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Rachel Maddow talks to Jane Mayer about the amount of involvement Dick Cheney had with the CIA in pushing them for the intelligence he wanted to make the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Maddow: We're trying to figure out the role of Vice President Cheney's office here in part, on the torture issue, the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. From your reporting what can you tell us about what sort of interest Cheney took personally in the intelligence that was going from the interrogations?

Mayer: Well I think we're beginning to learn more and more about this. He is described in my book by the number two person in the Justice Department James Comey as having become obsessive basically after 9-11 with the threat of terrorism and you can see it more and more really. I mean he's been speaking out so often he's becoming the face and the defense for these programs really.

He was I think if you look at it carefully, many of the finger prints go back to his office and we're beginning to sort of, you know, connect those dots now.

Maddow: And he was going through raw intelligence at this time in terms of the lead up, post 9-11, pre-invasion of Iraq, he was not only getting briefed or receiving the same kind of information the President was getting, he was also going through the raw materials wasn't he?

Mayer: Well what happened after 9-11 was he was dissatisfied with the kind of information that had been given to them from the CIA and so they demanded, just every single piece of scrap of information about threats that might be coming towards the United States and at his direction they took away the filter that the CIA had had where previously before 9-11, the President and the Vice President and people who are not intelligence agents, experts had only been told about things that were really possibly important.

After 9-11 they saw everything. It was called the Threat Matrix Report. It was this extensive thing. They started, Cheney started every morning with the Matrix Report and then went through it all again sitting down with the President, so he did it twice every day. And it was described to me by some of the more expert intelligence officials, Roger Cressey who worked in the NSC, as filled with garbage. Just completely alarming stuff that would just make anybody lose their judgement. Somebody else described it to me as like being locked into a room with Led Zeplin playing. I mean you just would lose your mind looking at this stuff.

And they started it every day looking at these things, so that was kind of the mindset that they were in. Then there were reports of Cheney going over to the CIA and personally taking great involvement in the issues. There were reports he had a reading room set aside for himself over there. Not all the details are out. I don't know whether or not, how many times he went over there. There are a number of people who say he was there a lot and pushing so hard on this front.

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As the latest from the Wall Street Journal and Politico reveal, the apologists for George W. Bush's regime of detainee torture are circling the wagons. While one anonymous Bush official claimed the Obama's release of the torture memos "laid it all out for our enemies," former Attorney General Michael Mukasey in an op-ed written with his CIA counterpart Michael Hayden proclaimed, "The President has tied his own hand on terror." Of course, in his 1700 word screed, Mukasey never acknowledges the possibility that the brutal tactics he defends might be illegal and require prosecution. And that comes as no surprise; back in 2007, Michael Mukasey derided such questions as "hypothetical."

To be sure, Hayden and Mukasey trot out all of the usual Republican talking points. Obama, they charged, not only disclosed "successful" CIA interrogators' "secret sauce" to terrorists, but ensured the agency would return to its timid ways:

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

Despite revelations as recently as three weeks ago that "not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions," Mukasey continued to insist that Abu Zubaida was "coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh" and by extension, 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

But while Mukasey today brushed off any notion that the Bush administration's so-called enhanced interrogation techniques "disgraced us before the world," during his confirmation hearings he hedged his bets.

Following in the footsteps of Alberto Gonzales, who during his own February 2005 confirmation hearings deemed Senators' questions on presidential authorization for torture as a "hypothetical situation," Mukasey tried to skirt the issue of the legality of the practices in question. As ThinkProgress recounted, Judge Mukasey in a written response to Democratic Senators in October 2007 took the same line as his predecessor:

In the four-page letter, Mukasey called the interrogation technique "over the line" and "repugnant" on "a personal basis," but added that he would need the "actual facts and circumstances"" to strike a "legal opinion":

"Hypotheticals are different from real life and in any legal opinion the actual facts and circumstances are critical."

But during the hearings themselves, Mukasey made clear he was already familiar with at last some of the facts, including at least one of the memos released yesterday:

"The Bybee memo, to paraphrase a French diplomat, was worse than a sin, it was a mistake. It was unnecessary."

And like Gonzales, Mukasey refused to disavow specific "enhanced interrogation techniques" such as waterboarding.

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All the discussion has been about Obama's selection of Leon Panetta and what it means for the CIA, but the most significant part of today's announcement was the statement that leads off this video:

The United States does not torture. We will abide by the Geneva Conventions. That we will uphold our highest values and ideals.

