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An investigation into abuse of terrorism detainees won't be halted following a letter sent to President Barack Obama by seven former CIA directors. "I don't want to start getting into the business of squelching, you know, investigations that are being conducted," Obama told CNN's John King Sunday.

"I appreciate the former CIA directors wanting to look after an institution that they helped to build," Obama told CBS' Bob Schieffer in a separate interview.

Politico:

The White House’s comments on the sensitive issue have been closely watched by supporters and opponents of further investigation into interrogations some have described as torture.

In August,
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y) urged Obama and his aides not to send signals about what Holder should do in terms of investigating the interrogations.

“I have nothing to say to the president on this, except let Mr. Holder alone. As far as I know, they are," Nadler said at a convention of liberal bloggers and activists. “It would be….improper for the president to decide that there ought to be or ought not to be a special counsel, prosecutions or whatever.”

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It looks like Mary Matalin, Chris Wallace and Bill Kristol all got their talking points from the same place for the Sunday shows this week. Matalin, like Wallace claims that we haven't been attacked since 9-11 and then names anthrax attacks as something that was prevented by the CIA after they tortured prisoners.

Uuummmm.... Mary, I hate to break this to you, but we were attacked by anthrax. But then you're fully aware of that already, aren't you? I doubt there's a single person in the Bush administration that has forgotten the event that was enough to scare some Democrats into voting for the invasion of Iraq.

I'm also wondering how many of the "attacks" she rattled off are on the list from Keith Olbermann's The Nexus of Politics and Terror? My guess is more than a few if she was forced to give specifics and maybe had someone besides her DINO husband and that hack John King sitting across the table from her.

As our own Jon Perr pointed out to me, Matalin is doing a good job of carrying water for Dick Cheney and his strategy to assure that torture is never investigated.

Transcript below the fold.

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Sen. John McCain disagrees with former Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that enhanced interrogation techniques helped keep the country safe. "I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," McCain told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday.

"I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq... I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members," said McCain.

McCain disagreed with Attorney General Holder's decision to probe interrogation techniques that went beyond legal recommendations.

I know there were people saying this at the time, but the people bent on war refused to believe it. Oh well, what's a few hundred thousand dead people killed in the name of saving us all?

WASHINGTON - Saddam Hussein feared Iran's arsenal more than a U.S. attack, and even considered asking ex-President George W. Bush "to protect" Iraq from its neighbor, once secret FBI files show.

The FBI interrogations of the toppled tyrant - codename "Desert Spider" - were declassified after a Freedom of Information Act request.

The records show Saddam happily boasted of duping the world about stockpiling weapons of mass destruction. And he consistently denied cooperating with Osama Bin Laden's Al Qaeda.

Of all his enemies, Iraq's ex-president - who insisted he still held office during captivity - hated Iran most.

Asked how he would have faced "fanatic" Iranian ayatollahs if Iraq had been proven toothless by UN weapons inspectors in 2003, Saddam said he would have cut a deal with Bush.

"Hussein replied Iraq would have been extremely vulnerable to attack from Iran and would have sought a security agreement with the U.S. to protect it from threats in the region," according to a 2004 FBI report among the declassified files.

Without Bush's help, "Iraq would have done what was necessary," he told FBI Agent George Piro in his Baghdad International Airport cell.

That didn't mean an alliance of evil with Al Qaeda, he insisted months into what he called a "dialogue" with Piro.

The interrogations unfolded in 2004 after his capture the previous December at the same farm where he said he'd hidden after orchestrating a failed 1959 coup plot.

Saddam denied ever laying eyes on the "zealot" Bin Laden, bent on striking the U.S.

He said he "did not have the same belief of vision" as the terror kingpin.

Saddam never sought Al Qaeda assistance because he feared the terror group would turn on him. To protect his country, the more likely ally "would have been North Korea."

Saddam also said the U.S. "used the 9/11 attack as a justification to attack Iraq" and "lost sight of the cause of 9/11."

The U.S. "was not Iraq's enemy," just its policies, Saddam explained.

Asked about WMDs, Saddam insisted: "We destroyed them. We told you."

"By God, if I had such weapons, I would have used them in the fight against the U.S," he added.

Although I normally take everything the CIA says with a very large grain of salt, I just don't think Leon Panetta's all that far from the truth. I think Dick Cheney would rather be right than see the country safe from harm:

WASHINGTON -- CIA Director Leon Panetta says former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's approach to terrorism almost suggests "he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point."

