Gallup Polls Public Approval on Innocent Bystanders, But Not Torturers

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You guys are all really smart people. So here’s a quiz. What’s wrong with this picture?

I know. Too easy: Gallup apparently decided to poll who was winning the battle of torture public opinion.

And forgot to poll public approval on the actual torturers!

I don’t have the crosstabs or actual questions, but by all appearances, Gallup asked, 

Do you approve or disapprove of how each of the following has handled the matter of interrogation techniques used against terrorism suspects?

  • Barack Obama
  • The CIA
  • Democrats in Congress
  • Republicans in Congress
  • Nancy Pelosi

I’m sorry to be crude, but was it Crazy Pete Hoekstra or Dick Cheney himself who sucked your dick, Gallup, to persuade you to do this poll?  Because there’s really no other legitimate excuse for this poll. You didn’t poll on approval on the "handling of interrogation techniques used against terrorism suspects" for:

  • Dick Cheney, the architect and main apologist of the torture program
  • James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the contractors who had no experience in interrogation, but nevertheless made big money off of torturing prisoners
  • John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury, who wrote crazy legal opinions to pre-authorize torture
  • The torturer who said he used more water than legally permitted because that made the whole process "more poignant and convincing"  
  • Alberto Gonzales, who was giving daily, meticulous approvals for torture even before it had been declared "legal"

Instead, Gallup polled on a bunch of people who weren’t involved in the actual torture. Hell, even the CIA’s significantly off the hook, given that contractors did the torture, and people like George Tenet and Jose Rodriguez who oversaw it are retired.

What’s your opinion of the handling of the members of Congress who were illegally not briefed before the torture started? What’s your opinion of those chump Democrats who tried to make the Army Field Manual (for all its faults) the standard for interrogation? What’s your opinion of a bunch of dead-ender Republicans who are clinging to some political scandal to stay relevant?

But not, "What’s your opinion of Dick Cheney, who tried to get an Iraqi tortured so he could claim there were ties between Iraq and al Qaeda that had long since been discredited?"

Victory Is Mine!!!!

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Finally, a TradMed source who knows how to read!!!!

But in looking at the substance of the accusations, it increasingly looks like [Nancy Pelosi] was right. Porter Goss was careful to parse his words in the conditional future tense when talking about what, exactly, he and Pelosi were briefed on in September 2002:

Today, 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.

And Senator Richard Shelby also carefully avoided saying he’d been briefed on EITs that had already been used, saying only that he’d been told about the techniques. And “purported” isn’t exactly a strong word – it’s a synonym of suggested or claimed. From his statement: 

As Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2002, Senator Shelby was briefed by the CIA on the Agency’s interrogation program and the existence of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs). To his recollection, not only did the CIA briefers provide what was purported to be a full account of the techniques, they also described the need for these techniques and the value of the information being obtained from terrorists during questioning.

Bob Graham, who was theoretically in the room with Shelby, says he has no recollection of the meeting at all – this from a man who famously details his every waking minute. Perhaps the most astonishing response has been from the CIA Director Leon Panetta, who basically said: Don’t trust our records. Which begs the question: what other issues have they kept questionable records on?

There are about 8 more sentences, all of them sweet vindication.  I can’t believe it took me one month and a Swampland post to feel like this. And it’s admittedly one damn battle in a too-long war on flaccid media.

But still. It feels good.

Dick Asks Obama to Wave His Magic Wand

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During the week that Dick Cheney ordered Libby to out Valerie Plame, Mary Matalin told Libby that "Bush" should order everything on the Wilsons declassified (it’s not clear whether Matalin meant this to include Plame’s identity or not). She said "the President should wave his magic wand" to declassify the oppo on the Wilsons. (She said this in the same conversation, IIRC, in which she called Joe Wilson a snake.)

I thought of that today when I read Cheney’s latest attempt to pressure Obama to declassify his propaganda on torture. (h/t Bob Fertik)

I saw that information as vice president, and I reviewed some of it again at the National Archives last month. I’ve formally asked that it be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained, the things we learned, and the consequences for national security. And as you may have heard, last week that request was formally rejected.

It’s worth recalling that ultimate power of declassification belongs to the President himself. President Obama has used his declassification power to reveal what happened in the interrogation of terrorists. Now let him use that same power to show Americans what did not happen, thanks to the good work of our intelligence officials.

C’mon, Obama, wave that magic wand, Dick appears to be begging. A wonder, huh, that he’s resorting to selective declassification again to try to win a political argument.

Selective declassification, that is, and a selective memory. Central to Cheney’s narrative, you see, is that Obama "used his declassification power to reveal what happened in the interrogation of terrorists." Now, to be fair, Obama did participate in discussions of whether or not to release those documents. But ACLU didn’t get the documents from Obama or the White House. It got them from DOJ, the originator of the memos.Those memos got handed over in the same way any routine successful FOIA request would  (even if this did end up being a non-routine FOIA request). 

