The Hill’s Campfire Games on Intelligence Briefings
The Hill has a childish article out–one that encourages our Congress to function like a child’s playroom, and one that manufactures "news" at the whim of its sources. The "story," as told by the Hill, is that Republicans attended a closed briefing (the article doesn’t really explain that "closed" means "classified"), and then came out and made claims about what they heard in the briefing.
Republicans ignited a firestorm of controversy on Thursday by revealing some of what they had been told at a closed-door Intelligence Committee hearing on the interrogation of terrorism suspects.
Democrats immediately blasted the GOP lawmakers for publicly discussing classified information, while Republicans said Democrats are trying to hide the truth that enhanced interrogation of detainees is effective.
GOP members on the Intelligence Committee on Thursday told The Hill in on-the-record interviews that they were informed that the controversial methods have led to information that prevented terrorist attacks.
When told of the GOP claims, Democrats strongly criticized the members who revealed information that was provided at the closed House Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations hearing. Democrats on the panel said they could not respond substantively, pointing out that the hearing was closed.
Now, reading those first few paragraphs, you’d think you’d find a series of quotes from Republicans in the article that supported the claim that torture "had led to information that prevented terrorist attacks," right? The Hill promised "on the record interviews."
As it turns out, the Hill gives us just one on-the-record quote from a Republican who attended the briefing, and it doesn’t quite live up to billing:
Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.), a member of the subcommittee who attended the hearing, concurred with Hoekstra [who was not at the briefing, that they told him interrogation worked].
“The hearing did address the enhanced interrogation techniques that have been much in the news lately,” Kline said, noting that he was intentionally choosing his words carefully in observance of the committee rules and the nature of the information presented.
“Based on what I heard and the documents I have seen, I came away with a very clear impression that we did gather information that did disrupt terrorist plots,” Kline said.
Kline makes two claims:
- The hearing did "address" techniques that have been in the news lately
- We did gather information that did disrupt terrorist plots
And from this, the apparently English-challenged Hill writer, Jared Allen, claims that GOP members–plural–said they "were informed that the controversial methods have led to information that prevented terrorist attacks." In the bits Allen quotes, after all, Kline makes no claims they were even briefed about what information they got from torture, and he certainly makes no claim that the information that disrupted terrorist plots came from torture. Maybe Kline said it, but if so, Allen forgot to report it. Just like he forgot to report the other on-the-record interviews proving this case.
Now what Allen does give us, in abundance, is on-the-record quotes from Republicans who didn’t attend the briefing. There’s Crazy Pete Hoekstra, who wasn’t at the briefing:
“Democrats weren’t sure what they were going to get,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (Mich.), ranking Republican on the Intelligence panel, referring to information on the merits of enhanced interrogation techniques. “Now that they know what they’ve got, they don’t want to talk about it.”
[snip]
Hoekstra did not attend the hearing, but said he later spoke with Republicans on the subcommittee who did. He said he came away with even more proof that the enhanced interrogation techniques employed by the CIA proved effective.
“I think the people who were at the hearing, in my opinion, clearly indicated that the enhanced interrogation techniques worked,” Hoekstra said.
It seems to me the story from these quotes ought to be:
- The Ranking Member of HPSCI thinks people should immediately talk about the content of classified briefings
- The Ranking Member of HPSCI treats hearsay–the comments of his members who attended a briefing–as proof
- The Ranking Member of HPSCI is politicizing intelligence
But instead, Allen seems to have followed Hoekstra down the road of taking hearsay evidence as clear proof (it’s not even clear that Allen asked Hoekstra who he had talked to about the briefing).
And then, Allen relies on a quote from John Boehner that doesn’t even pertain to this briefing
“It’s been three weeks since I asked Speaker Pelosi to back up her allegations that the CIA lied to her or purposely misled her,” Boehner said at his weekly press conference. “Allowing this to hang out there is unconscionable. And I just think the silence from Speaker Pelosi is deafening.”
