Pelosi Did It!

[Nbadan]

Dubya didn't know, Hayden was confused but Nancy Pelosi knew all about the water torture, even approved it....ahhh...the world of Wingnut politics....



Bush: ‘It’ll be interesting to know what the true facts are.’ (http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/11/bush-%e2%80%98itll-be-interesting-to-know-what-the-true-facts-are%e2%80%99)

In an interview with ABC News, President Bush asserted that he first learned (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2007/12/bush-i-didnt-kn.html) about the CIA’s destruction of the torture tapes when Director Michael Hayden briefed him last Thursday:


“My first recollection of whether the tapes existed or whether they were destroyed was when Michael Hayden briefed me (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/07/cia.videotapes/),” Bush said.

“There’s a preliminary inquiry going on and I think you’ll find that a lot more data, facts will be coming out,” he said, “that’s good. It will be interesting to know what the true facts are.”


Hayden says the videotapping stopped in 2002 (http://thinkprogress.org/2007/12/11/videotaping-waterboarding)

So let's stop for a moment and get the wing-nut story straight: Bush didn't know they stopped video taping in 2002, but according the to the BS Washington Post story (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2435666&mesg_id=2435666) the administration shared a virtual video design of their technique with Nancy Pelosi (http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=2440108&mesg_id=2440108), who gave the W.H. a nod of approval on torture after the fact?

[Nbadan]

"It is a startling disclosure," Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, said Friday on the Senate floor. "The United States of America -- a nation where the rule of law is venerated -- has now been in the business of destroying evidence. Evidence of a very sensitive nature -- evidence which clearly should have been protected for legal and historic purposes."

Durbin said he was sending a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey calling for an investigation into whether any laws were broken by "CIA officials who covered up the existence of these videotapes."

The Justice Department later said it had received Durbin's letter, but would not comment other than to say it had begun gathering facts. Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, joined Durbin's call for an investigation.

Democrat disputes CIA chief's account

In his letter to CIA employees, Hayden wrote that the leaders of the CIA's congressional oversight committees were informed of the videos "years ago" along with the agency's intent to destroy them.

But Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, -- who was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when the tapes were made and when they were destroyed -- told CNN that was "not true."

Harman said she'd attended a classified briefing in 2003 that "raised some concerns in my mind," prompting her to send a classified letter to the CIA's general counsel.

"Obviously they both remain classified," she said, "but I have raised with the CIA my view that no videotape should be destroyed. Let me just leave it there. ...

"Segue to two years later, we have now learned that the tapes have been destroyed," she said. "I was still the ranking member of the committee, (and) no one ever informed me that tapes were being destroyed."

Former Rep. Porter Goss, R-Florida -- who was head of the CIA when the tapes were destroyed -- was told about the tapes when he served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, a former intelligence official told CNN. The official said that Goss agreed with Harman that the tapes should not be destroyed and, when he became director of the agency in 2004, he let "the appropriate people" know his opinion.

The official said Goss was unhappy when he learned after the fact that the tapes were destroyed. Goss resigned in May 2006; Hayden was his successor.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, currently the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, was chairman of the committee after Goss joined the CIA until the Democrats won control of the House last year, covering the time when the tapes were destroyed. He told CNN he was never briefed about the tapes' existence or their destruction.

Other senators and representatives added their voices to the calls for investigations, including House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Michigan; Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan; and presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware. And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that panel "will be doing their own investigation."

Daniel Marcus, who was general counsel for the 9/11 commission investigating lapses in intelligence and security prior to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, said the commission was not informed about the videotapes and that the decision to destroy them "reflected very bad judgment."

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/12/07/cia.videotapes/)

Ahh...wouldn't it be ironic rather if Dubya got impeached for destroying sensitive tapes rather than the extra-ordinary rendition (i.e. government kidnapping) and torture (i.e. having a stick shoved up your arss)....

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, Pelosi can't get far away enough from this.....


"On one occasion, in the fall of 2002, I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for the both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.

"I had no further briefings on the techniques. Several months later, my successor as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, was briefed more extensively and advised the techniques had in fact been employed. It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred."

TPM (http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004862.php)

.... Pelosi just threw Harman under the bus....

[JoeChalupa]

I thought no actual "water boarding" terminology was used when it was run by Pelosi. Not that it matters but it'll be spun either way.

[Nbadan]

Pelosi isn't saying that she knew how detainees were interrogated. She's saying she was told that all techniques used in those interrogations were considered legal. So did she know what those techniques were, and what they entailed? We'll find out, or get stonewalled trying.

