Posts

Goss Won’t Elaborate on Torture Techniques that “Were To Be Employed”

/41 Comments/in /by

Almost four weeks ago, I pointed out that Porter Goss’ WaPo op-ed, purportedly attacking Nancy Pelosi, actually supported her primary contention that the CIA did not brief her and Goss that torture techniques had already been employed. It’s a detail that has gone almost unnoticed, as Republicans try to claim Nancy Pelosi should resign because Dick Cheney tortured.

But not entirely unnoticed. Greg Sargent has been patiently pushing for some clarification from Porter Goss. And today he got that clarification. Or rather, lack thereof: Goss has declined to say anything more than appeared in his WaPo op-ed, which (like Pelosi) speaks of torture prospectively. 

I asked a spokesperson for Goss if he would confirm that he and Pelosi had been informed of the use of torture. Goss was out of town, so it took her a while to get back to me, but now she has: She declined to answer the question, saying that Goss would not elaborate beyond what he said in a Washington Post Op ed last month.

In that carefully-worded piece, Goss did not write he had been told that torture had been used. Rather, he merely wrote that members of Congress were told that the CIA was “holding and interrogating” suspects and that EITs had been developed. He said that members should have “understood” that EITs “were to actually be employed” in the future, without saying that they were even told this, let alone told that they’d been used.

This does not contradict Pelosi’s claim that she was only told that such techniques were legal, not that they had been or certainly would be used — the crux of the GOP’s attack.

So I asked Goss’ spokesperson directly: Were he and Pelosi informed that EITs, including waterboarding, had already been used, and were they given a rough sense that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded more than 83 times the previous month?

Her answer: “He believes that his Op-ed makes it very clear and is not engaging beyond it at this time.” She declined repeated requests to elaborate.

Thanks to Greg for getting this (ahem) "clarification" from the old spook.

Can we please start talking about why, in September 2002, the CIA was unwilling to brief Congress (as they were legally obliged to do) that they had been torturing people for over a month? 

Issa: Waaahhhh! Dems All Reminding Us of Lies CIA Told in 2002!

/30 Comments/in , /by

Here’s Darrell Issa, in the process of getting schooled by Tweety, who called him on his grandstanding attempt to get the FBI to investigate Nancy Pelosi’s allegation that the CIA led to her on September 4, 2002. (Somehow, neither Issa nor Tweety seem interested in the fact that Porter Goss’ statements, to date, support Pelosi’s contention that CIA didn’t tell Congress waterboarding had already been used before they were briefed.)

But I’m more interested in the attention that Issa pays to a much more inflammatory accusation that Paul Kanjorski has made. In his effort to suggest all the Democrats are beating up on CIA, Issa notes that Paul Kanjorski says "he was lied to a week later."

It appears that Issa is not saying that Kanjorski was lied to in recent days (a week after Pelosi made the claim), but rather that Kanjorski says he was lied to in the week after September 4, 2002. Which seems to be this accusation.

In a town hall meeting in Bloomsburg, Pa. this week [leading up to September 3, 2007], Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a 12-term congressman, said that shortly before Congress was scheduled to vote on authorizing military force against Iraq, top officials of the CIA showed select members of Congress three photographs it alleged were Iraqi Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), better known as drones. Kanjorski said he was told that the drones were capable of carrying nuclear, biological, or chemical agents, and could strike 1,000 miles inland of east coast or west coast cities.

Kanjorski said he and four or five other congressmen in the room were told UAVs could be on freighters headed to the U.S. Both secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and President Bush wandered into and out of the briefing room, Kanjorski said.

Kanjorski said it was the second time he was called to the White House for a briefing. He had opposed giving the President the powers to go to war, and said that he hadn’t changed his mind after a first meeting. Until he saw the pictures, Kanjorski said, "I hadn’t thought that Iraq was a threat." That second meeting changed everything. After he left that meeting, said Kanjorski, he was willing to give the President the authorization he wanted since the drones "represented an imminent danger."

Read more →

WaPo’s Partisan Press Release Service

/45 Comments/in , /by

The front page of the WaPo website features what amounts to a press release from John Boehner, attempting to continue blaming Nancy Pelosi because Dick Cheney tortured.

House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) "ought to either present the evidence or apologize’" in the wake of her comments that CIA officials misled her about the use of controversial interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects.

"Lying to the Congress of the United States is a crime," Boehner said yesterday on CNN’s "State of the Union." "And if the speaker is accusing the CIA and other intelligence officials of lying or misleading the Congress, then she should come forward with evidence and turn that over to the Justice Department so they can be prosecuted."

He added: "And if that’s not the case, I think she ought to apologize to our intelligence professionals around the world."

