Sleeping With The Enemy?

Spencer Ackerman calls for congressional hearings into the revelations about Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a long suspected drug dealer, being on the CIA's payroll according to yesterday's New York Times piece.

CIA money funds a politically connected drug dealer. Opium funds the Taliban. We are in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. How much CIA money has indirectly funded the Taliban?

We definitely need to get some answers on this one.

Breaking: Dick Cheney FBI Interview Ordered Released To The Public

Looks like Jon Stewart will get his crack at Dick Cheney after all!

(h/t Ethan)

They Didn't Know What The Fuck They Were Doing

More great reporting from Spencer Ackerman:

In the August 1, 2002 memo written by Bybee and Yoo, the lawyers summarize and refer repeatedly to what the CIA told them about how the “enhanced interrogation techniques” are supposed to work, as well as to assurances that the lawyers then consider material for whether the proposed actions violate U.S. laws. For instance, discussing waterboarding, they write, that water would be applied “in a controlled manner,” and that the CIA orally informed them that “this procedure triggers an automatic physiological sensation of drowning that the individual cannot control even though he may be aware that he is in fact not drowning.”

Just one problem: CIA medical personal objected to the description that OTS gave to the Justice Department as factually inaccurate.

Addressing the discrepancies between how waterboarding worked in the SERE school and how it worked at CIA and other torture techniques that changed between on-paper justification and in-the-field practice, a footnote to the inspector general’s 2004 report reads:

According to the Chief, Medical Services, OMS [the CIA's Office of Medical Services] was neither consulted nor involved in the initial analysis of the risk and benefits of EITs [”enhanced interrogation techniques,” nor provided with the OTS report cited in the OLC opinion. In retrospect, based on the OLC extracts of the OTS report, OMS contends that the reported sophistication of the preliminary EIT review was probably exaggerated, at least as it related to the waterboard, and that the power of this EIT was appreciably overstated in the report. Furthermore, OMS contends that the expertise of the SERE psychologist/interrogators on the waterboard was probably misrepresented at the time, as the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant. Consequently, according to OMS, there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.

I ask that you read that excerpt several times slowly and let it sink in. Bush, Cheney et all trusted our national security, basically our very lives, to two guys who didn't know what the hell they were doing with no evidence that what they were proposing would work. And that is notion is supported by FBI interrogator Ali Soufan, who himself pulled a lot of information out of high value Al Qa'ida detainees using traditional methods, in his testimony before Congress earlier this year.

A major problem is that it is ineffective. Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse – the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example.

This is why, as we see from the recently released Department of Justice memos on interrogation, the contractors had to keep getting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods, until they reached waterboarding and then there was nothing they could do but use that technique again and again. Abu Zubaydah had to be waterboarded 83 times and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times. In a democracy there is a glass ceiling of harsh techniques the interrogator cannot breach, and a detainee can eventually call the interrogator's bluff.

In addition the harsh techniques only serves to reinforce what the detainee has been prepared to expect if captured. This gives him a greater sense of control and predictability about his experience, and strengthens his will to resist.

A second major problem with this technique is that evidence gained from it is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. As the interrogator isn't an expert on the detainee or the subject matter, nor has he spent time going over the details of the case, the interrogator cannot easily know if the detainee is telling the truth. This unfortunately has happened and we have had problems ranging from agents chasing false leads to the disastrous case of Ibn Sheikh al-Libby who gave false information on Iraq, al Qaeda, and WMD.

A third major problem with this technique is that it is slow. It takes place over a long period of time, for example preventing the detainee from sleeping for 180 hours as the memos detail, or waterboarding 183 times in the case of KSM. When we have an alleged "ticking timebomb" scenario and need to get information quickly, we can't afford to wait that long.

Bush and Cheney ordered torture not because it would keep us safe but because it would make them feel macho. Like they were "real" men. And they put all of us at risk in the meanwhile. Anybody who claims to be concerned about terrorism and national security should be outraged about this. Unfortunately Republicans only care about their party at this point so there won't be any accountability forthcoming from their side fo the aisle.

It is what it is.

Someone Had To Intercede

Check out this allegation included in the CIA IG report on torture.

Al-Nashiri was required to kneel on the floor and lean back. On at least one occasion an Agency officer reportedly pushed Al-Nahshiri backward while he was in this stress position. On another occasion [redacted] said he had to intercede after [redacted] expressed concern that Al Nashiri's arms might be dislocated from his shoulders. [redacted] explained that, at the time, interrogators were attempting to put Al-Nashiri in a standing stress position. Al-Nashiri was reportedly liftted off the floor by his arms while his arms were bound behind his back with a belt.