Panetta told The New Yorker for an article in its June 22 issue that Cheney "smells some blood in the water" on the issue of national security.

Cheney has said in several interviews that he thinks Obama is making the U.S. less safe. He has been critical of Obama for ordering the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, halting enhanced interrogations of suspected terrorists and reversing other Bush administration initiatives he says helped to prevent attacks on the U.S.

Last month the former vice president offered a withering critique of Obama's policies and a defense of the Bush administration on the same day that Obama made a major speech about national security.

Panetta said of Cheney's remarks: "It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

Why is it that, on the issues that count (Iraq, torture, FISA, secrecy), this administration is so much like the previous one? It really makes me wonder:

The Obama administration objected yesterday to the release of certain Bush-era documents that detail the videotaped interrogations of CIA detainees at secret prisons, arguing to a federal judge that doing so would endanger national security and benefit al-Qaeda's recruitment efforts.

In an affidavit, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta defended the classification of records describing the contents of the 92 videotapes, their destruction by the CIA in 2005 and what he called "sensitive operational information" about the interrogations.

The forced disclosure of such material to the American Civil Liberties Union "could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security by informing our enemies of what we knew about them, and when, and in some instances, how we obtained the intelligence we possessed," Panetta argued.

Although Panetta's statement is in keeping with his previous opposition to the disclosure of other information about the CIA's interrogation policies and practices during George W. Bush's presidency, it represents a new assertion by the Obama administration that the CIA should be allowed to keep such information secret. Bush's critics have long hoped that disclosure would pinpoint responsibility for actions they contend were abusive or illegal.

Last month, President Obama said he would seek to bar the release of photographs being sought by other nonprofit groups that depict abusive interrogations at military prisons during the Bush administration.

Panetta argued that none of the 65 CIA documents immediately at issue, which the ACLU has sought for several years in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, should be released. He asked U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to draw a legal distinction between the administration's release in April of Justice Department memos authorizing the harsh interrogations and the CIA's desire to keep classified its own documents detailing the specific handling of detainees at its secret facilities overseas.

He said that while the Justice Department memos discussed harsh interrogation "in the abstract," the CIA information was "of a qualitatively different nature" because it described the interrogation techniques "as applied in actual operations."

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Why is it that wingers like Greta still need to ask if waterboarding is torture? Enhanced interrogations are code for torture, but we know that. I guess my brain is getting scrambled by having to watch FOX News constantly try and denounce waterboarding as not really being torture. It's enhanced, it just tastes a little better than before.

Greta: Is waterboarding torture or enhanced interrogation techniques, what words do we use on this?

McCain: It's torture. It's in violation of the Geneva Conventions of the international agreement on torture treaty...singed during the Reagan administration. It goes all the way back to the Spanish Inquisition. It's not a new technique and it is certainly torture.

Did Greta really believe she would get McCain to change his mind on this? Maybe she thought she could break him. Then they get into all the national security stories of the week. Greta wants all the documents released about Cheney and Pelosi and that's when McCain starts wanking along...

At least she brought up Graham rebuking the CIA. McCain is worried about the morale of the CIA? Are they really that weak-kneed? I doubt it, but it's a useful talking point against Pelosi because the media will never say, "hey, these guys are out their in covert world, why would they care what a politician said."

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The hysteria has reached new heights by FOX News as they spin the Pelosi outrage as far as it can go. How far is that? The CIA will just stop working and America may be attacked because of her. Wingnut Du Jour, ex-CIA agent and FOX Newser Wayne Simmons said that Pelosi has. What is the impact of Nancy Pelosi saying that the CIA lied to her and members of Congress? We're doomed!!!

Simmons: The best thing about not being a diplomat or a politician is that I can tell you that first and foremost Nancy Pelosi, the woman whose third in line to be President of the United States, the Speaker of the House is a pathological liar and her attacks on the CIA, the release of the CIA memos has so sent a chill through the CIA to guys like me who were not only interrogated in our entire careers, but ran interrogations and interviews that I can assure you that we are not going to go the extra mile EVER in this climate to secure information and intelligence that's going to protect the Untied States so understand that the American people need to, this has directly affected the National Security of the United States.

Martha MacCallum: The Church Commission in the seventies and eighties, a lot of people think that those cracked down on our intelligence and made them very hesitant to do the job that hey needed to do and that those failures may have led to September eleventh.

Martha MacCallum, the FOX host, actually blames the Church Committee for the 9/11 attacks, and Simmons agrees. They always bring it back to 9/11. The FISA courts were instituted because of the Church Committee.

