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This is just a short informational diary only.
The Washington Post has a story up tonight about Nancy Pelosi saying that she knew about the use of harsh interrogation tactics.
Memo Says Pelosi Knew About Use of Harsh Tactics
They reference a 10 page memo sent to Congress by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency. The Post does not provide a link to the actual 10 page memo (Reuters calls it a report) that Reuters said was sent to Congress by Leon Panetta but I found what is supposedly a copy of the report on the Human Events website.
I don’t know if this is the real report or not but I wanted to get it to you guys just in case it’s accurate. The person who wrote the Human events piece on Pelosi was Jed Babbin a former deputy undersecretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush. Funny how Human Events just happened to get a copy, huh?
The Post also stated in their piece:
In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi’s office said yesterday that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal interrogation technique.
"As this document shows, the speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used," said Brendan Daly, Pelosi’s spokesman.
I went to Pelosi’s website but couldn’t find the statement, carefully worded or otherwise.
17 Comments
I just came from EW’s and bmaz articles (noted your comment there). This is a fast changing issue that’s getting hotter and hotter. Seems to me that Pelosi has been tagged the scapegoat. I have read about those briefings where it was emphasized that no notes were taken, no videos, no tapes, no stenographer. So, seems nobody can prove what was or was not said.
This hot quarrel distracts attention from the loud clamor for investigations for war crimes that is gaining strength. It may be a clear threat that if CIA goes down (with the lawyers, Bush & Cheney), there’s going to be a lot more folks go down with them.
The covert arm of the CIA is dependent on lies. Their operatives must lie convincingly as they take on different identities to fit the role called for in the mission. They lie to anybody – family, employers, their “contacts”, congress – no exceptions. Those who thwart them or endanger their program are eliminated. They are the ’secret government’ from which we may never be able to extricate ourselves.
marcy and bmaz also note that in all the briefings the term “waterboarding” is specifically used, in the pelosi briefing the term is specifically avoided
head on over to marcy’s post, she has the entire report exposed for the smear it is
Pelosi and Tenet should get in a boat, go out into the Atlantic, and have a little talk.
Then the boat should sink.
I think this plan could work well for a number of current and former officials.
The 30 briefings to Congress were mentioned by Cheney during his CYA tour. Yup, count them, the list shows 30. The members of the Intelligence Committee were public knowledge. That they were bound by secrecy was also public knowledge. By the HPSCI rules, anyone could ask to sit in on a meeting, but anyone who did were also bound by the secrecy rule.(2 page PDF)
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(FOX April 23/09)
” Republicans, hoping to turn the tables on Democrats who are open to prosecuting Bush-era lawyers for justifying “enhanced” interrogation techniques, are seeking to reveal the names of those lawmakers who were briefed on the tactics as much as seven years ago.
FOX News has learned there were more than 30 meetings and briefings with members of Congress on the subject since 2002.
Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has personally requested from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair an unclassified list of names of all members of Congress who attended those briefings, complete with dates and locations.
Republicans have criticized President Obama for opening the door to prosecuting Justice Department lawyers who drafted the so-called “torture memos,” which authorized harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding. But they’ve also raised the point that if Democrats pursue charges against the lawyers, they’d be shielding others involved in the interrogation program.
“They can’t blame the politicians in Congress who approved these tactics in 2002 because these are their friends,” Rep. Lamar Smith, ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said in an e-mail. “So they’re placing the blame on Bush administration officials, political appointees.”
Pelosi said Thursday that at the briefing she attended, she was not told that waterboarding “or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods” were being used.
“What they did tell us is that they had some legislative council … opinions that they could be used, but not that they would. And further, the point was that if and when they would be used, they would brief Congress at that time,” she said. ” “
http://www.foxnews.com/politic…..rogations/
http://intelligence.house.gov/…..equest.pdf
April 22/09 by Peter Hoekstra
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” Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair got it right last week when he noted how easy it is to condemn the enhanced interrogation program “on a bright sunny day in April 2009.” Reactions to this former CIA program, which was used against senior al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003, are demonstrating how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation.
George Tenet, who served as CIA director under Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, believes the enhanced interrogations program saved lives. He told CBS’s “60 Minutes” in April 2007: “I know this program alone is worth more than the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us.”
Members of Congress calling for an investigation of the enhanced interrogation program should remember that such an investigation can’t be a selective review of information, or solely focus on the lawyers who wrote the memos, or the low-level employees who carried out this program. I have asked Mr. Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques.