That’s it. That’s what the Hill’s Jared Allen gave us to back up his claim that Republicans, in on-the-record interviews, made claims about those briefings.
I don’t know whether Jared Allen is this dumb or what, but congratulations to Crazy Pete–you sure found your mark, a reporter so gullible he’d print your story, absent any proof, and with it declare "a firestorm" that serves your political spin.
Me, I think the Hill’s marshmallow just went up in flames.
From The Hunting of the Snark.
The Hill purports itself an odd horned beastie, eg. persistently listing Josh Marshall among its “columnists” though he’s AT MOST emeritus, as per wee Yorkie], alongside the ‘likes’ of Kos and ‘lusts’ of Dick Morris. Herding all those cats is scandalsheet purist Hugo Gurden, ex of the UK’s Telegraph, Canada’s National Post and presumably a few failed tabloids that, whether by pressure of unpaid court awards for slander or otherwise, never reached the lofty heights of the Enquirer. It appears to exist to serve a purpose pretty much on par with that of the Rasmussen line of designer pollsters.
On a more hopeful note, ms e wheel’s branding appears to have inspired at least some in the funnier reaches of the msm:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/…..nntelnaes/
“There is something nasty in the woodshed.”
I love ‘Cold Comfort Farm’!
Ok, it seems to me that even the hearsay doesn’t agree!
Some repubs went to a briefing and one repub, via hearsay, says he agrees with another repub’s hearsay. But the first hearsay account used the words “enhanced interrogation” as working – while the second hearsay account, termed agreement, only agrees that “interrogation worked”.
Got that? (twists neck like pretzel!)
Well, I too, just by hearsay, agree: “Interrogation works!” But I only am referring to normal “interviewing type” interrogation. So if any repub tries, via hearsay, to quote me as endorsing torture: I disavow that entirely (and my definition of torture is very, very elastic.)
EW, you are the best!
I hereby throw out a theory: If repubs stop spouting nonsense, fewer people will get stiff necks from trying to comprehend nonsense! And personally, I consider that torture! (And it’s not working!)
Re:
This sounds a lot like Cheney’s recent hedge on the success of torture alone by expanding his claim of success using an umbrella reference to “the Interrogation Program” inclusive of traditional interview interrogation methods.
Disown torture -> crossover previous claims of success of waterboarding to success of traditional interview methods -> create impression that Dems opposed traditional interrogation methods because they are ‘hiding’ information that traditional interrogations gave actionable intel.
I’m in complete agreement. “fudge” all lines.. make all words mean the same. Then endorse the “fudge” as what was “always fudge”.
Stiff neck ensues. It’s my fault, repubs will say.
EW, as soon as I read Kline’s statements, I thought, “Ooh! They can’t get away with that with us. We have been trained by EW. We can see the holes.”
I was so pleased with myself, not to mention ever-grateful to you.
Geez. Thought “torture works” was last month’s talking point. Must be tough for the Republicans, with that pending OPR report release, to keep going back to this.
I wish Obama would just declassify the whole mess. At this point, when even the number of water bottles being used is being discussed, there can’t possibly be a sources and methods justification for the remaining classification.
EW: check out how the following sentence is parsed:
“Based on what I heard and the documents I have seen, I came away with a very clear impression that we did gather information that did disrupt terrorist plots,” Kline said.
If the GOP talking point being pushed by the Cowardly Curmudgeon and his dutiful daughter were true, don’t you think Kline would have said something stronger?
Not only that, but the GOP seems to be using the classified/closed door hearings to make a point which can’t be disproved definitively UNTIL said documents are declassified, and by then, the Republican talking point will already have sunk in.
I demand that ew immediately apologize to children everywhere for comparing them to the House Republicans. At least when children play ‘I’ve got a secret’, everybody knows that the people who don’t know the secret really don’t know the secret. This is way sillier than a children’s game.
Exactly! Children love rules. They play by them. They argue over them.