The story doesn’t report that two out of three of the other members of Congress who were "briefed" in September 2002 (including the hyper-anal Bob Graham) back Pelosi’s claim. Here’s Graham:

The CIA when I asked them, what were the dates these briefings took place, gave me four dates. And I went back to my spiral notebooks and a daily schedule that I keep and found, and the CIA concurred, that in three of those four dates, there was no briefing held. That raises some questions about the bookkeeping of the CIA. Under the rules of clandestine information, I was prohibited from keeping notes of what was actually said during that briefing other than a brief summation that it had to do with the interrogation of detainees.

And here’s Goss, speaking of the torture techniques prospectively (and therefore revealing that he was not briefed they had already been used, which is precisely what Pelosi has claimed):

the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed

And for good measure, here’s Jello Jay, pointing out that the CIA also got its briefing schedule wrong with him, as they did with Graham.

Read more →

The Two Torture Tape Suspects, the Pelosi Briefing, and the Panetta Statement

/67 Comments/in , /by

A number of people are panicking about Leon Panetta’s statement to CIA employees, believing it rebuts Nancy Pelosi’s statement.

There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I’m gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress.

Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.

My advice — indeed, my direction — to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country.

We are an Agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is—even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.

But there’s a better way to understand this. 

First, look at Panetta’s statement about the briefings themselves.

As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.

Panetta is stating two things:

  1. The contemporaneous records (that is, the CIA briefer’s own notes on the briefing) show that the briefers "briefed truthfully … describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed’" on Zubaydah.
  2. It is up to Congress to evaluate this evidence and "reach its own conclusions about what happened."

Now, first of all, Panetta is not saying (nor has anyone said, not even Porter Goss) that the briefers briefed Congress that these techniques had been used. I know this sounds weasely, but until someone says, in plain language, that the CIA told Congress those techniques had already been used on Abu Zubaydah, we should assume that’s not what the notes reflect, because if they did, you can be sure both the briefing list and the public statements would say so. Read more →

The Terrorism Intelligence and the Briefing Schedule

/34 Comments/in , , , /by

I suggested yesterday that one of the explanations for the CIA’s unreliable record of briefings on torture and terrorism in 2002 and 2003 might reflect an attempt to hide certain information.

Did CIA not reveal they were torturing detainees to dodge any question about the accuracy of claims about Iraq intelligence? 

While we don’t know the full schedule of briefings on Iraq intelligence, the schedule of intelligence documents pertaining to Iraqi ties to terrorism suggests that might be possible. Significantly, according to Bob Graham and Nancy Pelosi, they were not briefed that Abu Zubaydah had been tortured before the NIE appeared integrating his August 2002 interrogation reports. And Jane Harman was not informed he had been tortured until after the last major report on Iraqi links to terrorism came out in January 2003.

Here are the intelligence documents mentioned in the SSCI Report on Iraq, interspersed with the torture briefings.

September 21, 2001: Document written by Cofer Black (then Director of CounterTerrorism) and Near East and South Asia Directorate. Distributed only to President’s Daily Brief principals, and not revealed to Congress until June 2004. The document is described as "taking a ‘Q&A’ approach to the issue of Iraq’s possible links" to 9/11.

October 2001:  NESA document discussing Iraq’s overall ties to terrorism.CIA refused to share the document with SSCI, explaining its dissemination was limited to PDB readers.

December 18, 2001: Ibn Sheikh al-Libi captured.

February 22, 2002: First report doubting al-Libi’s claims of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

March 28, 2002: Abu Zubaydah captured.

June 21, 2002, Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship: Ostensibly a joint project between CTC and NESA, the report was a subject of a CIA Ombud invsetigation into a complaint from a NESA analyst alleging that the document did not adequately reflect the views of NESA. The document was intentionally expansive, as described by Jamie Miscik: "If you were going to stretch to the maximum the evidence you had, what could you come up with?"

July 26, 2002: OLC orally authorized waterboarding.

July 31, 2002: Second report doubting al-Libi’s claims of ties between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Summer 2002, Dougie Feith’s Propaganda: This led to a series of briefings in August 2002 apparently designed to reinsert previously discredited claims into the CIA stream of intelligence. In particular, George Tenet agreed to hold up the production of Iraqi Support for Terrorism until CIA could attend a meeting with Feith’s people; the meeting took place on August 20, 2002. Read more →

Fox Reports Absence of Presidential Finding, Clear Violation of Law, Yawns

/109 Comments/in /by

Aw man. The corporate press keeps getting stupider and stupider in their desperation to claim Democrats didn’t do enough to prevent torture after being briefed on it more than six months after the torture started.