[violentkitten]

most likely nothing will come of this, and carlos will have rubbed his member raw

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, no interviewee for hadee until he gets his story straightee....

White House says Hayden won't talk about interrogation techniques
Associated Press - December 11, 2007 1:13 PM ET


WHITE HOUSE (AP) - The White House says Congress won't learn about CIA interrogation techniques from agency director Michael Hayden during two days of questioning.

Hayden is due to appear today and tomorrow before congressional panels about the destruction of videotapes of terror suspect interrogations.

White House press secretary Dana Perino says the CIA interrogation program approved by the president is safe, tough, effective and legal. She adds that Hayden won't talk about techniques and "explain to the enemy" what the U.S. is doing.

Hayden told CIA employees last week that the CIA taped the interrogations of 2 alleged terrorists in 2002.

Hayden says Congress was notified in 2003 both of the tapes' existence and the agency's intent to destroy them.

Link (http://www.kesq.com/Global/story.asp?S=7481318)

Congress is the enemy?!?

[xrayzebra]

Hey dan, Joe and the rest. I know I am old, but I did post all
this information yesterday............yesterday.............yesterd ay.

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2116576#post2116576

[Nbadan]

This thread is about the destroyed tapes, the other is about whether water boarding constitutes torture...

[JoeChalupa]

Hey dan, Joe and the rest. I know I am old, but I did post all
this information yesterday............yesterday.............yesterd ay.

http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2116576#post2116576

I missed it. My bad.

[Nbadan]

Could it be the reason Pelosi thinks impeachment of Dubya should be off the table is because she would have to resign for many of the same reasons too?

What Did Pelosi Know About NSA, and When Did She Know It?
by Ray McGovern


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has admitted knowing for several years about the Bush administration’s eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant. She was briefed on it when she was ranking Democrat the House Intelligence Committee when Bush and Cheney took office. But was she told that within days of their taking office, the National Security Agency’s electronic vacuum cleaner had already begun to suck up information on Americans-criminal law and the Constitution be damned?

In a Washington Post op-ed of Jan. 15, 2006, Pelosi, with a uniquely long tenure on the Intelligence Committee, acknowledged that she was one of the privileged handful of lawmakers who were briefed. Referring to her seniority as ranking member, she wrote in her Post apologia sans apology, “This is how I came to be informed of President Bush’s authorization for the NSA to conduct certain types of surveillance.” She then proceeded to demonstrate her remarkably-one might say unconstitutionally-subservient attitude toward the Executive Branch...


....And if the terrorists attacked on 9/11, it was perfectly in order that the Bush administration took “decisive measures” of similar kind. Shamefully, far too many American politicians exhibited sheepish submissiveness, when the White House PR machine pulled out all stops to exploit the trauma brought on by the attacks of 9/11.
Now we have learned that it is even worse. The eavesdropping abuses began as soon as the Bush administration came into office - well before 9/11.

In recent days, thanks to an enterprising reporter for the Rocky Mountain News, we find that the president, vice president, and CIA director-not to mention the credulous crowd around Nancy Pelosi-have all been regurgitating a king-sized whopper aimed at providing “justification” for the NSA program. Administration PR consultants made this easy by inventing a clever-if retroactive-label to the program: The “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” Nothing to fear, folks, unless you’re telephoning or emailing Osama bin-Laden.

Whopper? Well yes. It turns out that seven months before the threat of terrorism garnered much White House attention (despite the best efforts of then-counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke to install it on everyone’s screen-saver, so to speak), the administration instructed NSA to suborn American telecommunications companies to spy illegally on Americans.

Qt the time, the general counsel of Qwest Communications advised management that what NSA was suggesting was illegal. And to his credit, the then-head of the company stuck to a firm “No,” unless some way were found to perform legally what NSA wanted done. Qwest’s rivals, though, took their cue from the White House, adopted a flexible attitude toward the law, and got the business. They are now being sued. Lawsuit filings claim that, seven months before 9/11, AT&T “began development of a center for monitoring long distance calls and Internet transmissions and other digital information for the exclusive use of the NSA.”

Adding insult to injury, draft legislation now being pushed by the White House would hold AT&T and other collaborators harmless for playing fast and loose with our right to privacy in order to enhance their bottom line. For its principled but, in government eyes, recalcitrant attitude, Qwest apparently lost out on lucrative government contracts.

Yes, Before 9/11

These illegal operations, including those prior to 9/11, were enabled by Michael Hayden, then head of NSA and now director of CIA. Hayden has been out in front “justifying” illegal eavesdropping by what happened on 9/11. Did he know the illegal activities started before then? Of course; he was ordered to orchestrate them.

