torture briefings

TOPICS Video Cafe

Countdown: Jack Rice on Whether We Can Trust the CIA

By Heather Wednesday May 20, 2009 5:45am

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Former CIA agent Jack Rice weighs in on whether we can trust the CIA and on the politics being played over the release of CIA torture briefings. Marcy Wheeler got a well deserved kudos from Keith for her work at Firedoglake on the subject.

Olbermann: On the torture briefings themselves, Hoekstra who has joined the chorus of anti-Pelosi outrage, Hoekstra himself says the CIA memo alleging that Pelosi was told about torture is wrong. "Our records suggest there may have been a few additional briefings" he wrote to the CIA in a letter released yesterday. And that's not even the only new question about the memo. Congressman David Obey revealed that the memo revealed that the memo names an appropriations committee aide as present at one briefing when the aide recalls being told he was not cleared to stay there.

This means he joins Democrats Jay Rockefeller and Bob Graham who have also questioned the memos accuracy in terms of dates and time.

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Tags: CIA, Countdown with Keith Olbermann, David Obey, Jack Rice, John Boehner, Marcy Wheeler, Nancy Pelosi, Pete Hoekstra, torture briefings

TOPICS Video Cafe

Bob Graham Continues to Question Accuracy of CIA Briefing Records

By Heather Tuesday May 19, 2009 3:00pm

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Bob Graham on Washington Journal May 18, 2009. Graham continues to raise red flags about the CIA's record keeping and whether they can be considered reliable as to when Congressional committee members were briefed. Earlier in the program Graham suggested that the CIA needed to allow members of Congress to see the documents and sign off on them with an opportunity to dissent as to the content before making them part of any official record. His suggestion certainly would put a stop to this he said/she said gamesmanship we're seeing right now.

Q: Sen. Graham I did want to follow up on an interview that you gave to Huffington Post last week. They write "In testimony that could bolster Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA misled her during briefings on detainee interrogations, former Senator Bob Graham insisted on Thursday that he too was kept in the dark about the use of waterboarding, and called the agency's records on these briefings 'suspect.'

In an interview with the Huffington Post, the former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman said that approximately a month ago, the CIA provided him with false information about how many times and when he was briefed on enhanced interrogations."

What was your reasoning for asking the CIA for this information. What sort of raised red flags for you?

Graham: When this issue started to bubble up after the President released the so called torture memos, allegations were made that all of the leadership of the Intelligence Committee had been fully briefed on this. I knew that was not the case with me. So I called the CIA and asked what were the dates on which I, Bob Graham, was briefed.

They gave me four dates, two in April and two in September of 2002. I had a habit of carrying with me a spiral notebook such as this. I went back to my notebook to those dates and I found that on three of the four dates, there was no briefing held. I presented that information to the CIA and they concurred that their records were in error. That to me raised some question about their general records management process and I already indicated what I thought would be one important step that would make those records more reliable.

Tags: Bob Graham, CIA, Nancy Pelosi, torture briefings, Washington Journal

TOPICS

Torture

The Times Carries Water For Porter Goss in Pelosi Attack

By Susie Madrak Friday May 15, 2009 12:00pm

The New York Times loves stenography, and their CIA beat writer Mark Mazzetti does a great job, doing what he's told. Award-winning investigative blogger Marcy Wheeler points out why his work is so misleading:

Pelosi agrees that she and Goss were briefed on the program and, generally, that they discussed techniques. She even agrees that waterboarding was mentioned; the phrase "waterboarding was not being employed" certainly counts as a mention of waterboarding.

But see what number 5 doesn't say? It doesn't say, "those techniques had already been employed." "Were to be employed," a prospective use of waterboarding, not "had been employed," a past use of waterboarding.

Now, Mark. If you want to continue doing Porter's bidding, you're going to have to go back to him--I'm sure you've got him on speed-dial?--and get a stronger statement from him. But as things stand today, Porter Goss' statement is completely consistent with Nancy Pelosi's. The CIA, when it briefed Goss and Pelosi in 2002, did not tell them they had already been using waterboarding with Abu Zubaydah.

As a spook stenographer, Mark, I'm sure you're familiar with the National Security Act, but if you need a primer, why not read about it on the pages of the NYT? You'll see that the National Security Act requires the Administration inform Congress--arguably, the entire intelligence committees--about their covert ops. Requires. But instead, what happened here is that CIA took up torturing, and then, when they "briefed" Pelosi and Goss on it in September 2002, they didn't tell them they were already doing it. They didn't get around to revealing that until five months later--and six months after they had gotten into the torture business.

That is a violation of the law--some might even consider it news. But not the NYT!!! Nope, the NYT is going to keep recycling Porter Goss' carefully parsed statements and imply they refute Nancy Pelosi when they don't. The NYT is going to obsess over the fact that a staffer told Nancy Pelosi something that CIA should have told her almost a year earlier.

But the NYT is not, apparently, going to tell its readers that the CIA broke the law.

And what the hell is wrong with this country that the complicit media is now savaging Nancy Pelosi instead of those responsible for these war crimes? If she did know about torture (and she denies she did), why would she be the target instead of the war criminals who implemented this evil policy? Nope, the corporate media is consistent: It's only a crime if a Democrat does it!

That's why Pelosi is being savaged while war criminal Dick Cheney is still invited onto news shows to share his wisdom.

And if you want to look for complicity, the New York Times need look no further than the closest mirror.

Tags: blogger, CIA, marcy, MSNBC, Nancy Pelosi, New York Times, Porter Goss, Stenography, torture briefings, Waterboarding