This time it’s Fox News, complaining that Jane Harman, in her letter to Scott Muller, raised policy concerns, not legal ones.

California Rep. Jane Harman wrote about policy concerns, not legal concerns, in the letter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is citing in her claim that she let the top Intelligence Committee Democrat take the lead in addressing complaints to the CIA about "enhanced" interrogation techniques used on terror detainees.

In her Feb. 10, 2003, letter, Harman wrote to CIA General Counsel Scott Muller asking whether President Bush had authorized and approved the enhanced techniques, because of the impact such methods may have on policy.

Now there are two big problems with Fox’s latest pathetic attempt at a gotcha. First, it misquotes Pelosi in several significant ways.

At a press conference on Thursday, Pelosi told reporters that she supported the letter Harman drafted for Muller that raised concerns over the legality of the program.

Pelosi said her staffer told her in February 2003 that Harman and Goss "had been briefed about the use of certain techniques which had been the subject of earlier legal opinions. Following that briefing, a letter raising concerns was sent to CIA general counsel, Scott Muller, by the new Democratic ranking member of committee, the appropriate person to register a protest," Pelosi said

"But no letter or anything else is going to stop them from doing what they’re going to do," she added.

Pelosi added that those briefing her in September 2002 gave her inaccurate and incomplete information. Pelosi’s office issued a statement Thursday saying Pelosi had been told in September 2002 that waterboarding, or simulated drowning, had not been used, but was going to be used in the future.

Here are the complete quotes from Pelosi’s statement.

The CIA briefed me only once on some enhanced interrogation techniques, in September 2002, in my capacity as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.

I was informed then that Department of Justice opinions had concluded that the use of enhanced interrogation techniques was legal. The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed.

Read more →

Crazy Pete Hoekstra Flip-Flops on Congressional Notification

/20 Comments/in /by

In 2006, a certain member of Congress laid out the President’s and Intelligence Community’s obligation under the National Security Act to brief Congress on intelligence activities.

I want to reemphasize that the Administration has the legal responsibility to "fully and currently" inform the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of its intelligence and intelligence-related activities. Although the law gives you and the committees flexibility on how we accomplish that (I have been fully supportive of your concerns in that respect), it is clear that we, the Congress, are to be provided all information about such activities. I have learned of some alleged Intelligence Community activities about which our committee has not been briefed. In the next few days I will be formally requesting information on these activities. If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the Administration, a violation of law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the Members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies. I strongly encourage you to direct all elements of the Intelligence Community to fulfill their legal responsibility to keep the Intelligence Committees fully briefed on their activities. The U.S. Congress should not have to play "Twenty Questions" to get the information that it deserves under the Constitution.

This letter makes the President’s and Intelligence Community’s obligation pretty clear. They must "fully and currently" inform congressional intelligence committees. They must provide all information about such activities. Congress should not have to play "Twenty Questions" to get such information. Not providing such information is a violation of the law. And, "just as importantly," it is "a direct affront" to Congress to withhold such information.

That’s a pretty clear statement of the importance of CIA’s obligation to inform Congress of their activities.

So why do you think it is that the author of this letter–Crazy Pete Hoekstra–has spent the last three weeks beating up Nancy Pelosi when–by all accounts–she was not briefed on the CIA’s activities "fully and currently" in 2002? Why is it okay for Crazy Pete that Pelosi and Porter Goss should have to play Twenty Questions on torture, when such games were not okay for Crazy Pete himself after he became the Chair of HPSCI? Does’t Crazy Pete care that CIA’s treatment of Congress in 2002 was a "direct affront" to their efforts to support the intelligence community?

And most importantly, if it was a violation of the law in 2006 not to inform Congress about intelligence community activities, then wasn’t it a violation of the law in 2002?

Read more →

Pelosi: CIA Told Us Waterboarding “Was Not Being Employed”

/103 Comments/in /by

Pelosi has confirmed something I’ve been pointing out for weeks. When the CIA briefed Pelosi and Goss on September 4, 2002, it told them that waterboarding was not being employed.

The CIA comes to Congress and withholds information about the timing and the use of this subject. We later find out that it had been taking place before they even briefed us about the legal opinions and told us that they were not being used. This is a tactic–a diversionary tactic–off of those who conceived, developed, and implemented these policies, which all of us long opposed. 

[snip]

Of all the briefings that I have received at this same time, earlier, they were misinforming the American people there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and it was an imminent threat to the United States. I, to the limit of what I could say to my caucus, told them, the intelligence does not support the imminent threat that this Administration is contending. Whether it’s on the subject of what’s happening in Iraq, whether it’s on the subject of techniques used by the intelligence community on those they are interrogating, every step of the way, the Administration was misleading the Congress.

