CIA and US Senate row over torture report leads to IG investigation

[Winehole23]

The origins of the current dispute date back more than a year, when the committee completed its work on a 6,000-page report about the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation program. People who have read the study said it is a withering indictment of the program and details many instances when C.I.A. officials misled Congress, the White House and the public about the value of the agency’s brutal interrogation methods, including waterboarding.


The report has yet to be declassified, but last June, John O. Brennan (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/john_o_brennan/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the C.I.A. director, responded to the Senate report with a 122-page rebuttal challenging specific facts in the report as well as the investigation’s overarching conclusion — that the agency’s interrogation methods yielded little valuable intelligence.


Then, in December, Mr. Udall revealed that the Intelligence Committee had become aware of an internal C.I.A. study that he said was “consistent with the Intelligence Committee’s report” and “conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the committee’s report.”


It appears that Mr. Udall’s revelation is what set off the current fight, with C.I.A. officials accusing the Intelligence Committee of learning about the internal review by gaining unauthorized access to agency databases.
In a letter to President Obama on Tuesday, Mr. Udall made a vague reference to the dispute over the C.I.A.’s internal report.


“As you are aware, the C.I.A. has recently taken unprecedented action against the committee in relation to the internal C.I.A. review, and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the committee’s oversight responsibilities and for our democracy,” he wrote.

The letter gave no details about the “unprecedented action,” but Mr. Udall said that it was important for the committee to “be able to do its oversight work — consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers — without the C.I.A. posing impediments or obstacles as it is today.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/us/new-inquiry-into-cia-employees-amid-clashes-over-interrogation-program.html?_r=0

[Winehole23]

“I am very confident that the appropriate authorities reviewing this matter will determine where wrongdoing, if any, occurred in either the executive branch or legislative branch,” Brennan continued, raising a suggestion that the Senate committee itself might have acted improperly.


“Until then I would encourage others to refrain from outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and congressional overseers.”

[boutons_deux]

"important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and congressional overseers."

:lol yeah right! :lol

CIA doesn't GAF about Congress, CIA is its own secret government

[Winehole23]

lesson learned after the Church Committee: the CIA won't take it lying down this time.

[boutons_deux]

CIA Monitoring Of Senate Computers Referred To Justice Department

The CIA Inspector General’s Office has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations of malfeasance at the spy agency in connection with a yet-to-be released Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program, McClatchy has learned.

The criminal referral may be related to what several knowledgeable people said was CIA monitoring of computers used by Senate aides to prepare the study. The monitoring may have violated an agreement between the committee and the agency.

The development marks an unprecedented breakdown in relations between the CIA and its congressional overseers amid an extraordinary closed-door battle over the 6,300-page report on the agency’s use of waterboarding and harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists held in secret overseas prisons. The report is said to be a searing indictment of the program. The CIA has disputed some of the reports findings.

White House officials have closely tracked the bitter struggle, a McClatchy investigation has found. But they haven’t directly intervened, perhaps because they are embroiled in their own feud with the committee, resisting surrendering top-secret documents that the CIA asserted were covered by executive privilege and sent to the White House.

McClatchy’s findings are based on information found in official documents and provided by people with knowledge of the dispute being fought in the seventh-floor executive offices of the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Va., and the committee’s high-security work spaces on Capitol Hill.

The people who spoke to McClatchy asked not to be identified because the feud involves highly classified matters and carries enormous consequences for congressional oversight over the executive branch.

The CIA and the committee declined to comment.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council, declined to discuss the matter and referred questions to the CIA and the Justice Department.

In question now is whether any part of the committee’s report, which took some four years to compose and cost $40 million, will ever see the light of day.

The report details how the CIA misled the Bush administration and Congress about the use of interrogation techniques that many experts consider torture, according to public statements by committee members. It also shows, members have said, how the techniques didn’t provide the intelligence that led the CIA to the hideout in Pakistan where Osama bin Laden was killed in a 2011 raid by Navy SEALs.

The committee determined earlier this year that the CIA monitored computers — in possible violation of an agreement against doing so — that the agency had provided to intelligence committee staff in a secure room at CIA headquarters that the agency insisted they use to review millions of pages of top-secret reports, cables and other documents, according to people with knowledge.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) a panel member, apparently was referring to the monitoring when he asked CIA Director John Brennan at a Jan. 9 hearing if provisions of the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act “apply to the CIA? Seems to me that’s a yes or no answer.”

Brennan replied that he’d have to get back to Wyden after looking into “what the act actually calls for and it’s applicability to CIA’s authorities.”

http://www.nationalmemo.com/cia-monitoring-senate-computers-referred-justice-department/

[Winehole23]

the McClatchy scoop: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/03/04/220161/cia-monitoring-of-senate-computers.html

[Winehole23]

rough and dirty WH gloss: Senate snooped and found out the CIA internal review was substantially in accord with their own, subsequent CIA clarifications notwithstanding.

[Winehole23]

The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday sharply accused the CIA of violating federal law and undermining the constitutional principle of congressional oversight as she detailed publicly for the first time how the agency secretly removed documents from computers used by her panel to investigate a controversial interrogation program.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that the situation amounted to attempted intimidation of congressional investigators, adding: “I am not taking it lightly.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/feinstein-cia-searched-intelligence-committee-computers/2014/03/11/982cbc2c-a923-11e3-8599-ce7295b6851c_story.html

[boutons_deux]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/feinstein-cia-searched-intelligence-committee-computers/2014/03/11/982cbc2c-a923-11e3-8599-ce7295b6851c_story.html

CIA is beyond the reach of govt and laws. It's its own govt, and lawless. "a few good men" defending America don't need no steenkin laws

[Winehole23]

we'll see

[boutons_deux]

CIA-apologist, defender Feinstein pissed her beloved CIA spied on her committee.