Repubs love nonsense! (And any and all rules are subject to pixie dust!)
Altogether different!
Well, it did set off the childish response from Jan Sch, who to her credit will call bull. But she should have instead started telling the reporter to learn better English.
Otherwise, fair point.
good grief, the republican schemes for playing the media is just getting nattier and nattier.
of course, it does require the gullible reporter to pull it off. and a dozing editor, as well. none of this will stick, and it will go down as yet another case of the repugs working the system.
and note how they cleverly arranged it so that no one who was actually IN the meeting is named as revealing anything, so how are ethics complaints to be filed, against whom?
just stirring it up; our party of holey truthiness, foiled again by, well, their own holey truthiness.
Dear Jared Allen: I would not have permitted your article to run if I was your editor; I would have pushed it back at you and asked for two sources, with at least one on the record, for each of the anonymous citations.
Nor would I tolerate the use of “closed” because this term is clearly different from “classified.”
You might tell your editors they are really slipping on the job by not spanking you. They aren’t doing you any favors because we will now view all your work with great skepticism.
Best of luck getting it right next time.
Inside beltway media is hard-wired for Repubs, kinda like the law of gravity, but it isn’t. Reporters and editors make choices, and they choose to give Republicans cover and dress-up their dubious claims.
No offense, not meant to demean your comment.
But the notion that the beltway media is wired towards conservatives is bullshit.
By which I mean the editors are brain-dead with regard to journalistic integrity; there’s no way this piece should have been published without an editor going ape-shit on Allen’s ass and telling him to do his damned homework before coming back with a piece of crap story like this.
And I say that as someone who has done just that, sent reporters back to get more and better sourcing and asked them to change terminology to reflect more accurately what happened.
Frankly, if all the content which wasn’t adequately sourced was removed, along with the content which was categorized incorrectly as “closed”, would there have been a news story here? It’s just another piece of partisan he-said/she-said without it, and we can’t even be certain it’s that much.
It’s not just the reporter but the editorial staff to blame.
When I read things like this ‘Hill’ article anymore, it’s not even a question of jounalistic integrity. It’s propaganda. See if this line of attack will work, if not, try something else tommorow.
O’Reilly, Hannity, or Charlie Gibson are not cherry picking facts or just leaving out things for their benefit, that’s their job and they do it well and are compensated for it.
Well, of course waterboarding “worked.” We must have gotten something out of it. I’m sure that by the time they were done with KSM, he’d admitted to the JFK assassination.
Excellent point. That means Poppy Bush and Arlen Specter are off the hook.
No need to parse them too intensely. This is (mostly) all about getting Pelosi.
What they are doing is “showing” that nothing happens to you if you run out of a classified briefing and spill politically useful (to you) information to the press. Nothing happens to you.
You can blabber all you want. As they are doing. Some of what they are blabbing may or may not have come from their classified briefing on interrogation techniques. It doesn’t matter. All they have to do is “show” that Congressmembers can come out of a classified briefing, go immediately to the press, make whatever statements they want about said briefing and what they learned in it, and nothing will happen to them, contrary to what Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have been saying.
This has the effect of undermining the rationale for not revealing — say — torture when it was first learned of, and for keeping mum about it afterwards, like Pelosi and the rest of the Dems did (not to mention the Rs, but that’s different.) And the bonus is that you get to spout off about how effective you’ve learned that torture was back when it was being used — whether or not that’s true — because you’ve just come from a classified briefing, you’ve run to the press, who you know will print and broadcast anything you say.
Smart.
Seems that if proof was offered one would have more than an impression.
Actually, the second claim is not that we DID gather information, merely that he GOT THE IMPRESSION that we did. That makes it a much more dubious claim than what you put up. It’s a much more squishy thing than “we did” get intelligence.
Furthermore, WHO CARES? If it was gotten under torture, then it was obtained by illegal means!
It DOES NOT MATTER if torture works.
TORTURE IS ILLEGAL!
