Will The MSM Ask The Cheney's About Their Lies?

Don't worry, that was a rhetorical question.

From Michael Isikoff:

A crucial CIA memo that has been cited by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials as justifying the effectiveness of waterboarding contained “plainly inaccurate information” that undermined its conclusions, according to Justice Department investigators.

Cheney has publicly called for the release of the CIA’s still classified memo and another document, insisting their disclosure will bolster his claim that the rough interrogation tactics he vigorously pushed for while in the White House yielded actionable intelligence that foiled terrorist plots against the United States.

But a just released report by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility into the lawyers who approved the CIA’s interrogation program could prove awkward for Cheney and his supporters. The report provides new information about the contents of one of the never released agency memos, concluding that it significantly misstated the timing of the capture of one Al Qaeda suspect in order to make a claim that seems to have been patently false.

snip

The CIA memo, called the Effectiveness Memo, was especially important because it was relied on by Steven G. Bradbury, then the Justice Department’s acting chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, to write memos in 2005 and 2007 giving the agency additional legal approvals to continue its program of “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.” The memo reviewed the results of the use of EITs – which included waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and forced nudity – mainly against two suspects” Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the report states. One key claim in the agency memo was that the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogations of Zubaydah led to the capture of suspected “dirty bomb’ plotter Jose Padilla. “Abu Zubaydah provided significant information on two operatives, Jose Padilla and Binyam Mohammed, who planned to build and detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in the Washington DC area,” the CIA memo stated, according to the OPR report. “Zubaydah’s reporting led to the arrest of Padilla on his arrival in Chicago in May 2003 [sic].”

But as the Justice report points out, this was wrong. “In fact, Padilla was arrested in May 2002, not 2003 … The information ‘[leading] to the arrest of Padilla’ could not have been obtained through the authorized use of EITs.” (The use of enhanced interrogations was not authorized until Aug. 1, 2002 and Zubaydah was not waterboarded until later that month.) “ Yet Bradbury relied upon this plainly inaccurate information” in two OLC memos that contained direct citations from the CIA Effectiveness Memo about the interrogations of Zubaydah, the Justice report states.

As Newsweek reported last year, the information about Padilla’s plot was actually elicited from Zubaydah during traditional interrogations in the spring of 2002 by two FBI agents, one of whom, Ali Soufan, vigorously objected when the CIA started using aggressive tactics. The Justice report faults Bradbury for not pushing the CIA to backup its effectiveness claims. “We question whether it was reasonable for Bradbury not to have demanded more specific information before concluding that the use of EITs was both essential and effective in disrupting terrorist attacks,” the report states.

Look I like the show "24" as much as the next guy, but that isn't real life. At some point the folks who think it should some kind of "toughness" to torture detainees are going to have to wake up to the reality that not only didn't it work but the time invested in torturing took time away from doing the really effective interrogation techniques that actually DO work and put everyone at risk if there really was a so called ticking time bomb scenario.

It is what it is.

(h/t Greg Sargent)

Abu Zubaydah's Lawyer Says Marc Thiessen Is Full Of Shit

I was over at Attackerman's spot the other day where he had a post about Marc Thiessen's totally unsourced, bullshit assertion that Abu Zubaydah thanked his torturers for torturing him, and he was lamenting the fact that it would be extra hard to disprove something so ridiculous on its face. Well it turns out that while we may not have concrete evidence that its bullshit, Jason Linkins over at HuffPo contacted Zubaydah's lawyer, not a fan of Thiessen's to say the least, to ask him about the assertion:

Abu Zubaydah, categorically, was not affiliated with al Qaeda," Mickum said. "He was never a top leader of al Qaeda because he was never a member and he openly disagreed with the militaristic policies of al Qaeda. The camp he is alleged to have been involved with was closed in 2000 -- two years before his capture -- because the emir who oversaw it refused to allow it to fall under the control of al Qaeda. Thus, he is not, and never was, the man that the Bush administration made him out to be -- someone who orchestrated terrorist attacks."

