Mark Mazzetti, the Gray Lady’s Grammar-Impaired Spook Stenographer
C’mon, NYT, don’t you remember how embarrassing it was when Judy Miller was playing warmonger stenographer in 2002? Then why are you guys whoring yourself out to serve disinformation again?
I’m speaking of this post on Nancy Pelosi’s press conference spelling out reaaaalllyyyy slowly that the CIA lied when it briefed Pelosi and Goss on torture in 2002. When I first looked at the post, the headline said something like, "Pelosi says CIA misled Congress" (sorry, I didn’t get a screen cap; I should have known). Now it has shifted its focus back onto the fact that a Pelosi staffer–not the CIA, as required by law–informed Pelosi that CIA was in the torture business in 2003.
And with its update–including reporting from the NYT’s spook guy, Mark Mazzetti–the NYT claims that Porter Goss refutes Nancy Pelosi’s statement.
According to the C.I.A. records, Ms. Pelosi attended the Sept. 4 briefing about the agency’s interrogation techniques with her Republican counterpart, Representative Porter J. Goss of Florida. Based on agency notes from the briefing, the two lawmakers were told the specific techniques “that had been employed” on Abu Zubaydah.
By then, that C.I.A. already used a number of harsh methods on Mr. Zubaydah, including waterboarding.
The C.I.A. records do not list the individual techniques that lawmakers were told about. However, in an op-ed last month, Mr. Goss said he remembers being told specifically about waterboarding during the September 2002 briefing.
“I am slack jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned,” Mr. Goss wrote in The Wall Street Journal.
Mark, Mark, Mark. I spelled this all out here, back when it became apparent to anyone with a command of the English language that Goss’ dispute with Pelosi had nothing to do with her contention (which was clear even then) that the CIA hadn’t told Congress that it had already been using waterboarding. Rather, Goss argued that Pelosi should have known that the CIA was going to use waterboarding given that they told Pelosi they had gotten approval for it.
Now, that’s clear even from the excerpt you’ve included in the post. Read more →