[boutons_deux]

we'll see

not if the CIA has its way, and it will

[Winehole23]

CIA is forbidden to spy domestically. There's nothing ambiguous about it. It's illegal, to say nothing of the separation of powers issue.

[boutons_deux]

CIA is forbidden to spy domestically. There's nothing ambiguous about it. It's illegal, to say nothing of the separation of powers issue.

it is now well known that the CIA spies on US citizens, collecting their phone call metadata and very probably LOTS of other info. nobody in court, CIA lies, obfuscates to Congress.

[Bill_Brasky]

Everyone's down with the spying, until they're the ones being spied on.

[boutons_deux]

http://www.alternet.org/files/styles/large/public/bors411.png

[boutons_deux]

Everyone's down with the spying, until they're the ones being spied on.

Clearly Feinstein's situation:

CIA spy on Americans? yawn, CIA is great

CIA spy on me? hell no

[Winehole23]

Senate Intelligence Chair Dianne Feinstein's speech on the Senate floor yesterday, where she suggested that the CIA may have violated the Constitution (http://reason.com/blog/2014/03/11/how-to-get-feinstein-to-support-the-four) by monitoring her committee’s computers and seeking a criminal investigation into staffers has yielded her support from across the aisle. Republican Lindsey Graham called the allegations "Richard Nixon stuff (http://blogs.rollcall.com/wgdb/brennan-denies-cias-senate-snooping-graham-calls-allegations-nixonian/)," offering that "the legislative branch should declare war on the CIA" if Feinstein's allegations are true. Republican John McCain (http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Dianne-Feinstein-John-McCain-CIA-computer-search/2014/03/11/id/558835/) also slammed the CIA chief, saying he had never had much confidence in him and calling Feinstein’s allegations “disturbing.” He said the allegations worthy of an independent investigation because of “allegations of bias” that exist on both sides of the aisle. Other Republican senators, like Saxby Chambliss and Marco Rubio, questioned (http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/03/11/42741/sen-dianne-feinstein-s-cia-outrage-splits-senate/) Feinstein’s allegations, insisting they didn’t know the facts and that the story is likely “more complicated” than Feinstein is making out to be. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, meanwhile, called Feinstein out as a hypocrite (http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/edward-snowden-dianne-feinstein-hypocrisy-nsa-cia) for only caring about government spying when it involves her staffers.http://reason.com/24-7/2014/03/12/cia-senate-spying-constitutional-crisis

[TSA]

Karma's a bitch Feinstein.

[pgardn]

Oh shit, Republicans defending privacy.

How will Boots take this... Not lying down by God.

[boutons_deux]

NSA Aiming To Infect 'Millions' Of Computers Worldwide With Its Malware; Targets Telco/ISP Systems Administrators

from the so,-telco-sys-admins-are-now-'national-security-threats'-or-did-I-miss-t dept

The NSA is still working hard (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131124/20304025345/nsa-has-50000-computer-botnet-secretly-installing-malware-around-globe.shtml) to make the world's computer usage less safe. The latest leak published by The Intercept shows the agency plans to infect "millions" of computers worldwide with malware (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/article/2014/03/12/nsa-plans-infect-millions-computers-malware/), making it easier for the NSA to harvest data and communications from these compromised machines.


The classified files – provided previously by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden – contain new details about groundbreaking surveillance technology the agency has developed to infect potentially millions of computers worldwide with malware “implants.” The clandestine initiative enables the NSA to break into targeted computers and to siphon out data from foreign Internet and phone networks.

The methods detailed include the agency masquerading as a Facebook server and sending out laced spam emails in order to subvert users' computers and give the NSA access to local files as well as control of webcams and microphones. Not only does the agency actively work to delay bug fixes in order to exploit systems, but its ongoing malware mission ensures that using a computer and/or accessing the web will always be more dangerous than it should be.

Mikko Hypponen, an expert in malware who serves as chief research officer at the Finnish security firm F-Secure, calls the revelations “disturbing.” The NSA’s surveillance techniques, he warns, could inadvertently be undermining the security of the Internet.

“When they deploy malware on systems,” Hypponen says, “they potentially create new vulnerabilities in these systems, making them more vulnerable for attacks by third parties.”

The NSA has argued previously that its malware targets are strictly national security threats. But the evidence provided here undermines this defense of NSA malware
deployment.

In one secret post on an internal message board, an operative from the NSA’s Signals Intelligence Directorate describes using malware attacks against systems administrators who work at foreign phone and Internet service providers. By hacking an administrator’s computer, the agency can gain covert access to communications that are processed by his company. “Sys admins are a means to an end,” the NSA operative writes.

The internal post – titled “I hunt sys admins” – makes clear that terrorists aren’t the only targets of such NSA attacks. Compromising a systems administrator, the operative notes, makes it easier to get to other targets of interest, including any “government official that happens to be using the network some admin takes care of.”


http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140312/07334826545/nsa-aiming-to-infect-millions-computers-worldwide-with-its-malware-targets-telcoisp-systems-administrators.shtml

[boutons_deux]

Karma's a bitch Feinstein.

karma? here's karma

Pennsylvania trooper fatally shoots pregnant wife in the head while cleaning his gunhttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/wcau_miller_140310a-615x345.jpg

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/10/pennsylvania-trooper-fatally-shoots-pregnant-wife-in-the-head-while-cleaning-his-gun/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

right-wingers are against NSA only because there's Dem in WH.

Heard all kinds of defenses of FISA, etc from right-wingers when dubya was Pres.