I guess in Dick Cheney’s little mind, it always has to be about the executive waving his magic wand.

Update: Ah jeebus. As if working from a script, Fox’s Major Garrett rushed off to the press conference and started waving Dick’s magic wand for him.

Q A follow-up on Mark’s question, does the President agree or disagree with the Vice President’s contention that he has the authority to declassify the CIA memos? Does he agree with that?

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Joe Miller of FactCheck.Org Got Played for a Fool

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You’d think after Porter Goss once again failed to refute Nancy Pelosi’s central assertion, "Fact Check" organizations would get the hint.

But no–they’re still out there refuting themselves!!

Here are the details that FactCheck.Org uses to claim that,

So we’re left with Democrats offering one (not always entirely accurate) story and the CIA and some Republicans offering a different (and, again, not always entirely accurate) story.

Pelosi, February 25:

Pelosi: We were never told they were being used.

Maddow: You were told they weren’t being used?

Pelosi: Well, they just talked about them, but — the inference to be drawn from what they told us was that these are things that we think could be legal. And we have a difference of opinion on that. But they never told us that they were being be used, because that would be a different story altogether. … And they know that I cannot speak specifically to the classified briefing of that kind. But I can say flat out, they never told us that these enhancement interrogations were being used.

Pelosi, April 23:

Pelosi (April 23): 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 waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.

Pelosi, May 14:

The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed.

Porter Goss, April 25:

Today, 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;

Given that both the Democratic and Republican Member of Congress at that September 4, 2002 briefing describe a briefing in which "they" (the CIA) spoke to "us" or "we" (the members present for that briefing) of waterboarding in a hypothetical sense, you’d think people would finally cop on that Pelosi’s point all along has been that the CIA came to Congress, claimed to brief them, but then left out the all-important detail that the CIA had already been using torture for over a month. You’d think that a "fact check" organization would then note the consistency between Pelosi’s and Goss’ story, note the abundance of errors in the CIA’s briefing, and realize that the CIA was probably wrong and all the journalists and fact check organizations covering this for the past month have been played like out-of-tune fiddles. 

Read more →

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

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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? 

Senator Bob Graham Clarifies His Briefing

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Bob Graham (who has a good op-ed in the WaPo today that I will try to return to) just clarified some of my questions regarding the briefing on torture he received on September 27, 2002.

I had called to ask whether his explanation that Stan Moskowitz, from the Office of Congressional Affairs, did the briefing, meant that no one from CIA’s CounterTerrorism Center was at the briefing. No, it doesn’t. Graham’s notes have a line next to Moskowitz’s name, which suggests other people were with Moskowitz. Normally, Graham explained, the briefer would be someone who had an operational connection to the subject being briefed, which would support the likelihood that CTC was at that briefing. (In addition, Jose Rodriguez, then head of CTC, was still covert at the time, so they may not have used his name if he attended the briefing, but that’s my speculation, not Graham’s.)

I asked whether Richard Shelby attended that briefing. Yes, he did. That’s significant because Shelby’s and Graham’s accounts are the only ones from members of Congress whose memory of the same briefing significantly differs.

Graham went on further to explain that he recollects the briefing covered the high value detainees captured by that date, and described what the intelligence community had gleaned from those detainees. His impression, he said, was that they had gathered that information using traditional techniques the military, FBI, and intelligence agencies had used in the past. I asked whether Ibn Sheikh al-Libi came up in the briefing, but he did not recall who was mentioned. 

I asked (mostly for Mary) whether the CIA made any mention of the trip that Administration officials had made to Gitmo to discuss torture techniques–it had occurred just two days earlier. Graham had no recollection of such a discussion. 

Finally, I asked whether Graham was making an explicit connection between his mention of the deceptive intelligence Congress was getting in the form of the NIE and other Iraq War intelligence. No, he was not making an explicit connection. Rather, in the face of those who have been suggesting it is unpatriotic to suggest that the CIA might not be fully committed to accuracy and full disclosure, Graham was reminding them that this was the same period when the Administration and CIA was ramping up the case for war. The NIE, in particular, establishes some standard of believability or not.

And we all know the NIE turned out to Read more →

John Durham’s Torture Tape Documents

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Jason Leopold reported on and posted a late update to the ongoing torture tape FOIA exchange. If I read the latest exchange correctly, Special Prosecutor John Durham is at least preparing to identify–and potentially make available through FOIA–a number of older documents on the torture tape destruction, as well as admitting that some more recent documents on the torture tape destruction exist.

Today’s letter does two things. First, it withdraws John Durham’s objection to Judge Hellerstein’s order that:

The government shall produce documents relating to the destruction of the tapes, which describe the persons and reasons behind their destruction, from a period reasonably longer than April through December 2002. I find that the period for such production should be April 1, 2002 through June 30, 2003. If this longer period imposes an unreasonable burden, the Government should show why, and whether a reasonably shorter period would provide sufficient disclosure.