And that is the issue. And that is why we need a truth commision.

[snip]

Yes, I am saying that they are misleading–the CIA was misleading the Congress. And at the same time, the Administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  

Hello!?!?!? Press corpse!?!?! This has been clear–at least to one Dirty Fucking Hippy Blogger–for weeks (and Porter Goss’ statements–which speak of waterboarding prospectively, do not refute them). You think maybe it’s time to report on the crimes CIA and Dick Cheney covered up finally, rather than masturbating over what you consider a simulating partisan spat?

Here’s Pelosi’s prepared statement–I’ll post the questions when they get it done:

Throughout my entire career, I am proud to have worked for human rights, and against the use of torture, around the world.

As Ranking Member of the Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittee in the 1990s, I helped secure the first funding for the Torture Victims Relief Act to assist those suffering from the physical and psychological effects of torture.

I unequivocally oppose the use of torture by our government because it is contrary to our national values.

Read more →

“If You’re Trying to Commit a Crime,” You Wouldn’t Brief Democrats

/51 Comments/in /by

I’ve been meticulously tracking the erroneous claims made about whether or not Democrats got briefed on torture because:

  • The known briefing schedule makes it clear that CIA broke the law requiring them to inform Congress of their actions
  • Some of the arguments rely on either illiteracy or willful ignorance of the public record in their claims

But in today’s hearing Lindsey Graham makes clear why the Republicans are arguing this point so aggressively.

Now. I don’t know what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it. And I really don’t think she’s a criminal if she was told about waterboarding and did nothing. But I think it is important to understand that members of Congress, allegedly, were briefed by … about these interrogation techniques. And again, it goes back to the idea of what was the Administration trying to do. If you’re trying to commit a crime, it seems to me that’d be the last thing you’d want to do. If you had in your mind and your heart that you’re going to disregard the law, and you’re going to come up with interrogation techniques that you know to be illegal, you would not go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it. 

Ahem.

Yes.

That’s the point now, isn’t it?

Because no one in Congress was told that the CIA was going to start torturing in 2002, until it was too late. Pelosi and Goss were told, after CIA had waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times, that CIA might waterboard in the future. Bob Graham was not told of waterboarding at all, according to him. Jello Jay was not at the briefing at which CIA told Pat Roberts "in considerable detail" about waterboarding. The CIA doesn’t even say Jane Harman was told about waterboarding specifically in February 2003 (though I assume she was). 

The first time CIA can say for certain that any Democratic members of Congress at all were briefed on waterboarding was in July 2004, after CIA had waterboarded for what ended up being the last time, and after their own Inspector General determined they were breaking the law.

And then, in 2005, when CIA was trying to sustain their ability to torture against Congressional wishes, CIA had briefings for Ted Stevens and Thad Cochran with no Democrats in attendance. They had a briefing for John McCain with no Democrats in attendance. Read more →

Piling on PolitiFact

/2 Comments/in /by

Jamison Foser already beat up PolitiFact for its ridiculous judgment on the he-said-she-said debate over whether Nancy Pelosi was briefed on torture.

The real problem here is PolitiFact’s insistance on declaring Pelosi’s statement "true" or "false," when the painfully obvious reality is that PolitiFact just doesn’t know whether it is true or false.  Other media would be wise to take PolitiFact’s conclusion with a grain of salt.

But I’m going to join in the fun to point out PolitiFact’s real difficulty with verb tenses and pronouns. The point of their post, remember, is to judge whether or not this Pelosi statement is correct.

We were not, I repeat, were not told that waterboarding 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.

Pelosi’s statement refers to a briefing occuring on September 4, 2002, after Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. According to her statement, in September 2002, the CIA told Congress it could torture detainees, but did not say they would (in the future) be doing so. Her further comments from the same answer make that even more clear.

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.

[snip]

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?

That is, Pelosi’s entire point was that in September 2002, after the CIA had already torturing Abu Zubaydah for months, the CIA came before Congress and spoke prospectively about using torture, but did not reveal that they had already been and were currently using it. 

So PolitiFact goes to the CIA briefing list, acknowledging Panetta’s comments about its potential inaccuracy, yet nevertheless deciding that it, PolitiFact, should determine whether it is inaccurate or not (it decides not), and looks at this language.

Briefing on EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) including use of EITs on (alleged al-Qaeda operative) Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.

Now, even assuming one should treat this document as accurate when the Director of CIA is saying it may not be, look carefully at this language. "Use of [torture] on … Abu Zubaydah" Read more →