Agreed, I’m sure that Mengele discovered something medically useful as well. It doesn’t change a thing.
Good point. I mean, theft generally “works” but it ain’t legal. Just like punching someone in the face. It generally hurts them and that’s usually the intention. The problem is when you do it not in self-defense but because you can and think you can later get away with it.
“John Jacob Waterboarder Schmidt
That’s my name, too!
And whenerver I go out
Republicans do shout
There goes John Jacob Waterboarder Schmidt”
everybody, sing along!
PLEASE DON’T!
I have been wishing that damn song would die as long as I can remember! My dad did too. At one time there was 3 different commercials with that song in them at the same time.
JohnJ (son of JohnJ)
It’s embarrassing when your HR person sings it to you during an interview.
Strangling the person responsible for your paycheck is NOT a wise career move.
Then the boys and girls gathered round the campfire and regaled each other for hours with
ghostspook stories.You kinda hate to mention the part where a responsible adult has to check the kiddies for ticks the next morning.
This kind of material requires one to stand on head. Be that as it may, torture is taken as given without flinching, which is a story in its own right.
They are testing limits. If Holder and Justice do nothing(or actually question) either The Hill reporter or Hoekstra, it’s on to the next level to see what they can get.
O/T a bit, Congress, its silliness and corpo masters
Corporations behind efforts to label Sotomayor ‘racist’
BY LARISA ALEXANDROVNA AND MURIEL KANE Published: June 5, 2009 Updated 1 hour ago
“The Committee for Justice (CFJ), an astroturf group established by big business in July 2002 to create an appearance of popular support for President Bush’s judicial nominees, is now leading the effort to oppose the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the US Supreme Court.
. . .
“Following the campaign for Pickering — who was eventually given a recess appointment by Bush but was never confirmed by the Senate — CFJ went on to support other ultra-conservative Court of Appeals nominees, including former Alabama Attorney General William Pryor, Miguel Estrada, and Janice Rogers-Brown. In all these cases, the CFJ campaigns invoked cultural issues — claiming, for example, that opposition to Pryor was based on anti-Catholic prejudice and that Estrada’s opponents were anti-Hispanic — but the real objective was to move pro-business judges onto the courts.
“At the peak of the Pryor confirmation battle in November 2003, Mother Jones ran an article titled “The Making of the Corporate Judiciary: How big business is quietly funding a judicial revolution in the nation’s courts.”’
http://rawstory.com/08/news/20…..or-racist/
I suspect that if the corporates manage to unhorse Sotomayor, who appears to be business-neutral, they will be very, very sorry.
Me, I think the Hill’s marshmellow just went up in flames.
’smorans
Nice.
I seriously can not believe the GOP would politicize matters of National Security. /s
I think this is a classic case of a reporter trying to turn a non-newsorthy stunt into “news,” simply because it was on their beat. The “story” is a dog, so they bend over backwards to make a “firestorm” out of it. And Rayne is correct, any decent editor would have rejected this story, correctly detecting the bad journalism and the desperate bid to hype a wasted assignment (standing outside a closed hearing room on a GOP tip) into a printable story.
O/T, or how’s Dick “Dick” going to retire comfortably if people keep suing his businesses? (with several very interesting links)
6 soldiers sue KBR, Halliburton over burn pits
The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Jun 5, 2009 9:30:37 EDT
SAN ANTONIO — “Soldiers are among six Texans suing Houston-based KBR and Halliburton over burn pits at U.S. camps in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The suit filed in a San Antonio federal court alleges the military contractors burned everything from trucks and tires to human corpses in the large war-zone pits. Plantiffs say the burning waste released toxins that harmed at least 10,000 people.”
http://www.armytimes.com/news/…..ts_060409/
I read this parroted in ginormous blinking phosphorescent fonts of the HUffPo front page this morning and had to fight the gag reflex of them heaping exaggeration onto the Hill’s already exaggerated piece.