Meanwhile, all the fussing about how folks in the CIA feel about Panetta's imminent appointment is put in perspective, I think, by Melvin Goodman of the Center for International Policy, himself an intel veteran:

DeYoung and Warrick disingenuously repeated the assertion of one senior CIA officer that the “agency was neither consulted nor informed” about the Panetta nomination. More balderdash! The CIA has never been consulted about the nomination of a CIA director nor should it. It is unlikely that Foreign Service Officers were asked to vet the selection of Senator Hillary Clinton as secretary of state or that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were asked if they would support the nomination of Donald Rumsfeld as secretary of defense in 2001. Civil servants have no role to play in the selection of senior officials of the government, and their professionalism requires support for their leadership, regardless of political beliefs. We certainly expect U.S. military officers, who are overwhelmingly members of the Republican Party, to support the national security policies of Democratic administrations. We should assume that CIA officers will do the same.

His piece is really about how the media -- and the Washington Post in particular -- are in fact being played by CIA operatives in their reportage on this.

    In a remarkable development at the High Court in London, an email from a senior US State Dept. official has been revealed, apparently threatening to curb co-operation with Britain on international intelligence sharing if details on a detainees interrogation are revealed. Lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, held at Gitmo, have taken legal action in the UK to force the release of details which, they say, will prove Mohamed was ilegally abducted and tortured into a confession. Mohamed claims that his torture included having his penis cut with a razor blade by Moroccan proxies for the US.

In an email to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which was sent on to the court, Stephen Mathias, a legal adviser to the US state department, said that the disclosure of information would cause "serious and lasting damage to the US-UK intelligence-sharing relationship and thus the national security of the UK, and the aggressive and unprecedented intervention in the apparently functioning adjudicatory processes of a longtime ally of the UK, in contravention of well-established principles of international comity."

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Ron Suskind has a new book coming out called: "The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism"

 It has some explosive information about the White House's plan to forge documents to persuade the American public that we should attack Iraq. This is incredible stuff. Suskind appeared on the TODAY show and gave his first interview about it...He says it's "one of the great lies in modern political history."

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George "Slam dunk" Tenet denied the report, but there's this Sunday Telegraph article that describes what happened. Worse than Watergate.

I've used notes from CBS's Dan Raviv to highlight the action:

His new book THE WAY OF THE WORLD is about the war on terrorism and the Bush Administration since 9/11 and especially since invading Iraq in March '03. (You can easily Google details of the alleged letter from "Habbush" to Saddam Hussein dated July 1, 2001, which says (future) 9/11 hijacker was trained in Baghdad, AND that Iraq received shipments from Niger.) [..]

The book reports (or charges) that the Bush White House faked a letter from Saddam Hussein's intelligence chief to President Saddam in late 2003, backdating it to July 2001 and reports that Saddam's intelligence chief (Habbush) was in the protective custody of the C.I.A. at the time-- even while the U.S. military had him in the "deck of cards," a list of Saddam officials wanted dead-or-alive. The White House ordered the C.I.A. to arrange for Habbush to write the fake letter in his own handwriting. The controversial letter did find itself to the world media in December '03.

Habbush was in the deck of cards -- the (approx. 50) Saddam officials wanted dead-or-alive by the U.S. after the March 2003 invasion -- while in reality he was in C.I.A. protection. And in October 2003, Habbush was paid $5 million by the C.I.A. AFTER the C.I.A. asked Habbush to write -- in his own handwriting and in a convincing way -- the note that the White House suggested.

Britain's Sunday Telegraph in December '03 caused a sensation by reporting the discovery in Baghdad of that letter... and a few days later NEWSWEEK reported strong doubts that the letter was genuine. Among other things, experts wondered, why would Saddam's intel chief write about both Atta & nuclear material in the same letter?

Exact quotes from pp. 369-372 of Suskind's book are in bold print below:

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When even Reader's Digest goes after the Federal Government, watch out:

A 2007 Justice Department audit found that the FBI was somehow losing 2.6 laptops per month, many with sensitive or classified information. More than 1,400 Energy Department laptops went missing in a six-year period, according to another audit. So much for homeland security.

Despite growing awareness of the problem, real safeguards are not in place. A February report by the Government Accountability Office found that only two of 24 agencies the GAO reviewed had implemented all the security measures recommended by the government. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the GAO also found that at least 19 of 24 agencies had experienced one or more breaches that could expose people's personal information to identity theft.

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When I read this last year I suspected it wouldn't be long before I'd be seeing something like this in today's WaPo:

Imagine a world of streets lined with video cameras that alert authorities to any suspicious activity. A world where police officers can read the minds of potential criminals and arrest them before they commit any crimes. A world in which a suspect who lies under questioning gets nabbed immediately because his brain has given him away.

Though that may sound a lot like the plot of the 2002 movie "Minority Report," starring Tom Cruise and based on a Philip K. Dick novel, I'm not talking about science fiction here; it turns out we're not so far away from that world. But does it sound like a very safe place, or a very scary one?