I wonder if Joe Scarborough will continue to try to claim that the stress positions were no big deal.

Show Me Whatcha Workin Wit

Ladies and Gentlemen, there shall be an investigation!

This release just out from House Intel committee chair Silvestre Reyes, which says that House Dems have decided to probe the secret CIA program that had been concealed from Congress and was revealed the other day by CIA director Leon Panetta, is a big deal:

“After careful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, I am announcing an official Committee investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1974.

“This investigation will focus on the core issues of how the congressional intelligence committees and Congress are kept fully and currently informed. To this end, the investigation will examine several issues, including the program discussed during [CIA] Director [Leon] Panetta’s June 24th notification and whether there was any official decision or direction to withold information from the Committee.”

Now the funny thing about investigations is that when you start pulling back the covers sometimes you find something you weren't even looking for.

Oh I don't know, like some skeletons that Dick Cheney is trying to keep buried.

Deep Thought: Col. Nathan Jessup Edition

As I think back on the movie "A Few Good Men" there was a moment when Tom Cruise's character asked a logic question that went to the heart of his defense of the two marines and against the cover story pushed by Colonel Nathan Jessup. After their platoon was told not to touch Private Santiago supposedly there was another meeting where the two defendents were told specifically not to give him a code red. Tom Cruise established the importance of Marines following orders first and then asked the question that defied the logic of the second meeting. If the soldiers had already been told not to touch Santiago and Marines follow orders "or people die", why then would there ever even need to be a second meeting advising them against beating Santiago's ass?

I have similar thoughts about the current debate amongst Villagers over whether or not the CIA should have briefed Congress on some secret program that they were kept in the dark about for over 8 years. Now first of all let me say yet again that I think this story is much ado about nothing, not because it isn't important, but because there is a lot of misinformation being tossed around. And I think its all just to take attention away from the recent IG report that detailed the humongous (and illegal) warrantless wiretapping program that was operating during the Bush administration.

However even if this is really a big story, one thing should be readily apparent. And that is that OBVIOUSLY the CIA broke the law in not informing Congress. I don't care that anonymous Republicans continue to try to make it seem like the program never got started or that it was shut down a long time ago. What it boils down to is this, it has been well established that Dick Cheney specifically told the CIA NOT to brief Congress. There would be no reason on earth for him to do that unless he himself believed that they SHOULD be briefing Congress on the program. Why would the guy tell them not to brief Congress if there wasn't at least somebody pushing to brief them and or if the facts of the program wasn't making a compelling case for the need to brief them?

Now could you mainstream media types please stop insulting our intelligence and accept it as a given that the CIA broke the law, even though obviously it was at the direction of Dick Cheney?

Thanks in advance.

Nope Not Buying It

Zachary Roth of TPM isn't buying the Wall Street Journal's Al Qaeda assasination ring story either:

But there's reason to believe we still don't have anything like the full story. First of all, according to one of the Journal's sources, both Cheney and President Bush opposed what seems to be a particularly aggressive iteration of the program, involving using "teams of CIA and military Special Forces commandos to emulate what the Israelis did after the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks," by carrying out targeted assassinations.

That doesn't appear to line up with the Times' report that Cheney was behind the decision to keep Congress in the dark about the secret program, though strictly speaking it doesn't contradict it.

But there are other reasons to keep asking questions:

Perhaps most importantly, a program, launched immediately after September 11 to capture or kill top al Qaeda operatives just doesn't seem sufficiently radioactive to have provoked the kerfuffle it has. To be sure, Congress outlawed targeted CIA assassinations in the 1970s in response to the excesses of 50s and 60s, and the issue played a key role in the move during the same period to give Congress greater powers to oversee the agency. And if the program allowed CIA to act without the consent or knowledge of liaison services in the countries where the targets were located, that's obviously a big deal.

Still, the US military has openly been trying to get Osama bin Laden and other top Qaeda leaders "dead or alive" since shortly after the 9/11 attacks. Would CIA involvement in that effort be so explosive that it would not only need to be kept from Congress in the first place, but would also have been shut down by Panetta as soon as he learned about it?

By the same token, it was Democratic lawmakers who brought the issue into the news last week by complaining that they had for years been kept in the dark on the unidentified program. Would they have chosen to initiate that spat when it seems to allow them to be portrayed as opposing an effort to hunt down al Qaeda terrorists?

Exactly!

I can't wait till the REAL story comes out.

Of Revelations And Trial Balloons

First the revelation:

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.

Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.

The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.

Money quote:

Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the committee’s top Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency has not been as forthcoming as the law requires.