Mickum went on: "And no one is disputing these facts anymore. So, my question to Mr. Thiessen is this: If Abu Zubaydah wasn't a member of al Qaeda, and not in the position to know about al Qaeda's operations, what does that say about the quality of the information obtained using these enhanced techniques -- or to use the precise term, torture? And what does that tell him about the intel that led to his capture in the first place?"

And based upon what Mickum knows -- and can divulge -- about the legal filings in the case, it would seem that the government is, indeed, not contesting the fact that Abu Zubaydah was not a member of al Qaeda.

snip

I asked Mickum what he made of Thiessen's recent claim that he had thanked his torturers and credited them with lifting a "moral burden" from his conscience. "No. That's categorically untrue. Abu Zubaydah has never apologized to or thanked his interrogators. Quite the opposite, actually."

snip

I also asked Mickum about what is known to have taken place in interrogations, based upon the information that was provided to the 9/11 Commission. I shared with him the timeline that was established by Marcy Wheeler, after painstaking study of the commission's report. As you might expect, he did not dispute Wheeler's underlying premise -- that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah did not yield valuable intelligence. However, he was adamant that the timeline was wrong, that Abu Zubaydah was being tortured well in advance of August 31, 2002 -- the date established in the 9/11 Report as when waterboarding began. Mickum contends that torture began much earlier.

HUFFINGTON POST: Let me get this straight. You are saying that between the date of Abu Zubaydah's capture, which was March 28, 2002, and July 24, 2002, the date on which the CIA was said to have first received oral guidance on enhanced interrogation techniques from Jay Bybee, Abu Zubaydah was subjected to torture?

MICKUM: That's correct.

Now we all should be doing touchdown dances over this but we can't. The reason being is that it no longer matter what the truth is because our mainstream media sucks ass. No matter what Mickum says, Marc Thiessen will continue to have a platform at the Washington Post to spread as much unsourced incorrect bullshit as he likes to his hearts desire. And his boss Fred Hiatt will repeatedly be recognized as a high ranking liberal despite it all.

Frustrating.

You Don't Have To Believe Me, Unless You Want To Believe Me, But Its Real....So Real

When I got a chance to look at the CIA's IG report for the first time today at the Washington Independent's website I almost immediately noticed two things, one of which may not be a big deal, the other one is almost certainly a big deal.

Here was the first thing I noticed.

Several months earlier, in late 2001, CIA had tasked an independent contractor psychologist who had [redacted] experience in the U.S. Air Force's Survival, Evastion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) training program, to research and write a paper on Al-Qa'ida resistence to interrogation techniques.

Now honestly I might just be uninformed about this issue but I, personally, didn't know until now that the CIA had set out to try to figure out ways to overcome Al Qa'ida's resistance to interrogation techniques torture so early on in the game. I mean basically at best if we captured Al Qa'ida operatives right after 9-11 and this edict came down at the end of 2001 then that means in the intervening 3 months basically the CIA found that these operatives were impervious to normal and accepted means of interrogation and were already looking to up the ante.

The problem, of course, is that even on the face of it this doesn't add up. It goes to a point I made a few months back and that is that the whole justification for supposed "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" was that they were supposed to be used when traditional methods of interrogation failed. But that clearly couldn't have been the case with Khalid Sheik Muhammed because he was waterboarded 183 times in the first month of us having him in custody. It didn't appear to be the case with Abu Zubaydah either who was supposedly the first high value target to be waterboarded. And in this passage in the IG report it would seem that the third man who was waterboarded, Al Nashiri,also wasn't given the opportunity to cooperate before EITs or torture take your pick, were employed.

The interrogation of Al-Nashiri proceeded after [redacted] the necessary Headquarters authorization [redacted] psychologist/interrogators began Al-Nashiri's interrogation using EITs immediately upon his arrival.

Now everyone knows that there is something seriously fishy that is connected to Al-Nahsiri because you hardly ever hear the current administration or the previous administration even mention this guy as one of the people who were waterboarded. Instead they just focus on Abu Zubaydah and KSM. Hopefully one day we will get to the bottom of what actually happened to him. I suspect that he might not have been who they thought was which would be terribly embarrassing if it got out that they waterboarded an innocent man.