It's a question I think we should be asking as the federal government invests millions of dollars in emerging technology aimed at detecting and decoding brain activity. [...]

Will this be enough evidence for an arrest? Can it be used to convict a person of intent to commit a crime? [...]

These are just some of the questions we must ask as we balance scientific advances and the promise of enhanced safety against a loss of liberty. And we must do it now, while our voices still matter. In a world where private thoughts are no longer private, what will our protections be? ...(more)

That story follows one from yesterday's WaPo that the Bush admin is set to launch a new domestic spy program, "rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority."

I don't think I'll ever hear Alan Parsons' Eye in the Sky (YouTube) the same way again.

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We brought you Attorney General, Michael Mukasey's tearful remarks about 9/11 and the ongoing FISA battle in Congress last week and on Tuesday's Countdown, Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow dig deeper into what was either a series of lies from the AG or an admission of gross negligence on the part of the Bush Administration leading up to that tragic day.

Mukasey claimed that the U.S. received a phone call from a terrorist safe house in Afghanistan prior to 9/11, but couldn't trace the call because the FISA laws were too restrictive -- which is, of course, a lie. Mukasey was a Federal Judge, he knows that. Olbermann says that someone in the House or Senate needs to haul the Attorney General in and question him and find out whether he was lying to make a political point, or if the Bush administration really did receive such a call and chose not to act on it, leaving the country vulnerable to attack.

Maddow:"...Oh please, just let him have just been lying, because if he was telling the truth here, if there really was a call from a known al Qaeda safe house in Afghanistan to the United States before 9/11 which the Bush Administration did not tap and trace? That is huge news and we ought to get some answers about why we were left so unprotected and surprised on 9/11. Let's hope that he was just making that up."

*On a side note, we would like to wish Rachel Maddow a very Happy Birthday!

CIA Director Michael Hayden appeared on Meet The Press this morning and explained to Tim Russert that he has recently urged his CIA employees to buy liability insurance in order to protect them against any lawsuits that may challenge the legality of their legal acts. Got that? Yea, me neither.

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The Associated Press has more. It's pretty clear that the CIA just wants to cover it's ass once the DoJ comes to the conclusion that "enhanced interrogation techniques" really just means "illegal torture." It's a shame that the CIA, who really does (for better or worse) important work around the world, is put in such a precarious situation by this lawless administration.

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It's infuriating that the Bush administration has gone so far around the Constitution without any accountability from those who are charged with oversight, yet the few journalists and whistleblowers that have tried to shine a light on the actions of the Bush administration are fighting to not go to jail. Case in point: James Risen, the reporter who broke the warrantless wiretapping story and who is now fighting to not go to jail after being subpoenaed to reveal his sources. Rick Karr looks at how the Bush administration has consistently sought to squelch journalists and whistleblowers like Risen, Sibel Edmonds, and even Talking Points Memo.

The entire episode (including an interview with Rep. Henry Waxman on government oversight) can be viewed online.

Transcripts below the fold.

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While this video of the ad goes after Rep Nancy Boyda (D-KS) (btw, whose response so far has been really good), she is just one of many "Freshman Dems" targeted by this fear-mongering ad campaign so far. As the Minnesota blog Bluestem Prairie notes:

Other Freshman Dems targeted that we know of so far: Joe Courtney and Chris Murphy (CT); Carol Shea-Porter and Paul Hodes (NH); Jason Altmire (PA); Ron Klein and Tim Mahoney (FL); Gabrielle Giffords and Harry Mitchell (AZ); Jerry McNerney (CA); Melissa Bean (IL); Joe Donnelly (IN); ... Michael Arcuri and Kirsten Gillbrand (NY) ; Steve Kagan (WI). [...]

Defense of Democracies is affiliated with the non-profit, non-partisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focused on defeating terrorism and promoting democratic values.

The ad is similar to one posted last week by House Republicans on gop.gov, that also misleadingly blames the expiration of the "Protect America Act' on the Democrats. The fact is that "there is one reason, and one reason only, that the Protect America Act expired. Its name is “George W. Bush.”

Not surprisingly, the group The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' list of "Directors, Fellows, Personnel" includes many PNAC-neocons like Kristol, Krauthammer, and Perle (a lot more on the group here). The list also includes, however, several prominent Democrats, which begs the question: Why would Democrats be affiliated with a group that would be running these ads?