Perhaps we need an investigation not of the enhanced interrogation program, but of what the Obama administration may be doing to endanger the security our nation has enjoyed because of interrogations and other antiterrorism measures implemented since Sept. 12, 2001. “
http://online.wsj.com/article/…..45415.html
I say let the fire fly, let no man or women remain standing who had a say yay or nay in these programs and said yay
let it rip
The Decider should not be left standing. Over 7 long years now, this nightmare of torture that he unleashed upon humanity. Torture was happening before 2002, but then he proudly put it in writing in 2002 for all the world to see that it was officially sanctioned by him. There is too many who joined the Dark Side from both parties. It is not possible to prosecute all of the guilty as much as it would be nice to see justice delivered upon them all.
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“Executive Order: Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency
On February 7, 2002, I determined for the United States that members of al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces are unlawful enemy combatants who are not entitled to the protections that the Third Geneva Convention provides to prisoners of war. I hereby reaffirm that determination.
(b) The Military Commissions Act defines certain prohibitions of Common Article 3 for United States law, and it reaffirms and reinforces the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions. “
http://georgewbush-whitehouse……720-4.html
Jane Harman is the only one know to have tried to voice concern over the interrogations.
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” Rep. Jane Harman, Chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Intelligence & Terrorism Risk Assessment, issued the following statement today in response to news that the CIA destroyed detainee interrogation tapes:
CIA Director Hayden’s public statement yesterday, that some members of Congress were informed about the existence of videotaped interrogations of high value detainees, prompts me to respond.
In early 2003, in my capacity at Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, I received a highly classified briefing on CIA interrogation practices from the agency’s General Counsel. The briefing raised a number of serious concerns and led me to send a letter to the General Counsel. Both the briefing and my letter are classified so I cannot reveal specifics, but I did caution against destruction of any videotapes.
Given the nature of the classification, I was not free to mention this subject publicly until Director Hayden disclosed it yesterday. To my knowledge, the Intelligence Committee was never informed that any videotapes had been destroyed. Surely I was not.
This matter must be promptly and fully investigated and I call for my letter of February 2003, which was never responded to and has been in the CIA’s files ever since, to be declassified.
Rep. Harman’s letter to CIA Director Michael Hayden asking for her original 2003 letter to be declassified is below: “
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=981
pelosi is pretty clear, the ”briefing” did not indicate the methods that were going to be used
I’m going to believe her until proven otherwise
Letter from Panetta to Reyes. Have to read it to believe it.(3 page PDF)
http://theplumline.whorunsgov……er0001.pdf
That letter seems fairly shallow, in that it says that a list (dates, locations, Members of Congress who were briefed) will be provided, but there is no list of information. (I gather the list may be over at another thread)
What the hell is Pete Hoekstra doing heading up the Senate Select Comm on Intel??
oops…a little misread…
The list is the information compiled and presented in the Human Events PDF.
Interesting that the dates are all post September, 2002, and the focus is being shifted to what the Dems knew from that time on, whereas just a few days ago, the focus was on the crafting of the Yoo/Bybee reasoning between March and September of 2002.
Harman raised her concerns about the techniques used and cautioned against the possible destruction of video tapes in a letter to Muller on Feb. 10/03. This was his response to her sent on Feb. 28/03. He then classified her letter so that she could not speak about it.
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” Dear Ms. Harman:
Thank you for your letter of 10 February following up on the briefing we gave you and Congressman Goss on 5 February concerning the Central Intelligence Agency’s limited use of the handful of specially approved interrogation techniques we described. As we informed both you and the leadership of the Intelligence Committees last September, a number of Executive Branch lawyers including lawyers from the Department of Justice participated in the determination that, in the appropriate circumstances, use of these techniques is fully consistent with US law. While I do not think it appropriate for me to comment on issues that are a matter of policy, much less the nature and extent of Executive Branch policy deliberations, I think it would be fair to assume that policy as well as legal matters have been addressed within the Executive Branch.
I enjoyed meeting you, albeit briefly, and I look forward to seeing you again.
Sincerely,
Scott W. Muller”
http://www.house.gov/apps/list…..an_3.shtml
The Washington Post released the same information on Dec. 9/07.
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” In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.
Yet long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge. “
In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. “
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..64_pf.html