Today’s letter states:

For the reasons stated in the enclosed ex parte letter from John H. Durham provided for the Court’s in camera review, we write to advise the Court that Mr. Durham withdraws his objection to paragraph 4 of the Court’s April 20, 2009 Order.

In addition, the letter admits that the CIA has documents pertaining to the torture tape destruction,

that fall outside the date range provided in the Order; namely, April 1, 2002 through June 30, 2003. Mr. Durham may have objections to the production of documents created outside the date range specified in the Order.

This news is not surprising–it had always bugged me that the otherwise thorough Hellerstein hadn’t demanded documents for the period right up until the destruction of the torture tapes in November 2005. Now, Durham is admitting such documents exist–which we knew, because among other things, we knew that John Negroponte sent Porter Goss a memo in 2005 telling him not to destroy the tapes. But it’s nice to know that Durham is willing to go out of his way to admit that such documents exist.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Durham has finished his investigation of the earlier period–through June 30, 2003–so is now willing to produce at least a Vaughn Index of what documentation exists for the period (note, this should include the documents surrounding the Jane Harman briefing from February 5, 2003, including her letter telling the CIA not to destroy the tapes, and any paper response Scott Muller made internally at CIA). Read more →

Yet Another Error in the CIA Briefing List

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At what point are people going to start asking whether the errors in the CIA briefing list are by design, and not just the result of carelessness? Because with the news that the list shows a staffer who had already left the Senate attending a 2004 briefing brings us up to errors the CIA has conceded on seven different briefings–though they’re also trying to claim that listing then-Director Goss as attending a 2005 briefing was not an error. (h/t Mary)

The CIA chart states that a Senate staffer, Chris Mellon, attended a briefing on July 15, 2004. However, Mellon told The Associated Press that he left the Senate in April 2004 and did not attend the briefing.

On Wednesday, CIA spokesman George Little said the CIA has reviewed its record and agrees that Mellon was erroneously listed as having attended the 2004 briefing.

And note, this is again a case of the CIA claiming a Democrat or Democratic staffer got briefed when he didn’t. 

At this point, I’m really torn about which would be worse–to learn this was all intentional, an attempt to claim CIA had support from Dems for their torture program when they didn’t–or to learn that the CIA is really this incompetent. 

Levin: Send Those Terrorists to My Backyard

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Carl Levin (Senator Levin–congrats for casting your 11,000th vote yesterday!) has come up with a sound suggestion to help close Gitmo: send them to MI.

Most lawmakers view the prospect of moving prisoners from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to their districts as a negative proposition. But at least one Democratic senator is open to the idea as a potential economic boost to his struggling state.

Carl Levin , chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said that construction and staffing at a new maximum-security prison in Michigan could help his cash-starved state.

“If the governor and the local officials are open to it, that’s something that should be considered,” said Levin, making the point that each state should make its own determination.

Former Michigan Gov. John Engler, a Republican, suggested this month that creating a “Guantánamo North” in the Upper Peninsula could net the state upward of $1 billion per year, according to reports.

While I’m not a fan of turning prisons into profit centers, I’m with these men. If you need to, build a maximum security prison in MI, in the U-P if you want. We need the jobs, and if it’d help to close Gitmo, I’m all for it.

Scrapple and Pelosi

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Yes, I’m glad that Arlen "the Scrapple formerly known as Haggis" Specter has come out in support of Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion that CIA misled her in her September 2002 briefing.

"The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say ‘candid’; that’s too mild — to honesty," Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency’s involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair."Director [Leon] Panetta says the agency does not make it a habit to misinform Congress. I believe that is true. It is not the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to misinform Congress," Specter said. "But that doesn’t mean that they’re all giving out the information."

Because of leaks that have come from Congress, Specter said, he understands the agency’s hesitancy to disclose all its information.

"The current controversy involving Speaker Pelosi and the CIA is very unfortunate, in my opinion, because it politicizes the issue and it takes away attention from … how does the Congress get accurate information from the CIA?" Specter said. "For political gain, people are making headlines."

But one thing should be mentioned about Specter’s comments. Note that Scrapple, unlike John Boehner and Crazy Pete Hoekstra and John McCain, doesn’t claim to know WTF Pelosi was briefed.

Rather, his statement is general (a sentiment Specter probably formed when he was on SSCI): Specter’s noting that CIA is less than forthcoming with Congress, and that that needs to change. (He’s also correctly suggesting that those making headlines are doing so for political spin.)

The distinction is important. This whole debate has largely been drummed up by people who have no fucking clue how CIA briefed Congress in 2002. It’d be nice if that kind of rank ignorance wasn’t making the headlines anymore.