Update: Begged question answered. mcjoan:

Who's behind the shadowy organization isn't entirely clear, but it is definitely an offshoot of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, an organization that until a few days ago listed among its board of advisors Donna Brazile, Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY), Rep. Jim Marshall (D-GA), Zell Miller, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-NY). Engel, Schumer and Brazile have all resigned from the board, with Brazile making this statement

And it will be all the House Democrats' fault, or so this video attempting to scare the crap out of you posted over at GOP.gov portends. (h/t Wonkette)

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I have no idea why they didn't go with a mushroom cloud at the end. A sequel in the works, perhaps? It's a good thing they didn't shoot for the "based on a true story" intro, because the part about it really being the fault of the Republicans refusing to negotiate on their insistence on covering up Bush's crimes by protecting the telecoms who enabled him - That would have really detracted from that whole 'terror/panic/Democrats-fault' theme.

All the GOP has left is the fear card, and that sucker is wore slam out. Bush's trusty Supreme Court has already seen fit to throw up a firewall for the telecoms, so why is it the Republicans are still insisting on holding up the FISA bill? It's because the Republican Party will do anything they can to keep whatever secrets are hidden in those NSA spy rooms from ever incriminating their President, even if it does mean putting our country at more risk to do so. That's why.

Glenn Greenwald has more...

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Democratic Senator and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Jack Reed, appeared on Late Edition and did a great job of debunking the lies and spin being floated by President Bush and the GOP on FISA. As Juan Williams did earlier on Fox News Sunday, Reed makes it clear that allowing the flawed FISA legislation passed last August to lapse does not mean the U.S. can't do surveillance on suspected terrorists.

Host Wolf Blitzer floated out the exact same argument William Kristol did on Fox, which is this notion that Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, is some sort of apolitical figure and somehow that makes him more believable. Reed shot that down, reminding Blitzer that the previous FISA laws are still in place and that U.S. intelligence can still go after suspects for several days before requesting a warrant.

Bolivia has now filed espionage charges against Vincent Cooper, a U.S. Embassy official who instructed Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright scholar John Alexander van Schaick at mandatory orientation and security briefings "to provide the names, addresses and activities of any Venezuelan or Cuban doctors or field workers" they encountered.

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Van Schaick's account matches that of Peace Corps members and staff who claim that last July their entire group of new volunteers was instructed by the same U.S. Embassy official in Bolivia to report on Cuban and Venezuelan nationals. [...]

"I am supposed to be a cultural ambassador increasing mutual understanding between us and the Bolivian people," van Schaick explains. "This flies in face of everything Fulbright stands for."

<!-- page -->The Fulbright program receives its funding from the U.S. State Department and the Peace Corps is a federal agency, but the State Department insists that neither group has the obligation to act in an intelligence capacity. In fact, both have strict regulations against members getting involved in politics in their host country.

Robert Naiman points out that Cooper tried recruiting the Peace Corps class back in July and the incident with van Schaick occurred in November.

Back in Dec Morales lashed out at the United States Embassy, questioning whether some of its development aid was being channeled to the political opposition. That was just months after Bolivia rejected a U.S.-backed free trade agreement and instead signed a pact with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua (soon to be joined by Ecuador, Uruguay, the Dominican Republic, and St. Kitts) that has markedly heightened tensions between its members and the US and in recent weeks.

Democracy Now has more on this here and more on recent U.S. meddling in Bolivia here.

From an email sent by Wexler's office:

Today, in hearings on Capitol Hill, I confronted Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on her role in the lies, exaggerations, and misdirection that led us into the Iraq war.

During my questioning, Secretary Rice falsely stated that she never saw intelligence casting doubt on the Bush Administration claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction. This unbelievable statement is flatly contradicted by numerous government reports and CIA testimonials.

Secretary Rice's responses demonstrate once and for all that we need aggressive oversight over this out of control Administration. Unfortunately, the Bush Administration has ignored the constitutional right of Congress to provide such oversight.

It is time Congress took aggressive action to assert our rights on behalf of the American people.

The House of Representatives must immediately hold former White House Counsel Harriet Miers and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten in contempt of Congress for their failure to respond to congressional subpoenas.

I have been aggressively lobbying Members of Congress to support a vote on contempt, and I am thrilled to report that Speaker Pelosi told me directly that she agrees it is well past time to vote on contempt. I am anticipating that the House will shortly vote on resolutions of both civil and criminal contempt for both Miers and Bolten.

No one should be immune from accountability and the rule of law.

I think it's wonderful that Wexler is showing more spinal fortitude than almost all of his House colleagues. The one thing that bothers me in this exchange was Rice's continued defense that "other countries believed it" and that the intelligence on Iraq was the consensus of various intelligence agencies when we know that isn't the truth and was cherry picked and weighted from questionable sources like Ahmad Chalabi and "Curveball". I don't know if there's an enterprising C&Ler out there that would like to put together for Wexler's benefit a fact sheet that can cite sources that show Rice's continued lying on this, something like this great piece by A Tiny Revolution. If there is one, let us know and I'll make sure to get your work to Wexler's office.