Did he know they were illegal? Another no-brainer. While director of NSA, Hayden had emphasized what had long been known as NSA’s First Commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans.”

But in testimony at his confirmation hearings, Hayden said that in the wake of 9/11 he “could not not do” what the president wanted him to do with the “Terrorist Surveillance Program.” The hypocrisy is well nigh unbearable.

Martinet

When the program was revealed in the press in late 2005, Hayden agreed to play point man with smoke and mirrors. (Small wonder that the White House later deemed him the perfect man to head the CIA.)

Nevertheless, a whiff of conscience showed through his nomination hearing, though, when he flubbed the answer to a soft-pitch from administration loyalist, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri:

“Did you believe that your primary responsibility as director of NSA was to execute a program that your NSA lawyers, the Justice Department lawyers, and White House officials all told you was legal and that you were ordered to carry it out by the president of the United States?”

Instead of the simple “Yes” that was in the script, Hayden paused and spoke rather poignantly-and revealingly: “I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001, and it was a personal decision…I could not not do this.”

Why should it be such an enormous personal decision whether or not to obey a White House order? No one asked Hayden, but it requires no particular acuity to figure it out. This is a military officer who, like the rest of us, had sworn to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; a military man well aware of the strictures against obeying an unlawful order.

President George W. Bush assured us on Jan. 23, 2006, “I had all kinds of lawyers review the process.” Right. The same ones, no doubt, who were busy devising ways to “legalize” torture and indefinite detention without due process.

No American, save perhaps retired Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who as NSA director was present at the creation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (and who has said the Hayden-approved activities are illegal), knew FISA better than Hayden. Nonetheless, Hayden conceded that he did not even require a written legal opinion to satisfy himself that the surveillance program, to be implemented without warrant and without adequate consultation in Congress, could pass the smell test.

Small wonder that one of Hayden’s predecessors as NSA director, upon learning what Hayden had agreed to do, said angrily, “He ought to be court-martialed.”

And who was the NSA general counsel at the time? Robert L. Deitz, who is now a “trusted aide” to CIA Director Hayden. Deitz, we learn from recent news reports, has just been launched on an investigation of the CIA Inspector General-yes, that’s right, an investigation of CIA’s statutory Inspector General John Helgerson, who apparently does not fit in with the elastic ethos Hayden and his immediate predecessors brought to the agency.

It appears Helgerson is not a “team player,” resisting, as he has, the reintroduction of the Nixonian dictum “It’s legal if the president says it’s legal.” He has been taking his job too seriously for Hayden’s taste-conducting honest investigations into abuses like torture. Fortunately for Helgerson and the rest of us, Hayden cannot fire him, which is handy proof of the wisdom of having statutory inspectors general.

Common Dreams (http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/16/4561/)

So Pelosi didn't only likely know about the administration was utilizing torture, but she also likely knew that the CIA was spying on Americans illegally....

[Nbadan]

QWest CEO has already admitted that the W.H. was spying on Americans 7 months before 911...

Qwest CEO Not Alone in Alleging NSA Started Domestic Phone Record Program 7 Months Before 9/11
By Ryan Singel EmailOctober 12, 2007 | 4:23:55 P


Startling statements from former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio's defense documents alleging the National Security Agency began building a massive call records database seven months before 9/11 aren't the only accusations that the controversial program predated the attacks of 9/11.

According to court documents unveiled this week, former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio clearly wanted to argue in court that the NSA retaliated against his company after he turned down a NSA request on February 27, 2001 that he thought was illegal. Nacchio's attorney issued a carefully worded statement in 2006, saying that Nacchio had turned down the NSA's repeated requests for customer call records. The statement says that Nacchio was asked for the records in the fall of 2001, but doesn't say he was "first asked" then.

And in May 2006, a lawsuit filed against Verizon for allegedly turning over call records to the NSA alleged that AT&T began building a spying facility for the NSA just days after President Bush was inaugurated. That lawsuit is one of 50 that were consolidated and moved to a San Francisco federal district court, where the suits sit in limbo waiting for the 9th Circuit Appeals court to decide whether the suits can proceed without endangering national security.