Simmons paints the CIA as one big chickenshit outfit that can't take a little criticism from the big bad Nancy Pelosi. They will even abandon their posts and let terrorists attack the country because their itty-bitty feelings are so hurt. I say they should all quit right now if Simmons is correct.

This clip also speaks volumes about the type of agent Simmons is. Don't call me names or I'll let Cleveland get bombed. Of course the CIA would never do that, but that's how coordinated this attack of Pelosi is by the entire right wing. Doesn't the media ever get tired of the robotic responses by the Right whenever they want to push a narrative to the American people?

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*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection. *The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible. *Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees...read on

Read the entire story. What this report says is that the Bush administration took an active role in how torture was being used and their purposes were purely political and not to keep America safe. Richard Wolffe says the same thing to Nora on MSNBC.

Cheney and his band of inquisitors wanted to find something that could justify the Iraq war to the American people after all the lies were uncovered for us to see. And there was nothing. NO WMD's in Iraq and no connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda. Cheney willingly promoted the use of torture for his own political gains. Wow. He should be prosecuted just for that action because he even violated the CIA torture memo guidelines.

Cheney knows this information is going to come out so he's taking to the airwaves to try and turn the discussion all around. Lawrence Wilkerson has come out and said this:

Lawrence Wilkerson essentially confirmed this today.

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

Did you notices that there was very little media coverage if any on al-Libi's suicide? It's like he never even existed for the Villagers.

The CIA releases a detailed document at the request of Republicans that says 19 Democrats were routinely briefed on interrogation techniques. The Republicans are playing hardball, and this one's a little chin music for anyone who dares to try to prosecute BushCo over torture. (Here's a link to the document.)

And maybe this is why Democrats are so evasive over torture. If true, this is what happens when Democrats embrace Republican policies: They're always the ones who get blamed. You'd think they'd learn:

The document appears to conflict with recent statements from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Ms. Pelosi has said she hadn't been told that the CIA was using the technique known as waterboarding, or simulated drowning. According to the document, Ms. Pelosi was one of the first lawmakers briefed on the interrogations in 2002.

Ms. Pelosi's spokesman Thursday reiterated the speaker's earlier contention that she was told in the briefing that waterboarding had been authorized but not yet used.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said the agency compiled the document -- based on the files and meeting summaries written at the time that represented the best recollections of the briefers -- in response to requests from Republican lawmakers, including the top Republican on the intelligence panel.

Greg Sergeant says there's more to it:

As you can see, this letter says that the info about briefings is taken from notes based on the “best recollections” of those who were there, adding:

In the end, you and the Committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened.

That would appear to be a concession that the CIA isn’t willing to vouch for the accuracy of the info about the briefings in the docs, and that only further inquiry will produce a reliable recounting of what happened.

To be clear, it’s perfectly possible that the info about what Dems were told is right. But not even the CIA is willing to promise this right now. So it’s unclear how much stock to place in the documents at this point.

***

Update: I’ve just learned that this same letter was also sent to GOP Rep Pete Hoekstra, a leading proponent of the claim that Dems knew the full scope of the torture program early on. I’ve edited the above to reflect this.

I’ve obtained the letter to Hoekstra, which you can read right here. What this means is that the Republican who has lodged the highest-profile attacks on Dems over what they knew and when has been directly informed by the CIA that the info on the briefings may not be reliable.

Bonus Update: Marcy Wheeler nails exactly why this is important.

Special Update For Waterboarding Obsessives: Here’s the key question in a nutshell.

Do you think it might be okay if we sort of looked into this? I mean, I wouldn't want to hurt anyone's feelings or keep the country from "moving forward", but isn't murder still a crime?

Or should we sweep this under the rug, too?

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.

In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.

The researcher, John Sifton, worked for five years for Human Rights Watch. In a posting Tuesday, he documents myriad cases of detainees who died at the hands of their US interrogators. Some of the instances he cites are graphic.

Most of those taken captive were killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. “Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables,” Sifton writes. “Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.”

Another Afghan killing occurred in 2002. Mohammad Sayari was killed by four U.S. servicemembers after being detained for allegedly “following their movements.” A Pentagon document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005 said that the Defense Department found a captain and three sergeants had “murdered” Sayari, but the section dealing with the department’s probe was redacted.

Perhaps the most macabre case occurred in Iraq, which was documented in a Human Rights First report in 2006.

