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Breaking News! CIA Manipulating Briefing Process
No. Not really breaking. We knew that CIA was playing around with its obligation to inform the intelligence committees before it starts any big new projects--like opening torture factories around the world.
But that's the real story of this briefing list--aside from what a bunch right wingers are claiming it says, the actual details of the briefing list notwithstanding. The real story is that the CIA was playing a bunch of games to be able to claim it had informed Congress, even while only informing some of Congress some things.
First, CIA has officially confirmed what I have been saying for weeks. The CIA first briefed Congress on torture on September 4, 2002, 35 days after CIA purportedly began waterboarding and much longer after we know CIA started torturing Abu Zubaydah. Moreover, we have on the record statements from Pelosi and Goss (and I've had even stronger assurances elsewhere) that CIA did not tell Congress they were already in the business of torture. Their discussions of torture were all prospective, and they may even have stated clearly that they had not used these techniques yet, which (if true) would be a clear and direct lie to Congress.
Second, look at when--according to the CIA's specific assertions--they first talked about waterboarding to members of Congress:
February 4, 2003: Pat Roberts and a Republican and a Democratic staffer (but not Jello Jay); according to the CIA there was no specific mention of waterboarding in the February 5, 2003 briefing for Porter Goss and Jane Harman
July 13, 2004: Porter Goss and Jane Harman
July 15, 2004: Pat Roberts and Jello Jay
Now, it's possible that the people trying to smear Pelosi with this are correct and CIA mentioned waterboarding in September 2002. But that's not what the CIA says. Once you account for the fact that Jello Jay did not attend the February 4 briefing, the CIA says it first informed Democrats about waterboarding in July 2004, only after the CIA's own Inspector General had declared the program cruel and inhuman (and note, the Senate intelligence leaders, at least, got a copy of that document in June 2004, so the CIA couldn't very well pretend that they hadn't been waterboarding).
Note, too, that the CIA claims to have discussed legal issues in the July briefing with Harman and Goss, but not in the July briefing with Jello Jay and Roberts. We know this to be false.
In July 2004, the CIA briefed the Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Committee on the facts and conclusions of the Inspector General special review. The CIA indicated at that time that it was seeking OLC's legal analysis on whether the program was consistent with the substantive provisions of Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture.
Given the way the SSCI narrative focuses on the constitutional amendments named under CAT (the 5th, 8th, and 14th), I suspect CIA was informed in no uncertain terms they would have to account for these in the briefing. If they did not record the fact, it suggests they were trying to claim deniability for that key issue (though that is speculative on my part).
The CIA seems to have no memory of the details of the 2005 briefings (and, as WO has pointed out, seems to have been unsure who was HPSCI Chair and who was DCIA, since it claims that Porter Goss, then head of CIA, attended a March 8, 2004 hearing as HPSCI Chair). That's rather curious as Mary McCarthy has alleged that the CIA briefers in two hearings in 2005 lied to Congress. At least one of these briefings would have also featured the Senators asking why they fuck OLC ignored the 8th Amendment (and the CAT generally) in its December 2004 opinion. It includes briefings when Jello Jay was beginning to ask for more details on the torture program, to no avail. And, finally, it includes briefings when Congress should have been briefed about the destroyed torture tapes, but wasn't. All of that? The CIA seems to have little memory of it.
Then there's the slew of Republican-only briefings in 2005, just after the Senate approved the McCain Amendment limiting torture use. As I've explained the most suspicious of those is the briefing of the two pro-torture Republicans holding DOD's purse strings.
Until, finally, in 2006, it finally gets around to briefing the full intelligence committees but not yet the full Gang of Eight, leaving off the House leadership, including Nancy Pelosi. Anyone wonder why Jane Harman got her very own briefing on September 6, 2006, the day Bush finally came clean as a tortuer? I do.
In short, in spite of what Republicans tell you (and therefore ABC prints), this is actually an utter damning chronology of CIA contempt for their obligations to inform Congress (particularly Democrats in Congress).
