing board.
None of this is really about protecting contractors, but prote ting their superiors in the CIA, the NSC, and the White House.
“..whether these files were located on the SSCI side of the CIA network…”
come on mr. brennan, whose network is it?
the ssci network was supposed to be isolated from the cia network, not a part of it.
technically, if they had no access to it, cia can only know what they think (based on what they made available) went into the ssci network. they cannot know with certainty what ssci staff actually saw on the hard drives of the ssci system.
the problem the cia faces is that there is no reason at all why anyone looking at this matter should not assume the cia is lying about what it has done or has not done. lying is, afterall, a cia stock-in-trade, “tradestock” one could say.
All you alls’ writing is incredibly hard to read, but, from the original quote, the post and the comments, it’s clear that the CIA had undue, improper access to material in the hands of SCCI investigators. Throughout the investigation.
Brennan’s made little effort to conceal CIA meddling here, and he really had no need to did he? His casual, matter-of-fact words illustrate the extent of Executive branch agency power, and highlight the Senate’s essential lack of power.
Feinstein and Udall managed to get one man cashiered, but, that seems very small in the greater scheme of things. The newsmedia will focus elsewhere very soon, and the torture reports will remain hidden from the public.
The Congressional authority over the National Security empireeis a myth. This whole cesspool of corruption proves that the CIA and NSA is blackmailing most of Congress. And they blackmail or threaten or murder anyone else who dares question the American Gestapo.
It is all about the money. The spies can steal as much as they can carry. For Example, General Hayden is being paid millions of dollars every year, plus government pensions, plus whatever he can steal from the victims of his torture. The same goes for the other Generals of the American Junta, such as General Petraeus and Genera Allen, who are obviously still powerful members of our military dictatorship.
The phony War on Terror is all about money. The CIA created Al Qaeda. The greed of ur National Security Terrorist Overlords is only exceeded by their bloodthirsty brutality.
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