Live Blogging The Senate Hearing On Torture

Can see the hearing here.

10:02 Senator Sheldon comes out strong in his opening statement. Goes through all of the lies that have been told publicly about the torture program. Mentions private contractors. Calls liars out by name. Ssys Mukasey and Hayden owe "real" interrogators an apology. Calls Bush out as liars who knew they could get away with it because they were the only ones who could declassify the truth. Says prosecutions vindicate the rule of law. Says its a sad day that there even has to be an OPR investigation into torture. Tips his hat to Senators Leahy and Feinstein. Ali Soufan has been threatened so no pictures can be taken.

10:09: Senator Lindsey Graham brings the weaksauce and first tries to call the hearings a stunt then asks if we would have the hearings if we were attacked today. Blatant fearmongering. Now he goes into "who knew what" defense and calls for declassifying memos to find out. He says its not fair to investigate what happened in the past because its acting "holier than thou". Says his bonafides give him the ability to discern policy differences from crimes. Obvious how this hearing will end up going. Admits the OLC lawyers looked at the law in a way he disagrees with. Admits they made mistakes. Don't know how that squares with "policy differences". Now promoting the "rule of law". Disses the Army Field Manual. Says interrogation techiques shouldn't be on the internet. Claims Leon Panetta would ask Obama for "harsh interrogation techniques" not in AFM if they had a high value target. Calls out Nancy Pelosi for being told about the techniques. Claims telling people, a requirement by law, was proof Bush administration wasn't trying to do anything illegal. Obviously trying to devalue the information that will come out in the hearing. Endorses the Levin report which other GOOPers have said is partisan and incorrect. Says waterboarding is "innapropriate" but doesn't say "criminal". Does say any military member that waterboards will be prosecuted for war crimes. Appreciates what Obama is doing to repair our image. Ends with typical GOP bedwetting.

10:19 Senator Leahy urges against raising strawmen (aimed at Sen Graham). Applauds Sen Whitehouse for holding the hearings which he says will be one of the most important they have this year. PWNS OlC office for authorizing torture which was already predetermined. Says nobody including POTUS is above the law. Endorses bipartisan "Truth Commission" again. Talks about inviting Jay Bybee to testify after conflicting press reports about his level of regret. Through his lawyers he declined to come forward. Leahy says Bybee communicated with the press but only people he won't talk to is the Congress. Talks about America not being afraid to admit mistakes when we have made them and then correcte them which makes him proud.

10:26 Senator Feinstein first talks about the 4 recently released OLC memos and talked about how its appropriate for the Senate to investigate this issue. Refers to Supreme Ct ruling that refutes Sen Graham's assertion that Geneva Conventions did not apply. Says Judiciary Committee has independent oversight of the Dept of Justice. Talks about the Intelligence committee review of detainee process. Says they will evaluate whether detention program exceeded OLC memo guidelines. Says review will be necessarily classified so as to get all of the information. Says Soufon will also be brought in front of Intelligence Committee. She is convinced that between Judiciary Committee and Intelligence Committee they will have all the information in the end.

10:31 Senator Feingold comes out swinging and says unequivically that the EIT program was illegal. Say he has seen all information including reports Cheney has referred to any says that Cheney is lying. That nothing he has seen shows the program to be legal. Says he supports further declassification. Also endorses "Truth Commission".

10:33 Senator Whitehouse endorses a "Truth Commission" also

10:34 Up first is Professor Luban from Georgetown University. He is here to talk about ethics of OLC memos. Says memos are "ethical train wreck". Torture memos fall far short of ethical standards. Reverse engineered for pre approved outcome. Refers to Reagan administration prosecuting police officers for waterboarding. Calls OLC memos "torture memos". Says OLC lawyers didn't mention Lee case because they didn't want to give evidence of waterboarding's illegality. Compares memos to Pres Nixon's statements "When a President does it its not illegal". Memo authors were looking for a standard of torture so high that it couldn't be met. Impossible lawyers of high caliber could have written memos in good faith.