[Winehole23]

After watching DiFi’s speech (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/03/11/the-cia-forces-a-constitutional-crisis/), the course of action Milibank recommends (http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-allegations-of-cia-spying-on-the-senate-deserve-investigation/2014/03/11/96105150-a95b-11e3-8d62-419db477a0e6_story.html):



If the White House wishes to repair the damage, it would declassify without further delay the report done by Feinstein’s committee — along with the Panetta Review. If the White House won’t, Feinstein’s panel and others would be justified in holding up CIA funding and nominations and conducting public hearings.


Agreed. But here is Rubio, equating the Senate investigation staffers with CIA lawyers, as if there was some kind of equivalence:

(http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/the-buzz-florida-politics/rubio-cia-story-more-complicated-than-what-feinstein-suggests/2169650)


Well, again, because I’m a member of that committee, I’m — others may choose to be more forthcoming about — but I try to protect the nature of the work we do in that committee. Let me just say that I think that story has two sides; I think it’s a bit more complicated than what’s being put out there by Senator Feinstein or others. I think at the end of the day there should be an impartial investigation as to what happened. And you may end up finding out that both sides are to blame, that both sides committed mistakes … But there should be an impartial investigation of it, and I think until that point people should reserve judgment. But I would just caution that I don’t think anyone has a clean hand and I think it’s important for the full truth to come out. I think people may be surprised to learn that, in this case, there were no good guys and maybe two or three bad ones.


Notice the attempt to claim that “both sides” have “unclean hands” – as if perpetrating torture is somehow equivalent to a vital oversight function of the Congress. Then there’s a veiled threat – gleefully touted by Eli Lake (http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/11/did-the-cia-chief-just-dare-obama-to-fire-him.html) – that the CIA could retaliate against a sitting president by leaking information to try and damage him:



“Any agency can undermine just about anyone,” said Pete Hoekstra, who served as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during the first two years of Bush’s second term. “We saw that under the Bush administration, there were leaks coming out all over the place. You never knew where they were coming from and some of them were coming from the intelligence community and the objective was to embarrass President Bush.”
If the CIA and the broader intelligence community come to feel the same way about Obama, the White House could find itself as under siege as Bush was in his second term. Then Obama would not only have to face opposition to his foreign policy from Republicans in Congress, but also the bureaucracy of spies that know many of his darkest secrets.


Just take a moment to ponder that empirical prediction. It assumes that the CIA is an entity independent of the president, who is the head of the executive branch. It assumes that the CIA will act against the president if it feels exposed or slighted. Nothing could more baldy illustrate the desperate need to cut this anti-democratic and anti-constitutional power-center down to size. When an agency lies to the White House over torture, when it spies on the Senate investigating its torture program, it has become a rogue threat to our political system. I fear that Obama’s pusillanimity on accountability for war crimes has merely emboldened them to further illegality.
Dickerson weighs in (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/03/dianne_feinstein_the_cia_and_cover_up_the_californ ia_senator_accuses_the.html):



We are no longer in a predictable fight between two branches of government anticipated by the framers.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/

[TSA]

karma? here's karma

Pennsylvania trooper fatally shoots pregnant wife in the head while cleaning his gunhttp://www.rawstory.com/rs/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/wcau_miller_140310a-615x345.jpg

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/10/pennsylvania-trooper-fatally-shoots-pregnant-wife-in-the-head-while-cleaning-his-gun/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29

How is this even remotely related to the thread? And how is that even remotely karma? If I were anti-gun I'd be able to present a much better case than you've tried over the years.


right-wingers are against NSA only because there's Dem in WH.

Heard all kinds of defenses of FISA, etc from right-wingers when dubya was Pres.




Problem you have here is I'm not a right winger by any means, I just love guns and am annoyed by stupid liberals like yourself. There are good liberals out there, just like there are good conservatives, but both are very rare.

[Winehole23]

I may sound like a bit of a Straussian here, but the absence of a name in this particularly pointed part of Senator Feinstein’s epic speech yesterday drew enormous attention to it. Money quote from DiFi: (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/03/11/the-cia-forces-a-constitutional-crisis/)

There is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that Senate staff may have committed a crime. I view the acting

http://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2006/02/abughraib.jpg?w=580 (http://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2006/02/abughraib.jpg)general counsel’s referral as a potential effort to intimidate this staff—and I am not taking it lightly.


I should note that for most, if not all, of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, the now acting general counsel was a lawyer in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center—the unit within which the CIA managed and carried out this program.
From mid-2004 until the official termination of the detention and interrogation program in January 2009, he was the unit’s chief lawyer. He is mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study.


The general counsel’s name is Robert Eatinger, a key figure in the authorization of torture in the US. As I noted yesterday (http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/03/11/the-cia-forces-a-constitutional-crisis/), it’s a testament to how devoted the CIA is to its torture program that, long after it was disbanded, it promoted the lawyer who defended it and was an integral part of it to be the acting chief counsel for the entire agency (while Obama’s nominee for the job remains bottled up in the Senate). So who is this guy? Here’s one key fact:

(http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/12/cia-lawyer-at-centerofciacongressclash.html)
Eatinger was one of two CIA lawyers who reportedly told the director of the CIA’s clandestine service in 2005 there were no legal

http://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/abu_ghraib_56.jpg?w=300&h=226
(http://sullydish.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/abu_ghraib_56.jpg)requirements for the agency to hold onto 92 videotapes that showed the abusive tactics used by its interrogators against Al-Qaeda prisoners. Although Eatinger and the other lawyer did not specifically sanction it, the CIA official, Jose Rodriguez, later ordered the tapes destroyed.