“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.

Kinda sounds like what Speaker Pelosi said a couple months back doesn't it?


Now the trial balloon:

It's the morning after Independence Day, and Eric Holder Jr. is feeling the weight of history. The night before, he'd stood on the roof of the White House alongside the president of the United States, leaning over a railing to watch fireworks burst over the Mall, the monuments to Lincoln and Washington aglow at either end. "I was so struck by the fact that for the first time in history an African-American was presiding over this celebration of what our nation is all about," he says. Now, sitting at his kitchen table in jeans and a gray polo shirt, as his 11-year-old son, Buddy, dashes in and out of the room, Holder is reflecting on his own role. He doesn't dwell on the fact that he's the country's first black attorney general. He is focused instead on the tension that the best of his predecessors have confronted: how does one faithfully serve both the law and the president?

Alone among cabinet officers, attorneys general are partisan appointees expected to rise above partisanship. All struggle to find a happy medium between loyalty and independence. Few succeed. At one extreme looms Alberto Gonzales, who allowed the Justice Department to be run like Tammany Hall. At the other is Janet Reno, whose righteousness and folksy eccentricities marginalized her within the Clinton administration. Lean too far one way and you corrupt the office, too far the other way and you render yourself impotent. Mindful of history, Holder is trying to get the balance right. "You have the responsibility of enforcing the nation's laws, and you have to be seen as neutral, detached, and nonpartisan in that effort," Holder says. "But the reality of being A.G. is that I'm also part of the president's team. I want the president to succeed; I campaigned for him. I share his world view and values."

These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

Now here is the deal. We who feel that the Bush Administration MUST be held accountable for their crimes against the constitution have to strike NOW when the iron is still hot! Here we have revelations about all of the ways Dick Cheney held back information from Congress coming at the same time that Eric Holder is openly contemplating an investigation, if there was ever a time that we had a shot at changing public perception on this issue it is now. We need to pound Cheney mercilessly for the next few weeks! Whatever new dirt that can be exposed should be brought out. All of the things we already know should be reemphasized. All of the lies he has told should be recounted. We need to pressure the mainstream media into reporting on the issue as well. Go on the Washington Post chats and keep asking the pundits to hold Cheney and the rest of the Bush administration accountable. Go on the mainsteam media blogs like Swampland or The Note and demand justice. Twitter it out with MSM folks like Jake Tapper and Joe Scarborough and DEMAND accountability.

We have been giving a slight opening. Its up to us to decide if we are going to exploit it or continue waiting on someone else to do it for us.

It is what it is.

Hypothetical...

Ok I am not saying its for sure, but how likely is it that this story that Spencer Ackerman is working on, dovetails with the previous story about a CIA program that Leon Panetta had to recently brief Congress on?

Cheney's Assasination Ring?

Since last night news of a letter that House Democrats on the Intelligence Committee sent to CIA Director Leon Panetta has created a strong buzz. Evidently last month Panetta testified to the committtee about a covert program which had been going on reportedly since 2001 until now and which members of Congress had never been briefed on. Clearly such testimony was at odds with Panetta's much ballyhooed statement on May 15 of earlier this year where he claimed that it is not the policy of the CIA to mislead members of Congress.

That statement was used as a club by the House Republicans to beat up on Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her earlier remarks that the CIA lied to her on a regular basis. So obviously this letter was in many ways a political move. But there is a high possibility that it was a policy move as well meant to underscore the need to include a provision in the new Intelligence funding bill set to be voted on in the House in the next few days which would require that the WhiteHouse brief more members of Congress on covert actions. The WhiteHouse has reportedly threatened to veto any bill with such a provision.

But now a possibly more important story is emerging. Above and beyond the question of whether or not Congress was properly briefed on this covert program the bigger deal may be what the program is in the first place. Could it be that this covert program is the same one that Seymore Hersch previously referred to as an assassination squad? Sam Stein of HuffPo examines the possibility.

So what are the "significant actions" that these seven lawmakers insist were kept from Congress? Another theory being bandied about concerns an "executive assassination ring" that was allegedly set up and answered to former Vice President Dick Cheney. The New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, building off earlier reporting from the New York Times, dropped news of that ring's apparent existence in a March 2009 discussion sponsored by the University of Minnesota.

"It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," Hersh said. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...

"Congress has no oversight of it," he added. "It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."

Asked if this was the basis of her letter to Panetta, Eshoo said she could not discuss what was a "highly classified program." She did, however, note that when Panetta told House Intelligence Committee members what it was that had been kept secret, "the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans."