“Nagem Sadoon Hatab… a 52-year-old Iraqi, was killed while in U.S. custody at a holding camp close to Nasiriyah,” the group wrote. “Although a U.S. Army medical examiner found that Hatab had died of strangulation, the evidence that would have been required to secure accountability for his death – Hatab’s body – was rendered unusable in court. Hatab’s internal organs were left exposed on an airport tarmac for hours; in the blistering Baghdad heat, the organs were destroyed; the throat bone that would have supported the Army medical examiner’s findings of strangulation was never found.”

In another graphic instance, a former Iraqi general was beaten by US forces and suffocated to death. The military officer charged in the death was given just 60 days house arrest.

“Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.”

Oh, so his murderer was a church-goer! Never mind, then. I'm sure he's prayed about it since.

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Newsday columnist Ellis Henican took on Bill O'Reilly last night to talk about President Obama's decision to leave the door open for prosecutions of Bush administration officials for creating its now-defunct torture regime.

And frankly, he did as well I've ever seen anyone do in the canned, no-win setup that is The O'Reilly Factor. He went toe-to-toe with O'Reilly on the factual points -- and in fact started scoring so well that O'Reilly was reduced to blurting out increasingly outrageous pronouncements.

First, it's clear that O'Reilly was only familiar with the GOP Talking Points[tm] version of the letter written by National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair in which he talks about "high value information" obtained through these techniques. But here's the actual letter.

As you can see from reading it, unlike the edited-down version O'Reilly and the GOPTP offer, Blair makes clear that he probably would have opposed the use of torture and clearly disapproves of it now:

Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.

Moreover, Blair further clarified himself the next day in the New York Times, explaining exactly why he would not have approved it:

"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means," Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. "The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."

O'Reilly clearly was unaware of this, so when Henican tosses it in his lap, he's at first confused, continuing to think that Blair and Henican have opposing views when they don't. It's kind of an amusing instance of O'Reilly so enrapt with his own narrative he doesn't recognize when it's been knocked out from under him.

Indeed, Henican essentially repeats Blair's words, and O'Reilly resorts to claiming that's "not exactly" what he said.

From then on, O'Reilly is reduced to barking increasingly strident charges at Henican:

O'Reilly: This was done to protect your life, you live in New York City. You -- this was done to protect your life, and it worked! That's No. 1.

Henican: We don't know whether it worked.

O'Reilly: Yeah, we know it worked, you're still alive! And the attack on Los Angeles was aborted.

[Crosstalk]

O'Reilly: Wait, wait, wait. We can establish facts. And the facts are, this worked.

Henican: Well, you say that.

O'Reilly: They did it to protect us.

Henican: You assert that. Well, let me assert a couple of things.

O'Reilly: That's the overwhelming evidence.

Henican: Well, that's what you're focused on. Let me focus on some other facts. One is that these kinds of things cause huge problems for us afterward.

O'Reilly: Oh, now we're in Theory World. Here we go!

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Time to push Congress into a full investigation of BushCo torture policies:

WASHINGTON — A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration.

The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by the military, not those conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas. It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military facilities.

The 232-page report, the product of an 18-month inquiry, was approved on Nov. 20 by the Senate Armed Services Committee, but has since been under Pentagon review for declassification. Some of the findings were made public in a Dec. 12 article in The New York Times; a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed the report at the time as “unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation.”

The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq — stripping detainees, placing them in “stress positions” or depriving them of sleep — originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or SERE, intended to train American troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations.

According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising “to get ‘tougher’ with detainee interrogations.” Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques.

The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as “an analogy and basis for use of these techniques,” and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan “that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim.”

Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy “and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command.” This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, “sleep management” and military dogs to exploit detainees’ fears, the report said.

“The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization” by Mr. Rumsfeld “to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq,” Mr. Levin said.

Dave N.: Suzanne Ito reports reaction from the Senate, including Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich:

In my judgment, the report represents a condemnation of both the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse — such as that seen at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan — to low ranking soldiers. Claims, such as that made by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz that detainee abuses could be chalked up to the unauthorized acts of a “few bad apples,” were simply false.

Chris Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel for the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, offered a statement as well:

This report makes frighteningly clear that some of the darkest moments in our country’s recent past were choreographed at the highest levels of government… The people who were at the very top of the Bush administration and those at the top of the chain of command must be held accountable. Just as any other American would be investigated by a prosecutor for crimes committed, so must our government officials. We must ensure that our laws are impartially enforced against everyone.

(Can I just say "I told you so"?)


John Amato: See if you can throw a few bucks to my pal Marcy. She does an outstanding job.