Rodriguez’s destruction of the tapes in late 2005 in an industrial-strength shredder came despite objections by the Bush administration’s White House counsel and the director of national intelligence. The CIA director at the time, Michael Hayden, assured senators that Rodriguez hadn’t destroyed evidence because there were still written cables describing what the videotapes showed, but Feinstein said Tuesday the cables downplayed the brutality of the program.


http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/03/12/who-is-robert-eatinger/

[Winehole23]

A lawyer dogged by scandal, already deemed by a federal judge to have withheld evidence in order to protect a CIA agent from scrutiny, and deeply embedded in the torture program itself, should never in a million years have risen to the top legal post at the CIA. 128 pages of the Senate report are reportedly concerned with false CIA representations to the Office of Legal Counsel. I wonder how many times Eatinger appears in them. Yesterday, DiFi said it was 1600 times in the full report.

The conflict of interest is so massive and obvious here that one has to wonder if anyone at the White House knew what Eatinger’s past was, when he ascended to the job. But it sure seems obvious Brennan did. Which is why, yesterday, he seemed so unsettled. The gig may soon be up – unless the CIA manages to suppress the Senate report past the coming elections. Haste, Mr President. Haste.

same

[pgardn]

karma? here's karma

Pennsylvania trooper fatally shoots pregnant wife in the head while cleaning his gun




http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/10/pennsylvania-trooper-fatally-shoots-pregnant-wife-in-the-head-while-cleaning-his-gun/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheRawStory+%28The+Raw+Story% 29



Its karma that a State trooper, who has to pull over people, often in the middle of the night risking their lives, shoots his pregnant wife in the head accidentally.

Jesus...

[boutons_deux]

Its karma that a State trooper, who has to pull over people, often in the middle of the night risking their lives, shoots his pregnant wife in the head accidentally.

Jesus...

He's well trained professional and immersed in the wonderful culture of safety around guns

[pgardn]

He's well trained professional and immersed in the wonderful culture of safety around guns

So State troopers don't need weapons, and because we got a goof ball that accidentally shoots his wife, this is karma?

Sick mofo...

[TSA]

He's well trained professional and immersed in the wonderful culture of safety around guns

Your stupidity rears it's head again. You obviously don't know how little range time/safety training officers have, this guy seems to fit the bill. What happened is tragic, yet you find it amusing and call it karma? It's scary that there are millions of other twisted liberals just like yourself.

[boutons_deux]

Your stupidity rears it's head again. You obviously don't know how little range time/safety training officers have, this guy seems to fit the bill. What happened is tragic, yet you find it amusing and call it karma? It's scary that there are millions of other twisted liberals just like yourself.

it's not amusing, it's just more proof how you gun fellators and your 2nd Amendment bullshit and your guns-as-toys/everybody-must-have gun cause horrible tragedies and are a huge public health disaster.

[Winehole23]

derail. boutons once again ignores the topic to focus on petty, totally unrelated partisan bs.

[Winehole23]

the coverup spans successive administrations and so goes beyond mere partisanship

[Winehole23]

Obama's pusillanimity in the face of US war crimes has emboldened a rogue CIA. If he chooses not to declassify the Senate report and the Brennan review, we'll know which side he's on once and for all.

[TSA]

it's not amusing, it's just more proof how you gun fellators and your 2nd Amendment bullshit and your guns-as-toys/everybody-must-have gun cause horrible tragedies and are a huge public health disaster.

.2 deaths per 100,000 hardly seems like a huge public health hazard, but keep on telling yourself that.

Sorry to derail winehole, back to the topic.

Fuck Feinstein, you reap what you sow.

[Winehole23]

perhaps our representatives now feel a personal stake in reining in an out of control intelligence sector. I guess we'll see.

[pgardn]

CIA claims Senate committee went around a firewall to obtain information general staffers were not supposed to see.

The plot thickens.

[boutons_deux]

CIA claims Senate committee went around a firewall to obtain information general staffers were not supposed to see.

The plot thickens.

so the CIA Keystone Kops security aces can't build a reliable firewall? :lol

[Winehole23]

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/13/president-obama-covering-presidencys-role-torture-4-years/

[boutons_deux]

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/13/president-obama-covering-presidencys-role-torture-4-years/

Imagine the Repug EXPLOSION if Obama's Exec exposed the dubya/dickhead/CIA crimes.

[pgardn]

Imagine the Repug EXPLOSION if Obama's Exec exposed the dubya/dickhead/CIA crimes.

The Obama White House has covered up the Bush presidency’s role in the torture program for years. Specifically, from 2009 to 2012, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to keep a single short phrase, describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program, secret. Why wait?


All the NSA , CIA crap gets nabbed by the 4th branch of any country wishing to be democratic, let's have a big shout for a free press. Snowden's stuff would have never been seen if not for the Washington Post and the Guardian.

Maybe one day someone can explain to Wild Cobra that RT is not a great source for information that is accurate.

[Winehole23]

The top CIA lawyer at the heart of a clash between the agency and its political overseers has been replaced, after senators lifted a block on confirming his successor.


Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat, said on Thursday that he released a procedural obstacle he had placed on the CIA’s nominee for its next general counsel, Caroline Krass, setting up the departure of its acting senior attorney, Robert Eatinger.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/14/senate-departure-top-cia-lawyer-successor

[boutons_deux]

The Obama White House has covered up the Bush presidency’s role in the torture program for years. Specifically, from 2009 to 2012, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to keep a single short phrase, describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program, secret. Why wait?


All the NSA , CIA crap gets nabbed by the 4th branch of any country wishing to be democratic, let's have a big shout for a free press. Snowden's stuff would have never been seen if not for the Washington Post and the Guardian.