Panetta himself was kept in the dark about the program -- whatever it was -- having only been told about the classified activity on June 23. "His own top leadership didn't even brief him that this program existed," said Eshoo.

I Am Fresh Out Of Passes

After delaying the release of the CIA's Inspector General's report on torture several times, now the Obama administration is looking to push it back yet again until August 31st. Now I don't know about you, but I have pretty much run out of plausible excuses for why they continue to kick this down the road. Right about now it seems to me that what makes most sense is that they are pushing it back so that the issue falls off of the radar and doesn't impede other parts of their agenda.

Well I am calling BULLSHIT on that. If President Obama is going to be using that "nation of laws" verbiage then he for damn sure needs to start living up to it. This is much too serious to keep playing games with it. And if accountability is going to continue to be a buzz word with his administration then at some point we are going to need to actually see some. This is weaksauce plain and simple.

I Guess He Is Coming Around

Nancy Pelosi got some support today from an unlikely source, Arlen Specter.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) took the opportunity Wednesday to defend House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has come under fire in recent weeks over a controversy surrounding when she was told of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques being used by the CIA.

"The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say 'candid'; that's too mild — to honesty," Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency's involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair.

"Director [Leon] Panetta says the agency does not make it a habit to misinform Congress. I believe that is true. It is not the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to misinform Congress," Specter said. "But that doesn't mean that they're all giving out the information."

Because of leaks that have come from Congress, Specter said, he understands the agency's hesitancy to disclose all its information.

"The current controversy involving Speaker Pelosi and the CIA is very unfortunate, in my opinion, because it politicizes the issue and it takes away attention from ... how does the Congress get accurate information from the CIA?" Specter said. "For political gain, people are making headlines."

(h/t TPM)

Get Your Story Straight

Joe Scarborough can't seem to decide if he believes the CIA leaks information or not.

Pots And Kettles

I am just wondering if any mainstream media outlet is going to get around to pointing out that one of the people bashing Speaker Pelosi for saying the CIA lied to her, Pete Hoekstra, accused the CIA of covering up a crime just last fall.


Ooops I forgot, IOKIYAR.

Ohhhhhhhhhh It Ain't My Fault

Seems like the current CIA officials are just about tired of catching hell because of things done by the former CIA officials in the Bush Administration. Earlier today Congressman David Obey sent the CIA a letter detailing a discrepancy between the CIA's report on the intelligence briefings and the memory of a staffer purported by the report to have attended one of the briefings. The CIA has now responded.

“While CIA’s information has Mr. Juola attending briefings on September 19, 2006 and October 11, 2007, there are different recollections of these events, which Mr. Obey’s letter describes. As the agency has pointed out more than once, its list — compiled in response to congressional requests — reflects the records it has. These are notes, memos, and recollections, not transcripts and recordings.”

So now that they have pretty much admitted that they aren't sure about what in the hell went on back then, isn't it time for the mainstream media to start focusing on the CIA's credibility on the issue instead of focusing on Speaker Pelosi's? Im just sayin.

The Walkback You Aren't Hearing About

You would think that with all of the "he said, she said" journalism going on with respect to Speaker Pelosi's quote last week that the CIA misled her that when a prominent antagonist of hers had asserted that she was lying and then had to walk it back on a major "Sunday Show" after seeing the actual CIA documents that it would be plastered all over cable news. And you would be wrong.

“I think these documents will be made public. I think that when they are made public it won’t be crystal clear as to what exactly went on in that briefing. …

“Overall, Chris I think it’s pretty clear the speaker either knew or should have known that these enhanced interrogation techniques were occurring. …

“I think the documents for me are pretty clear. For others they may not be as clear.”

Now why in the world wasn't Representative Hoekstra's word featured prominently on "Morning Joe" today as they tried to impugn Speaker Pelosi's credibility? I think we all know the answer to that. Send this video to as many people in the media as you can via twitter or their email addresses and demand they start focusing on the credibility of the CIA as much as they have been focusing on Speaker Pelosi's.

(major h/t to JaO)

LIght Bulb Moment

I am reposting a comment here that I made at Greg Sargent's blog. I would love some feedback on it truly. If I am right then most of us have been sucked into a vortex over Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and something that we thought the CIA said about her but on a second look didn't actually explicitly say:

A light bulb just went off for me and I feel like the world’s biggest dumbass. It was in front of us the whole time basically all from Greg’s reporting but none of us really noticed it.

What exactly did the CIA intelligence report say about Nancy Pelosi’s briefing? Lets take a fresh look.

Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.