16 Comments so far
Show AllWell what else did you expect of the CIA? It has always been this way. When will the progressives and liberals actually unite with the civil libertarians and fight to abolish the CIA? When it's too late and the country's broken way beyond repair?
It's already broken beyond repair. Re-investigate 9/11 and the truth will set us all free...free to abolish and prosecute many members of the old government and begin anew. Nothing else will ever suffice.
Jennifer - it is past time. The CIA has become little more than a whitewashed Stasi or Mossad - in fact - probably heavily infiltrated by Mossad - a foreign power. If this country is to retain its sovereignty, if we are to maintain some form of democracy, these subterranean agencies with their hidden budgets have to have to full exposure by governmental personnel willing to take them to task; having said that, can you think of any (many) who have the courage to do it?
Agreed. The CIA is a world class trouble maker. If there is any hope of a better world, they rush to crush it with assasinations of the peace makers and money for the most despotic individuals here and abroad.
A couple of years ago they had a sharp looking lady recruiting here in Vermont. She said that if you could lie constantly about who you are, you would be a good candidate. Yes Marcy, they have contempt for humanity. The CIA is truly contemptible.
Well, the whole bunch lost their conscience on October, 25, 2002, when Sen. Wellstone's plane went down, ending his role as leader of the opposition to the war and giving the Republicans a majority. When the CIA briefed congress on torture in Sept., are they saying Wellstone was briefed? Because, I don't think he's the kind of guy who could have sat on that.
This is why I believe nothing Ray McGovern writes other than it being the latest psy-ops disinformation for progressive bloggers. Ray and the rest of the VIPS are "Company" men and women to the core and will always be so.
Poet
Hilarious!! I love your send-up of a concern troll.
Think this will shut up the PelosiHaters and assorted reflexive DemBashers? I wouldn't count on it. Facts don't matter to zealots.
The CIA has a long history of lying to Democratic presidents beginning with the Bay of Pigs to JFK, about Iran to Jimmy Carter, about Iraq to Bill Clinton. Who can say how far the lying extends, since that would be a matter of national security.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/06/us-interrogators-killed-dozens-human-rights-researcher-and-rights-group-say/
Like a great Greek chorus, the mainstream media is off on a feeding frenzy after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to fuel this weekend's news cycle, all based upon the CIA briefing list memo that Marcy Wheeler so diligently dissects for true significance. But my take is a little different.
Yes, the briefing list is a chronology of how the national security establishment can manipulate politicians and evade genuine Congressional oversight. But this memo (and the media campaign attacking Pelosi accompanying its release) is also quite a skilled psy-ops ploy. Everywhere you look, the spin of the headlines and lede is how this CIA-generated document is a smoking gun that shows Speaker Pelosi has lied about her complicity, and the Democratic Party leadership's complicity, in enabling George Bush's torture policies. That's talking point Numero Uno in the mainstream media script.
Now, here is what the CIA's narrative actually says about their one, single oversight briefing session with Nancy Pelosi: "Briefing on EIT's [enhanced interrogation techniques] including use of EIT's on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EIT's that had been employed."
That's it. This single entry, the first Congressional briefing on the CIA's list, dated 9/4/02, is the only place where Nancy Pelosi's name appears.
In the next thirty nine entries (spanning a time frame from 9/4/02 through 3/12/09), the CIA's narrative summaries of oversight briefings use the word "waterboard" eleven different times, such as "discussed how the waterboard was used", "waterboarding and walling", "specific discussions of waterboarding", "waterboarding, nudity and walling", "waterboarding and water dousing", "waterboarding not used for years", "waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah discussed", "specific mention numerous times of waterboarding", "specific mentions of waterboarding numerous times" and "one mention of one specific EIT, waterboarding."
Okay. Giving the CIA's narrative style its due credit, do you think Nancy Pelosi was told anything about waterboarding or other torture techniques back in her one briefing session with Porter Goss back in September '04? I think Pelosi was "briefed" very briefly indeed, in the context of the rest of this CIA memorandum list.