Maybe one day someone can explain to Wild Cobra that RT is not a great source for information that is accurate.

honor among thieves and rogues: there's an agreement that a new President will never prosecute the previous President's crimes and criminals

[boutons_deux]

OBAMA, THE CIA, AND THE LIMITS OF CONCILIATION

It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that, in one very important way, the president has lost control of his own government. The current constitutional crisis between the CIA and the Senate committee tasked with investigating its policies regarding torture during the previous administration has only one real solution that is consonant with the rule of law.

Either CIA director John Brennan gets to the bottom of what his people were doing and publicly fires everyone involved, or John Brennan becomes the ex-director of the CIA. By the Constitution, this isn't even a hard call.

The Senate has every legal right to investigate what was done in the name of the American people during the previous decade. It has every legal right to every scrap of information relating to its investigation, and the CIA has an affirmative legal obligation to cooperate. Period. The only way this is not true is if we come to accept the intelligence apparatus as an extra-legal, formal fourth branch of the government.

That is the choice that the president should give Brennan. Right now. This morning. Nobody is asking for the release of tracking data regarding the current operatives of al Qaeda. This information is being withheld because, during the late Avignon Presidency, the CIA repeatedly broke the law in its treatment of captives and it did so with the blessing of the highest reaches of the American government. That the president has not done this yet -- indeed, that he seems to have thrown (http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/cia-senate-snooping/white-house-obama-has-great-confidence-cias-brennan-n50021)his support behind Brennan -- is not merely a mistake, it is a demonstration of the practical limits of the political appeal that got him elected in the first place.


Increasingly, the election of Barack Obama seems to have functioned more as an anesthetic than as an antidote to the criminality of his predecessor's government. His message of conciliation allowed the American people to forget what they had allowed a cabal of bureaucrats and fantasts to hijack their government in the chaos and terror following the attacks of September 11. The president offered the country, as I wrote at the time, absolution without penance. And he put that philosophy into action by declining right at the outset to prosecute, or even to thoroughly investigate, what had been done. What we are seeing today is the final limit to looking forward, and not back.

The CIA, and the rest of the intelligence apparatus of the country, was not reconciled to democracy. They were not brought properly to heal and the American people were not forced to confront the consequences of the terrible abandonment of self-government that, at its worst, the intelligence community represents.

The Senate investigation is really the last chance for even the ghost of a full accounting. (The CIA already destroyed videotapes of the torture sessions ) The apparent interference with the Senate investigation is a constitutional crime of the first order. The president set himself to bring people together. That's a noble goal, and one with which few people would disagree. But it is not the CIA's goal. It never has been. Its long history of crimes and bungling have created a climate within the intelligence community that is anathema to intelligent self-government. The president is the only one who can change that. It's time that he start the job.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-cia-john-brennan-031414

[Winehole23]

As the scandal over the CIA spying on Senate staffers (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140311/07212926527/senator-feinstein-finally-finds-surveillance-to-get-angry-about-when-it-happened-to-her-staffers.shtml) charged with oversight of the CIA deepens, it's now come out that the White House was fully aware (http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2014/03/12/white-house-told-cia-move-against-senate-aides/N02n80GjKL0f3Q1SazF3NL/story.html) that the CIA was pushing forward with a criminal complaint (http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140306/13253926469/cia-tries-to-spin-accusations-that-it-spied-overseers-as-if-it-were-senate-staffers-fault.shtml) against those very same staffers and did nothing to stop it. It's been reported that the White House is standing strongly behind the CIA on this one, and that report confirms some of the serious Constitutional/separation of powers questions that have been raised over this incident.


Having the White House be supportive of the CIA not only spying on its overseers, but then (even more ridiculously) filing a criminal complaint against those same staffers for doing their job speaks volumes about how this White House views Congressional oversight of its giant spying machine. It views it with contempt. It only reinforces how the claims that have been stated repeatedly over the past few months that there is plenty of oversight of the intelligence community are completely hogwash.http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140312/13122426553/white-house-was-aware-cias-attempt-to-file-criminal-complaint-against-senate-staffers-did-nothing-to-stop-it.shtml

[Winehole23]

Around this time, Senate staffers start to notice that relevant documents were starting to disappear. Apparently, after the CIA had provided all these documents for review, it then realized that it had provided too much and tried to pull them back. Since the Senate staffers noticed when some of these files went missing within the 6.2 million-page haystack, one could hypothesize that they were files of potential relevance to the ongoing investigation. If staff noticed them being gone then they were likely relevant. It's at this point when the staffers realized what was happening that things went from a normal story of Congressional oversight to a plot from a Tom Clancy novel.


If the CIA is able to thwart an active investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, then there is no oversight of the intelligence branches, and then we truly have a lawless entity within the government, and one that operates almost entirely in the shadows.


When the Senate staffers realized that the CIA was actively thwarting their investigation and deleting documents, and with the background knowledge that in the recent past the CIA deliberately destroyed tapes of the enhanced interrogation, the staffers decided to take action in their own hands and print out copies of vital documents before they were deleted - then they sneaked the documents out of the CIA's secure area.


Imagine Senate staffers taking documents so classified that the CIA would go to the extent of deleting them from an oversight branch's computer, being printed out in black and white, put into a briefcase, taken in a taxi-cab across Washington, and brought into the Senate building where it was put into a locker in the Senate Intelligence Community's secure location (SCIF). This is, apparently, exactly what happened. It should be noted that the Senate Intelligence Committee's SCIF is an extremely secure location, not merely a random Senate office, access is highly controlled for only those with clearances. There are armed guards protecting access and security cameras. Not just any Congressional staffer can access these rooms. If this SCIF facility was secure enough to likely be the location where the existence of the raid on Bin Laden was disclosed to the Gang of Eight, then it is secure enough to hold an internal CIA review into past behavior. There are a large number of highly classified documents in these locations.