According the allegations in the suit (.pdf):

The project was described in the ATT sales division documents as calling for the construction of a facility to store and retain data gathered by the NSA from its domestic and foreign intelligence operations but was to be in actuality a duplicate ATT Network Operations Center for the use and possession of the NSA that would give the NSA direct, unlimited, unrestricted and unfettered access to all call information and internet and digital traffic on ATTÌs long distance network. <...>

Wired (http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/10/qwest-ceo-not-a.html)

[JoeChalupa]

Those bastards!! :cuss

[Nbadan]

Torture Tapes: Failure at All Levels
Aziz Huq



In November 2005 the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rashim al-Nashiri, two early detainees in the Bush Administration's "war on terror." Two years later, the news breaks and the Administration assures us that the tapes from 2002 had nothing much of interest on them and that their destruction was nothing out of the ordinary.

Don't be so sure.

Even the limited facts at hand make clear that the CIA ran through every legal and procedural red light within the government to prevent criminal conduct or its cover-up. And it seems that the Justice Department and even the White House are sufficiently implicated in both the underlying conduct and the cover-up to require an independent investigation. The manifest corruption of oversight mechanisms means that Senator Joe Biden is correct to call for a Special Counsel to conduct an independent criminal investigation.

Readers of The Nation already know about the Bush Administration's grim and persistent addiction to torture. But CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden wants to set aside this record and persuade the public that the destruction of interrogation tapes indicates nothing sinister. "...other methods of documenting the interrogations--and the crucial information they produced--were accurate and complete. The Agency soon determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes," he said, adding that preserving the tapes would have endangered CIA officials and their families.

Even if there were no evidence of the Bush Administration's record of torture, Hayden's explanation would not ring true. The notion that a record of an interrogation can be reduced to writing, with no further use for videotape, is belied by a basic premise of our judicial system: the credibility of a statement can only be judged by seeing a witness in the flesh. (We even protect this right in the Sixth Amendment's Confrontation Clause). It is beyond bizarre for Hayden to claim that reducing a videotaped interrogation to a printed transcript can remove "the need for tapes."

The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071224/huq)

[Wild Cobra]

Well, if you ask me, this is a big ado about nothing.

After "Flamegate"; the outing of a CIA operative, and the leaks of other matters...

The CIA took it upon itself to destroy the tapes to protect it's operatives. It was deemed legal.

Nuff said!

[Nbadan]

Actually, this story may be just as much about whether Nancy Pelosi can be trusted to continue to be Speaker in the House, as this Washington Post story shows, Pelosi had been told about the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including water-boarding....


"n September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html?nav=rss_email/components)

So either Pelosi is lying or the source of this story is lying...

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, Law professor John Turley asserts that multiple laws were broken, including some by Dubya, and the House will be put into a tough position if it tries to use the independent counsel route that moves at a snails pace and crawling with Bush cronies....


http://jonathanturley.files.wordpress.com/2007/08/turley_jonathan.jpg
"Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University
and lead defense counsel in pending terrorism cases."


There are at least a dozen individuals who should be retaining private counsel in this matter. However, it is still not clear that either Republicans or Democrats truly want an independent investigation. Notably, Democrats have largely called for investigations by the Justice Department, which guarantees that the investigation would move at a glacial pace and remain under the control of the administration. It is obvious at this point that the Justice Department should not conduct an investigation that could threaten high-ranking officials, including the president himself.

We are now at a crossroad in history. On just the admissions made by Hayden, there appear to be at least six indictable offenses against at least a dozen individuals, including the president. That number of offenses and offenders is likely to increase in the coming week, but clearly include obstruction of justice, obstruction of Congress, false statements to Congress, false statements to federal courts, conspiracy and, of course, torture. The question is not the clarity of the crimes, but the will of Congress to finally act and guarantee an independent investigation.

Despite the embarrassment to some Democrats, there is no way to continue to ignore a pattern of criminality that extends to the highest office in his country. These were crimes committed in our name and it is time for the disclosure of the truth — wherever it may lead.

[xrayzebra]

I love the fact that J. Rockefeller committee is investigating all
this junk. Wonder if he is going to call himself as a witness. :downspin: :downspin:

[Nbadan]

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON - Federal courts had prohibited the Bush administration from discarding evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest interrogation tactics.

Normally, that would force the government to defend itself against obstruction allegations. But the CIA may have an out: its clandestine network of overseas prisons.

While judges focused on the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and tried to guarantee that any evidence of detainee abuse would be preserved, the CIA was performing its toughest questioning half a world away. And by the time President Bush publicly acknowledged the secret prison system, interrogation videos of two terrorism suspects had been destroyed.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

Yahoo (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071212/ap_on_go_ot/cia_videotapes_courts_13)

...add another broken law to the books...

[JoeChalupa]

I believe laws were broken but since most politicians cover each other's asses this may drag on.