Recess for a vote

10:55 Phillip Zelikow is up. Gives his bonafides as having been there during the period from 2001 to 2003 in the Bush Administration. Important to learn from our mistakes. Administration ignored 9-11 Commission recommendation. CID standard was what 9-11 Commission recommended. Cruel and Inhuman and Degrading. By 2005 he and Sec Rice battled to get detainee program changed over to CID standard. McCain amendment helped push them to switch over. OLC guarded against CID review in 2005. OLC said waterboarding would work under CID standards. OLC position was strange and indefensible. If CIA program passed muster under American Constitutional standard then it would be applicable inside the US on US citizens. He wrote a memo to that effect. He was advised to destroy all copies of memo but he didn't. Memo has been found and is under review for declassification. Hamdan decision pushed Bush to change course on detainee program. Something Sec Rice had been pushing for. "Dehumanizing abuse and physical torment". Because it was a collective failure all the more reason to examine it and learn from it. Adhering to international standards has nothing to do with keeping us safe. Laws must change and country must change if people endorse Cheney view of torture.

11:06: Professor Jeffery Addicot is up next. 16 pages of testimony WOW. Sen Whitehouse asks for summary. Addicot speaking off the cuff. Does not think EITs constitute torture. Arlen vs UK decision. 5 techniques shown to be inhumane but not torture. Wall Standing for up to 30 hours, hooding, noise, sleep deprivation, deprived of food and drink. Uses SERE school excuse. Says the worst of what he had done was way below Arlen standard. Huh? If we conclude that we tortured we have to prosecute them. Guy is from Alabama by the way.

11:22 Ali Soufan is now up. Government's key witness in both GITMO trials so far. Mistake to use EITs. Position shared by interrogations officers including some in CIA. Mentions Abu Jindal as success story for traditional interrogation. Treasure trove of actionable intelligence from Jindal. OBL's network and details on individual operatives. Approach was "by the book". Outlined in AFM. Describes "by the book" interrogation process. AFM is not about being soft its about out witting and out smarting the detainee. Torture is about compliance, not cooperation. Al Qaeda is trained to withstand torture. Much worse than what we could ever authorize. Detainee simply calls interrogators bluff because they know there is a ceiling to what can be done in Democracies. Waiting for sleep deprivation to work wastes time and is "amateurish". Basically he says torture sucks when it comes to efficacy. Doesn't want these mistakes ever made again.

11:31 Questioning phase. Senator Whitehouse is up first askign questions of Soufan about Zubaydah. Questioning at hospital lead to KSM identification. Happened before CIA and CTC arrived. Soufan given back control after CIA tried EITs and they failed. At this time he disclosed info about Jose Padilla. Then CIA took over again and Zubaydah shut down again. Again Soufan given authority again. This time he wasn't as successful because of the EITs having already been introduced. Then CIA reasserted control and Soufan never interrogated again and left after "borderline torture" was introduce by CIA. Soufan just confirmed that we were lied to about Padilla information. Soufan now said Bush was lying in 2006. Or "half truth".

Senator Graham now questioning. Asks about whether EITs garnered yielded good information. He won't let Soufan answer the question. He seems to be testfying himself saying that the statement that EITs yielded no good information was "probably" not true. Now questioning Robert Turner. Questioning Geneva Conventions. Talking about importance of intelligence. Now questioning Mr Addicot. Senator Graham US only nation recognizing Al Qaeda as military combatant. Says nobody but us interrogates under Article 3.