The printing out of highly classified documents, removing them from a secure facility and concealing their existence is a truly incredible move by a Congressional staffer who may have committed multiple felonies to protect the integrity of the constitutional process. (It seems like a textbook example of what should be pardonable by the President if these actions were a potential "crime").

http://politix.topix.com/story/11115-americans-need-to-know-what-the-cia-did-in-their-name-will-congress-make-it-happen

[Winehole23]

What happened then? Panetta's review was sitting in the safe and the Senate Intelligence Committee issued a preliminary version of their report on the Enhanced Interrogation program, likely relying upon the Panetta Report.


The CIA responded with a 120-page rebuttal, which allegedly was directly contradicted by the Panetta Report. In other words, the CIA's rebuttal was not consistent with the former CIA Director's own analysis. At some point the CIA realized that the Senate Committee had the Panetta report, or at least were aware of its existence. On January 29, 2014, Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) asked (http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/transcript-senate-intelligence-hearing-on-national-security-threats/2014/01/29/b5913184-8912-11e3-833c-33098f9e5267_story.html) CIA Director John Brennan about the report in an open hearing.


It appears, based on Feinstein's allegations, that at that point, the CIA gained access to the Senate staffers computers to see if they had a copy of the Panetta Report - which they did. (It should be noted that the CIA still disputes this version of events but it's unclear what their version is). According to Feinstein, "The CIA just went and searched the committee's computers."


When this was discovered, the counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency referred the Senate staffers to the Attorney General for potential prosecution. As Feinstein would mention on the floor, this was the same counsel that had authorized much of the enhanced interrogation programs and has potential skin in the game for what the report would look like.


Thus this would lead to a standoff where the CIA was directly going after Senate Intelligence Committee staffers, allegedly obtaining access to their computer system without their permission, and the Senate Intelligence Committee refused to give up documents that they had "stolen" from the CIA. At this point, Feinstein took to the floor, and took the CIA apart for their actions, which the current CIA Director, John Brennan, now denies.

same

[Winehole23]

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-misled-on-interrogation-program-senate-report-says/2014/03/31/eb75a82a-b8dd-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html?hpid=z1

[boutons_deux]

water boarding isn't torture

-- dickhead, Yoni, etc, etc

[Winehole23]

CIA spied, Brennan lied:



According to David B. Buckley, the C.I.A. inspector general, three of the agency’s information technology officers and two of its lawyers “improperly accessed or caused access” to a computer network designated for members of the committee’s staff working on the report to sift through millions of documents at a C.I.A. site in Northern Virginia. The names of those involved are unavailable because the full report has not yet been made public.


The C.I.A. officials penetrated the computer network when they came to suspect that the committee’s staff had gained unauthorized access to an internal C.I.A. review of the detention program that the spy agency never intended to give to Congress. A C.I.A. lawyer then referred the agency’s suspicions to the Justice Department to determine whether the committee staff broke the law when it obtained that document. The inspector general report said that there was no “factual basis” for this referral, which the Justice Department has declined to investigate, because the lawyer had been provided inaccurate information. The report said that the three information technology officers “demonstrated a lack of candor about their activities” during interviews with the inspector general.


http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intelligence-commitee-cia-interrogation-report.html?_r=1

[boutons_deux]

CIA spied, Brennan lied:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intelligence-commitee-cia-interrogation-report.html?_r=1

anybody in CIA going to be held PERSONALLY accountable?

So that's at least CLAPPER and BRENNAN who outright lied to Congress.

penalty? or just "settle" as Too Scary Powerful Out-of-Control To Jail

I expect NO ACTION from Congress, and/or EVERYTHING proposed to be killed by House tea baggers, Cruz, etc.

[Winehole23]

As far as the allegations of, you know, CIA hacking into, you know, Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, we wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s—that’s just beyond the—you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we would do.

[Winehole23]

Improper access to oversight committee computers? Filing a crimes report lacking factual support—apparently misleading the lawyer who filed it in the process? Improperly accessing committee staff email? And then talking to investigators about the whole business in a fashion less than truthful?http://www.lawfareblog.com/2014/08/on-the-cia-inspector-generals-findings/

[Winehole23]

no one at the CIA will suffer any consequences (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/us/politics/panel-to-advise-against-penalty-for-cia-computer-search.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news#story-continues-2) for their astonishing attempt to spy on their Senate overseers:



The five C.I.A. officials who were singled out by the agency’s inspector general this year for improperly ordering and carrying out the computer searches staunchly defended their actions, saying that they were lawful and in some cases done at the behest of CIA director John Brennan.



So we discover that it was Brennan himself who directed that the CIA spy on the Senate staffers! And it’s worth recalling why he resorted to that violation of the basic constitutional order. He did so because the staffers had come upon the CIA’s own internal report on the torture program, and it came to the exact same conclusions as the Senate Report, i.e. that the progam was obviously torture and completely ineffective. The so-called “Panetta Report” utterly devastated Brennan’s continuing view that torture provided good intelligence and all but proved that the CIA had no utilitarian defense of their barbarism whatsoever. And so Brennan panicked.


He needn’t have. It’s clear that the CIA’s place in our “democracy” will not be dislodged any time soon. President Obama has not the slightest qualms about employing war criminals and working closely with them. He never has. Opponents of torture are, for the president, “self-righteous.” And the system, in any case, ensures that the CIA always polices itself (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/us/politics/panel-to-advise-against-penalty-for-cia-computer-search.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news#story-continues-2) and will therefore always exonerate itself:


A panel investigating the Central Intelligence Agency (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org)’s search of a computer network used by staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who were looking into the C.I.A.’s use of torture will recommend against punishing anyone involved in the episode, according to current and former government officials … While effectively rejecting the most significant conclusions of the inspector general’s report, the panel, appointed by Mr. Brennan and composed of three C.I.A. officers and two members from outside the agency, is still expected to criticize agency missteps that contributed to the fight with Congress.