The plain-as-the-nose-on-your-face fact here is that regardless of who contends that these techniques “disrupted plots” or “thwarted attacks”, ie. “kept us safe”, all the evidence they’ve ever trotted out was the retarded Library Tower exampl. That was so weak that really pushing it would have only weakened it more as it was scrutinized.
There is no doubt in the world’s collective gut that had actual plots been disrupted because of ANY intelligence gained from torture, it would have served the administration’s belligerent agenda tremendously for them to have not only shouted it from the rooftops in relentless detail, but to demonstrate the uber-effectiveness of torture.
That didn’t happen. No getting around that. They are pissing down our backs and The Hill is holding their dicks.
If it worked so well, they should have gotten a victim to ‘fess up for the ‘53 deposing of Iran’s Prime Minister so Obama wouldn’t have had to implicate the CIA.
They blew it.
“marshmallow”
Fixed, thank you. Next thing you know, I’ll be getting “weenie roast” wrong.
These reports are all now using the Cheney shuffle. Essentially:
My point is that “it” is ambiguous in this context, and the program has many other components. Mainstream reporters are going for that bait.
so i GUESS the repuglitarded message for 2010 is:
“TORTURE WORKED”
good luck with that
I’m gonna have to denounce them, in a loud and colorful voice, cuz I don’t care how well Crimes Against Humanity work
an, you kno, my moral values ain’t protable n stuff
so the repuglitarded are gonna have to deal with that
How could an Irishwoman who drinks beer from Cork miss the “mallow”?
Gee, EW,
Jared Allen couldn’t write the story you propose, no matter how accurate. It would make the Republicans look bad and he would lose his access!
To continue to “report” he has to keep that access. (Otherwise he’d have to start working for a living and digging out real stories instead of skating easy by transcribing whatever the sources want reported.)
Secrecy permits selective and creative leaking…and that’s the main reason that it is used. You can just invent various realities to talk about in public and then claim that there really is no way to verify it besides relying on faith…
ot, media update:
rick sanchez is makin faux gnus “THE NEWS”
looks BAAAAAD when a character like sanchez can take ya to the woodshed for shoddy work
billo oliely is joining the newtster an lushbo
soon, they are gonna be the main feature of a MAJOR discussion is America
an we’re gonna call the discussion “A CANCER on our Country”
hey lushbo, oliely, newtster
TRY TELLING YOUR STORY TO THE ANGRY MOB
that usually works out well …
You just disemboweled yesterday’s attempt to make points on the “Torture is useful” front, but let’s get back to the center of things. Torture is un-American, against U.S. Laws, and breaks our Geneva Convention commitments. “Effective” is immaterial [and, by the way, it also doesn’t work]…
As to John Klein, who represents the 2nd district in Minnesota…
He was elected on his third try for Congressional Office, was only successful after the 2000 redistricting and a change of address.
In fact, Klein is a former Military Intelligence Officer. His great claim to fame was carrying the Nuclear Football during most of the Reagan Administration. After he retired, certain circles in Northern Virginia recruited and funded him to move to Minnesota and try to unseat a DFL’er, something that was only accomplished after a district was designed for him, and after one of the former DFL’ers lucked out by being caught in the House Banking Scandal.
He still campaigns for office with pictures of himself carrying the Nuclear codes in the shadow of Reagan. I think he could be beaten if the DFL had a strong candidate who knows how to campaign in that district (a Tim Walz for instance who represents the 1st district to the south of the 2nd), and if determination to invest in the campaign were made. Essentially Klein is a Republican neo-con robot, just the kind of guy who would be proud of carrying someone elses briefcase.
Always reassuring when a guy like that has the launch codes.
Yee-hah!
Seriously, is there anything BUT spin out there any more.
Part Three of comment: The GOP are serious putzes.
in case anybody was wonderin about it, this si what I mean about Marcy proving what I’m already thinking
I saw the link last night
I think EW did a better job of splainin it than I did:
but I’ll let Y’all decide fer yerselves