Senator Whitehouse back up. Asking Soufan about conflict between FBI and CIA over interrogation of Zubaydah. Asking about CIA and FBI being against CIA contractors. Soufan says actual CIA agents supported his approach. And says a CIA psychologist left before he did in protest. Points out Padilla and KSM "success stories" don't match up with timeline of when waterboarding was approved. Now questioning Professor Luban about why OLC memos didn't mention CIA contractors. Legal opinion about Padilla was obviously untrue

Senator Durbin now questioning Zelikow. Talking about constraints of being briefed on top secret information. Asked if those who were briefed were briefed before the fact and or were they asked for authorization. Zelikow says briefings should be held at the outset but its likely it was done after the fact. Durbin references Jay Rockefeller having to write a handwritten letter to voice a protest because he had no other avenues for relief. Pushes back on the "they were complicit" argument by the GOOpers. Zelikow said briefings were used to win arguments inside information as some kind of validation of the program. Sen Durbin points out there was no means to voice your displeasure. Zelikow asked if closing GITMO is a good decision and Zelikow says yes. Durbin points out a GITMO detainee who was told 15 months ago that there was no charges against him and he could be released but he is still being held. Zelikow says GITMO is now as much symbol as substance. References why we closed Al Catraz analagous to why we need to close GITMO. "a toxic problem for America". Durbin asked if Zelikow had any questions that we could hold terrorists in our jails here. Zelikow points out that we have held dangerous criminals and terrorists in our jails for a very long time.

Senator Graham ask Zelikow about recidivism of GITMO detainees. Zelikow says no reliable sources but maybe dozens. Graham asks about "if it was one of your son's and daughters who get killed by these people". Zelikow makes an analogy to a criminal being paroled and then committing more crimes. Graham is bringing the weaksauce. He also invokes NIMBY defense. Contradicts himself almost immediately and says we can hold detainees in this country because we did it before. Robert Turner says POWs are not supposed to be charged and are only supposed to be warehoused and are not supposed to be tried in regular courts. Addicot says closing GITMO is a mistake. Says torture never happened at GITMO. Sen Graham refutes him on closing GITMO. Addicot says that its propaganda that we tortured people. Even Sen Graham cuts him off on that bullshit. Now Graham arguing Article 3 of Geneva Conventions.

Ludan refutes the points about "everybody" held in GITMO is a "enemy combatant" and the statement from Addicot that we didn't torture at GITMO

Back to Senator Whitehouse. PWNS OLC memos. Talking again to Zelikow. Asked what does it say about the atmosphere of the WhiteHouse that he was told his memo was inapproriate and that they should be destroyed. Zelikow says dissent was not welcomed. Zelikow said they didn't want a discussion or a debate at all about his dissent. Now questioning Luban about "Lee Decision". Points out that the guy from Texas didn't use texas case law in his testimony. Lee decision on 5th Circuit of appeals called waterboarding torture 12 times according to Whitehouse. Mukasey said it wasn't relevant because it was brought under Civil Rights Act. Asking for Luban's legal opinion on whether Lee verdict was applicable to deeming waterboarding as an EIT torture. Luban says definition of torture didn't mysteriously change from Lee decision to now. Says striking how many times court called it torture as if it was "obvious" that waterboarding was torture. No basis for it not to apply.

Senator Graham asks Ludan whether putting a spider in a cell would be torture. Again weaksauce. Senator Graham won't let Ludan talk. Now its a fight between Graham and Ludan.

I missed the last little bit but here is my summary. Basically not a lot new was learned here but some things that have been said on blogs and elsewhere were finally put on the record. For instance the lies that were told during the Bush Administrtion about torture successes and timelines. Also we got a better look at the timeline of the Zubaydah interrogation which still had some holes in it before today. We found that there was almost a consensus on the lawyere about the shitty job the OLC lawyers did. One thing that jumped out at me was that Addicot was a right wing hack. He didn't deserve to be in this hearing and I would like to know who invited him. Even Graham didn't have much use for his fantasy world view of what happened in GITMO.

I don't know if Soufan's testimony was the gamechanger. That will largely be decided by the media but I do believe some key nuggets came out. One that it was the CIA contractors who weren't covered under OLC memos curiously who were doing all of the torturing. Two that actual agents of the CIA supported him in his stance against torture. And third and perhaps most damaging for the pro torturists is that a CIA psychologist left GITMO in protest even before Soufan did. Now comes the wait to see how its covered. I hope I did a decent job.