Now at first glance it would seem this statement is definitely saying that Speaker Pelosi and Porter Goss were told that EITs were used on Abu Zubaydah. But remember that this is the CIA so lets look at what its really says and what it doesn’t. Probably what most gives this impression is this part.

including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah

Now again at first glance it looks straight forward. But it really isn’t. It doesn’t say “including the fact that we used EITs on Abu Zubaydah”. It just employs the ambiguous term “use” in this context. Does that mean prior use or future use or current use? It doesn’t really say. There is also a redundancy in the statement that doesn’t add up. Why would you need to come back and say

and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed

How could you possibly brief someone on the fact that you used EITs if you didn’t describe the EITs at the same time? “Yeah we whupped this guy’s ass but I can’t tell you how until I explain why it was legal to whup his ass” Nah don’t think so. But you CAN tell them that you are thinking about using EIT’s in general, and then explain what legal opinions you have sought out on the subject, and then come back and describe the EITs in detail. That would make a lot more sense right? So basically if you were in a court of law and you were trying to prove that the CIA report refuted Nancy Pelosi’s assertion you couldn’t do it. Because in essence its exactly what she said. She said they told her they were thinking about using EITs and that they thought certain techniques were legal and they described them to her. And the report never states unequivically that they told her that they HAD used the EITs or that they told her that they HAD used waterboarding. It simply doesn’t say that. And in that vein Panetta’s statement doesn’t go any further than that either. But here is the thing about Panetta’s statement today that actually turned on the light switch for me. He doesn’t go through that whole passage from the report. Instead he just quotes what I think is the most relevant passage.

As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.”

Now the operative word here is “describing”. But its easy to get side tracked by the “that had been employed” part of the sentence. But look at what Panetta is really saying here. He is saying they described something to Speaker Pelosi. He isn’t saying now, nor did the original report say, that they told her that the techniques HAD BEEN used. They just described what had been used.

If you still aren’t getting it let me give you an analogy. I say to you that I plan on going to the store and buying some bbq chips and cheese dip and lite beer. Unbeknownst to you I already went to the store and bought the chips, dip and beer. But later I can say truthfully that I described to you the items that I had already bought at the store. Doesn’t matter that I didn’t tell you that I had already bought them. Timing isn’t the issue, the description is. And you have to know that the CIA is going to cover their asses to a tee when it comes to parsing what they say and making sure that they don’t overreach in their assertations. Remember they already admitted to Greg Sargent that they didn’t have enough info to say that Pelosi was actually briefed on waterboarding in particular. However today they came back and said that the report was truthful which if we were actually reading the report right because we know Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded before the briefing happened and we also know the CIA can’t attest to Pelosi having been briefed on waterboarding. But the reality is it WAS truthful, it was just us rubes reading more into it than what was actually there with a major assist from the mainstream media.

I realize that at this point this is probably long and rambling however the truth is this story may have been pushed for over a week now on a false premise and I feel like I totally missed it. Or maybe I am just all wrong. What do you guys think?

Whip It Whip It Real Hard

Fresh off Speaker Nancy Pelosi saying the CIA lied to her yesterday, today Senator Ron Wyden upped the ante when he said the CIA broke the law in not keeping Congress informed.



CIA director Leon Panetta released a statement today that many cable news talking heads are reading as a refutation of Speaker Pelosi. But it looks like more and more Democrats are now speaking out against how the CIA handled their briefings of the torture program. It might be time for Panetta to just lay low since he wasn't in charge back when all of this went down. Otherwise he is attaching his credibility to actions taken by Bush Admininstration officials and that might just end his career as director quite prematurely.

Bob Graham On MSNBC

Finally somebody is covering the fact that other Democratic Leaders had similar experiences to Speaker Pelosi in their CIA briefings. I think David Shuster did a fantastic job interviewing former Senator and Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Bob Graham.



Will other cable news shows follow suit?

Barry Goldwater And The CIA

If you go over to the "Morning Joe" website and look at the clips for today you wouldn't know that Lawrence O'Donnell was even on the show today. The reason why might be the fact that O'Donnell pointed out that Barry Goldwater, like Pelosi did yesterday, said the CIA lied to him back in 1984. Because Joe Scarborough and the rest of his yes men and women had spent all morning trying to convince the world that the CIA NEVER lies this was probably an inconvenient truth for them.

Thank God for MediaMatters




Now notice that in order to support torture Joe Scarborough is willing to defame one of the major players in the conservative movement, Barry Goldwater, by saying he was crazy. That is the state of Republicans and wingnuts today. They will throw anybody, even their most revered icons, under the bus in order to protect the Republican brand. Disgusting.

Fixt