Notice that the “panel” has a built-in CIA majority. And the CIA will never allow anyone in its employ to be held accountable for his or her actions – least of all the chief conspirator in this attack on the Senate, Brennan himself.


There is one person missing in all this: the president. He has allowed his own CIA director to violate the constitution and to lie to the public in defending the torture program’s effectiveness. After a report proved that American torture was sadistic and useless, the president allowed his CIA director to stand up and say the answer to the latter question is “unknowable”. This is not a neutral stance, and never has been. It is a classic example of truthiness versus the truth. It is a stance that reaffirms that we live in only the appearance of a democracy, but that the deep state of the US is a law unto itself. It is a position that one agency in government is beyond any accountability. It is a recognition that this president, like all the others, reports to the CIA and not the other way round.

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/12/21/the-best-of-the-dish-this-weekend-52/

[boutons_deux]

compare with persecution to suicide of Aaron Schwartz

No Law Is Above The Man

[Winehole23]

there are dedicated threads for Aaron Schwartz, boutons.

by trying to derail this thread it appears you're carrying water for the deep state you claim to hate.

[boutons_deux]

there are dedicated threads for Aaron Schwartz, boutons.

by trying to derail this thread it appears you're carrying water for the deep state you claim to hate.

whine hole, gfy

[boutons_deux]

After Scrutiny, C.I.A. Mandate Is Untouched

But the scathing report the Senate Intelligence Committee delivered this month is unlikely to significantly change the role the C.I.A. now plays in running America’s secret wars.

A number of factors — from steadfast backing by Congress and the White House to strong public support for clandestine operations — ensure that an agency that has been ascendant since President Obama (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/o/barack_obama/index.html?inline=nyt-per) came into office is not likely to see its mission diminished, either during his waning years in the White House or for some time after that.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/27/us/politics/after-scrutiny-cia-mandate-is-untouched-.html?_r=0

iow, the "CIA torture, crimes, murders, over the decades, R US"

[Winehole23]

CIA panel clears CIA of wrongdoing, criticizes own IG:


A CIA panel Wednesday cleared agency officials of any wrongdoing when they accessed the computers of a Senate committee investigating the agency’s involvement in torture. The finding ended a yearlong dispute marked by angry accusations of “hacking” and criminal misconduct.

Instead, the panel — whose members were appointed by CIA Director John Brennan — faulted the agency’s own outgoing inspector general for suggesting in a report that there may have been grounds to discipline five officials at the agency.

http://news.yahoo.com/panel-clears-cia-officials-accused-of-spying-on-senate-committee-probing-torture-030659646.html

[boutons_deux]

CIA panel clears CIA of wrongdoing, criticizes own IG:

http://news.yahoo.com/panel-clears-cia-officials-accused-of-spying-on-senate-committee-probing-torture-030659646.html

:lol

there's more whitewashing, hypocrisy:

DIANNE FEINSTEIN, STRONG ADVOCATE OF LEAK PROSECUTIONS, DEMANDS IMMUNITY FOR LEAKER DAVID PETRAEUS

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/12/dianne-feinstein-advocate-whistleblower-prosecutions-demands-immunity-david-petraeus/

iow, more proof that No Law Is Above The Man

[Winehole23]

The White House knew about the snooping beforehand:


Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan consulted the White House before directing agency personnel to sift through a walled-off computer drive being used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to construct its investigation of the agency’s torture program, according to a recently released report (https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/Redacted-July-2014-CIA-Office-of-Inspector-General-Report.pdf) by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General.

The Inspector General’s report, which was completed in July but only released by the agency on Wednesday, reveals that Brennan spoke with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough before CIA employees were ordered to “use whatever means necessary” to determine how certain sensitive internal documents had wound up in Senate investigators’ hands. The conversation with McDonough came after Brennan first issued the directive, but before he reiterated it to a CIA attorney leading the probe.
Brennan’s consultation with McDonough also came before the CIA revealed the search to then-Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), whose staff was the target of the snooping.


The new information suggesting the White House was aware of -- and did not stop -- the CIA’s computer snooping is unlikely to improve the existing distrust between Senate committee members and the executive branch.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/15/cia-senate-spying_n_6478960.html?1421346327

[Winehole23]

We tortured innocent people and got nothing for it.

We still hold some of them incommunicado, in the legal black hole at Gitmo, in contravention of our own laws and acknowledged norms of civilization and democracy.

Gitmo is injurious to our own republic and our international standing. Obama should put a stop to it, like he promised.

[boutons_deux]

We tortured innocent people and got nothing for it.

We still hold some of them incommunicado, in the legal black hole at Gitmo, in contravention of our own laws and acknowledged norms of civilization and democracy.

Gitmo is injurious to our own republic and our international standing. Obama should put a stop to it, like he promised.

Several GITMO guys left recently, so Obama is doing unilaterally what he can, but the Repugs, strict asshole obstructionists, are blocking any closing of GITMO by blocking funding, so place your blame accurately.

It looks like Obama will not be able to trickle out all the GITMO guys before he leaves office, which suits the Repugs just fine.

I think US should close Guantanamo Bay base, a vestige of and now notoriously a shit-stain on the American Empire, clean up the soil (US military being the biggest, nastiest polluter, eg, Kelly Field, perchlorate, fuels, etc), and give the base to Cuba.

[boutons_deux]

btw, the battleship USS Maine was not sabotaged by Spain. USA needed an excuse to go to war, no matter how flimsy. War is America's favorite pastime.

