Archive for the ‘waterboarding’ tag
Did CIA Lie to Pelosi? Isn’t That Illegal?
Nancy Pelosi claimed in a rambling and confused press conference that the CIA repeatedly lied to her, “every step of the way” concerning the US use of waterboarding. If true, somebody at the CIA may soon be headed to jail. Or Pelosi may be forced to admit the obvious — she’s the one doing the lying.
Democrats on the House intelligence committee said Thursday that CIA officers broke the law in 2002 if they told Nancy Pelosi then that they had not yet engaged in waterboarding.
“If they make a false report, absolutely it’s illegal,” said Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “If they fail to make a report when they’re obligated to that is also illegal — a violation of the National Security Act.”
Said CIA Spokesman George Little: “It is not the policy of the CIA to mislead the United States Congress.”
The Speaker of the US House of Representatives says otherwise. Both versions can’t be true.
Liar Knew It All Along
Nobody Told Me Nuthin!
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.
In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah.” EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.
The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a matter of heated debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of knowing for many years precisely the techniques CIA agents were using in interrogations, and only protesting the tactics when they became public and liberal antiwar activists protested.
Did She Know? Or Is She Lying?
Nancy Pelosi says she was briefed by Bush administration officials on the legal justification for using waterboarding — but that they never followed through on promises to inform her when they actually began using “enhanced” interrogation techniques.
When she starts wagging her finger. . .
“In that or any other briefing…we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel … opinions that they could be used,” she told reporters today.
Earlier, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) criticized Pelosi and other Democratic leaders for backing probes into the use of waterboarding — after reportedly failing to raise objections during a briefing on its potential use in 2002.
“Well, yesterday I saw a partial list of the number of members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, who were briefed on these interrogation methods and not a word was raised at the time, not one word,” Boehner told reporters at his weekly news availability.
“And I think you’re going to hear more and more about the bigger picture here, that what — the war on terror after 9/11 was done in a bipartisan basis on lots of fronts. And that bigger story will be coming out,” he added.
Pelosi says members who receive classified intelligence briefings are powerless to act on them — or even discuss them with staff — due to confidentiality requirements.
GOP operatives are pointing to a 2007 Washington Post story which describes an hour-long 2002 briefing in which Pelosi was told about enhanced interrogation techniques in graphic detail.
Two unnamed officials told the paper that Pelosi, then a member of the Democratic minority, didn’t raise substantial objections.
Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen wrote:
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.
Lower down in the article, however, the authors and their sources acknowledge Pelosi & Co. were severely constrained in what they could do with the information — and had no way of knowing how the techniques would ultimately used or abused in a pre-Abu Gharaib era.
Congressional officials say the groups’ ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.
“In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic,” said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. “But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, ‘We don’t care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.’”
How Waterboarding Saved Los Angeles
Waterboarding KSM Saved Los Angeles, CIA Says
Less than a week after declaring that it was time for the nation to move on rather than “laying blame for the past,” Obama described what might be done next to investigate what he called the loss of “our moral bearings.”
Answering a reporter’s question, Obama said that it would be up to his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to determine whether “those who formulated those legal decisions” behind the interrogation methods should be prosecuted.
The methods, described in Bush-era memos Obama released last Thursday, included such grim and demeaning tactics as slamming detainees against walls and subjecting them to water-boarding, which is simulated drowning. The harsher methods were authorized to gain information after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Obama said CIA operatives who did the interrogating should not be charged with crimes because they thought they were following the law as interpreted by Bush administration. Read the rest of this entry »
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