Yet the propaganda bandwagon is warming up. Folks all across the political spectrum are picking up their pitchforks and torches to march on Pelosi's office in populist outrage, while Faux News bangs the drums and Limbaugh distributes the whistles.
Never mind that Pat Roberts, Jay Rockefeller, Bill Frist, Harry Reid, Jane Harmon, Porter Goss, and many other bipartisan elected luminaries are identified by our spooks as being far, far more implicated in the Bush/Cheney torture policies than Nancy Pelosi. It's that woman from San Francisco's head that the powers-that-be want served up on a platter. The facts be damned. Let the show begin.
Who benefits if public anger over torture gets diverted towards Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, or even Barack Obama?
Who gains, if the cops who were asleep at the switch or who got co-opted by the crooks get held equally accountable for the evil acts that were actually committed by the criminals?
The CIA benefits. The Bush/Cheney legacy wing of the GOP benefits. That's who.
This sure looks like a psy-ops campaign to me, one that has a lot of otherwise good people swallowing the bait, and blindly following the scent of blood in the water. Feeding frenzies are always so much fun.
Bill from Saginaw
I'm not sure how Pelosi being briefed (secretly) to a greater or lesser degree, matters with regards to the necessity of investigating and prosecuting the principals of the torture program.
The US inside the beltway, spin, sophisticated backroom politics is always ongoing, and sure there is an effort by the Republicans to share the blame, but I don't know why you are concerned that this is a threat to justice being done. In fact the Republican efforts may backfire by forcing Pelosi and the Democrats into a corner where they have nothing to lose by taking their chances with a special prosecutor.
"In fact the Republican efforts may backfire by forcing Pelosi and the Democrats into a corner where they have nothing to lose by taking their chances with a special prosecutor."
Good point.
It matters because the hoo ha over Pelosi is being used as cover to divert the debate and attention from prosecuting the principals.
Bring America Back !!!!.....Let us heed the post of 'angryoldman' that the
mother of it all was 9/11 !!! And, the disgraceful Truth of 9/11 has yet
to see the Sunshine !!!
****-It did not start with Torture, it started pre and post 9/11....
the US Torture programs were set up to produce Patsies== brainwashed and
waterboarded detainees who would admit to anything and everything.
Our Government, esp the CIA and FBI are just great at coming up with Patsies !
Now we have the chauffeur of bin Laden , and the 19th so called Hijacker
admitting to masterminding 9/11, and begging to be martyred so they may
join their 40 virgins in Islam heaven.
Patsies, folks, Patsies !!! Think now, why would the US Govt need Patsies ?
The CIA, since its inception post WWII, has the entire Nazi Gehlen group of SS technologists Operation Paperclipped right into the CIA, where their policies of fomenting uprising, assassination, and long history of torture and experimentation live on in subterranean abandon, with no oversight, based on loose policies like the mandate to wipe out Communism. The entire male Bush clan back to Prescott, banker to the Nazis, never prosecuted for Nazi collaboration, is full of treason - to dirty tricks with George I as in October Surprise and Iran Contra, to Baby Bush and his continuation of corporate/ government collaboration (read fascism), torture and trashing the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and selling off large portions of the United States to foreign countries, points to some fairly dirty dealing, stealing and outright treason. With China owning most of our debt, can they come over here and take over my town's bridges, water treatment plants, etc? Where are the cops? The cops are the danger to us all. Loose cannon does not cover it - shadow government is more like it - and the news is not good. I believe the politicians have been threatened, their families threatened. We have to wake up and be responsible in whatever ways we can. For more information and documentation to support the idea that Nazism is alive and flourishing in North and South America (where they have a booming business training various dictator-led regimes to torture and "disappear" dissidents), read authors Joseph Farrell and Peter Levenda, and Tim Weiner on the CIA for the last 60 years' worth of anarchy. Their targets will be us eventually.