The hull shows the explosion was from the inside.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-maine-explodes

[Winehole23]

the blame is accurately placed. Obama promised to close Gitmo.

He hasn't.

[boutons_deux]

the blame is accurately placed. Obama promised to close Gitmo.

He hasn't.

When he proposed moving GITMO guys to high-security prisons on US soil and closing GITMO, Repugs blocked the $200M? cost, LYING such prisons would be terrorist targets. :lol

A President isn't an autocrat, and his unilateral powers are quite limited.

[Winehole23]

bullshit. the detainees are held on POTUS's authority. POTUS can release them.

[Winehole23]

if he can't, GITMO is void of controlling political authority and that is fucking bullshit.

[Winehole23]

you can't have multi-tiered justice and the US Constitution. it doesn't work that way.

in fact, that's the thing that breaks it.

[boutons_deux]

bullshit. the detainees are held on POTUS's authority. POTUS can release them.

bullshit, he'e been trying to get countries to take them for years

[CosmicCowboy]

When he proposed moving GITMO guys to high-security prisons on US soil and closing GITMO, Repugs blocked the $200M? cost, LYING such prisons would be terrorist targets. :lol

A President isn't an autocrat, and his unilateral powers are quite limited.

It's not because of terrorist targets it's because they automatically get more rights when on US soil.

[boutons_deux]

It's not because of terrorist targets it's because they automatically get more rights when on US soil.

That's not what the Repugs were saying. It was all about the prisons and local communities becoming terrorists targets. iow, Repugs, lying and pushing bullshit paranoia, as always.

[Winehole23]

bullshit, he'e been trying to get countries to take them for yearsbullshit. he could stop everything with the stroke of a pen. he won't.

[boutons_deux]

goddam BULLshit

"In the larger defense bill that the President signed into law (https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/25/statement-president) in November, congressional Republicans included a measure (https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/1356/text), opposed by Obama, that

prohibits the use of funds to close or abandon the prison,

transfer detainees to the United States (or Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen) or

build or modify facilities to house detainees in the United States."

The Bowe Bergdahl affair hasn’t made things easier

The controversial exchange of Bowe Bergdahl (http://time.com/3758604/bergdahl-sentence-2014-cover-story/) for five Taliban detainees angered many Republicans and has put Guantanamo transfers in an even more unfavorable light among opponents. Bergdahl was released after five years in captivity in exchange for five detainees who were being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Following the swap, Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said he was “very disturbed about the policy (http://www.postandcourier.com/article/20150202/PC1603/150209888) of releasing prisoners from Guantanamo Bay while the war is still raging,” saying the decision “undercut the war effort.” Sen. Saxby Chambliss said the prisoner trade “is one of the reasons (http://washington.cbslocal.com/2014/06/04/bergdahl-swap-increases-opposition-to-obamas-promise-to-close-guantanamo/)why a number of us have been so strongly opposed to the release of individuals there.”

http://time.com/4179278/state-of-the-union-guantanamo-bay-president-obama/

[Winehole23]

The preservation of the Senate’s report on the CIA’s Torture Program is increasingly in doubt; the DC Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed (https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/89DCC2C927CD3E7F85257FB2004E63BD/$file/15-5183-1613150.pdf) the District Court’s ruling that the report “is a congressionally generated and controlled document that is not subject to disclosure under FOIA.” Days after the appeals court decision, news broke (https://www.yahoo.com/news/senate-report-on-cia-torture-1429636113023030.html?soc_src=social-sh&soc_trk=fb) that the CIA Inspector General’s office “accidentally” destroyed its copy of the report. The recently revealed destruction allegedly took place last summer – months after the CIA’s IG, David Buckley, resigned. Before his resignation Buckley issued a report finding that five CIA officials improperly monitored (http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/31/234997/cia-staffers-accessed-senate.html#storylink=cpy) Senate Intelligence Committee staff working on the Torture Report; while his report admonished (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/world/cia-report-found-value-of-brutal-interrogation-was-inflated.html) the involved officials, the agency opted not (https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/Redacted-December-2014-Agency-Accountability-Board-Report.pdf) to punish them. A CIA panel (https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/15/john-brennans-latest-fuck-you/) handpicked by Director John Brennan, “in what was widely seen (https://www.yahoo.com/politics/white-house-criticized-for-not-filling-watchdog-125876527661.html?soc_src=unv-sh&soc_trk=tw) as an embarrassing rebuke to Buckley,” went so far as to clear the officials of any wrongdoing, concluding that the officials had acted reasonably in the face of a potential security breach. The Obama administration has yet to nominate a permanent replacement.https://nsarchive.wordpress.com/

[boutons_deux]

"CIA Inspector General’s office “accidentally” destroyed its copy of the report"

accidentally? :lol These assholes know they are beyond the reach of all three branches of govt.

They are a secret govt unto themselves, immune to all attacks, beyond control of anybody.

[Winehole23]

Trump Administration surrenders the report:


The last iteration of the Obama administration’s ambivalent “look forward not back” attitude toward the defunct Bush-era CIA torture program — banning it, but not investigating what happened — was the Obama Justice Department’s resistance to an effort (http://www.charliesavage.com/?p=1448) to get a copy of the full, still-classified Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report about that program deposited with the judiciary for safekeeping during the Trump years. But as the Obama era came to an end, two Federal District Court judges for the District of Columbia ordered the executive branch (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/19/us/politics/cia-torture.html) to provide a copy of the report to the court’s security officer, and today, on the deadline set by one of them, the Trump administration complied rather than appeal.http://www.charliesavage.com/?p=1478

[Thread]

Trump Administration surrenders the report:

http://www.charliesavage.com/?p=1478

A delectable red herring. Chow!