The second thing I found was this passage about waterboarding and why the interrogators were not going strictly by the OLC memo guidelines as to how it would be administered. (thanks for the transcription Attackerman)

OIG’s [Office of the Inspector General's] review of the videotapes revealed that the waterboard technique employed at [REDACTED] was different from the technique as described in the DoJ opinion and used in the SERE training. The difference was in the manner in which the detainee’s breathing was obstructed. At the SERE School and in the DoJ opinion, the subject’s airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contest, the Agency interrogator [REDACTED] continuously applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee’s mouth and nose. One of the psychologists/interrogators acknowledged that the Agency’s use of the technique differed from that used in SERE training and explained that the Agency’s technique is different because it is “for real” and is more poignant and convincing.

Now this is vital information for two different reasons.

The first reason its important is a legal one. When asked about the difference between what the OLC and DOJ memos outlined as being acceptable as waterboarding and what the psychologists and interrogators were doing in practice, at least one of those psychologists/interrogators acknowledged that not only was there a difference, but that it was also entirely intentional. Im no legal scholar but that sounds pretty much like an admission of guilty to a layman. Especially when this unnamed person invoked the words "for real" to describe the difference. I don't see a way that someone can explain away these psychologists/interrogators disregarding the already flawed OLC memos in order to intentionally treat the detainees in an even more harsh manner than was laid out for them. So it would appear that the Special Prosecutor whom Attorney General Eric Holder just chose to investigate torture will have some pretty nice targets right off the bat.

The second reason this is important is purely political and I make no apologies for that. For months torture apologists like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and Liz Cheney, just to name a few, hid behind our troops to try to make a bogus argument that waterboarding was not torture. Their meme which got repeated time and time again on FoxNews and in the wingnut blogosphere is that "it couldn't be torture because we do it to our own members of the military". Many of them took it further and tried to paint anyone who rightly labeled waterboarding as torture, as it has been prosecuted as such for decades, to be claiming that we also tortured our men and women in the military. Even for the GOP this was a particularly disgusting attack in their attempt to excuse the rancid bullshit that was perpetrated by the Bush administration, supposedly in the name of national security.

Well no longer can they make such a claim when it comes to what we did with these detainees. Not only did the CIA Inspector General observe for himself that they were not following the guidelines to waterboard a detainee as was proscribed in the OLC memos which were cribbed from SERE school teachings, at least one of the persons participating in the waterboarding acknowledged that it wasn't the same thing because with the detainees it was "for real".

Now the next step is that when liberals or progressives of Democratic members of Congress go on any cable news shows or Sunday talk shows to talk about demanding accountability for torture, they need to familiarize themselves with the information in this document. No longer should they allow Republicans and Conservatives to try to frame this issue as being not a big deal. I understand that we have our plates full with health care reform but if there was ever a time to demand accountability from the Bush administration I think its now. We have to try to strike when the iron is hot in my honest opinion. And we have to be armed with the facts not as we see them but as they are spelled out in this CIA IG report.

I will be posting more on the report as I comb through it.

Who Said What And Why?

There is a new Washington Post story up about the torture of Abu Zubaydah at GITMO. Now I am not quite sure who gets to make these kinds of decisions but, and I bullshit you not, the overwhelming bulk of the story is derived from "anonymous" sources. Mind you WaPo allows these former Bushies to contradict Ali Soufan, a decorated FBI agent whom is still in the field trying to keep us all safe and who has testfied under oath to Congress and still enjoy the freedom to lie that comes with being an "anonymous" source. Its really ironic that on the weekend that we lose an icon in journalism, Walter Cronkite, that the Post would publish such an antithesis to journalism excellence and integrity.

Now ostensibly I guess the article is an attempt by some former Bush officials to push back on the notion that Abu Zubaydah didn't yield any useful information as a result of torture. To wit I think that this part of the article comes the closest to trying to substantiate this claim.

Soufan testified to Congress in May that Abu Zubaida went silent once Mitchell took charge. Within days of the CIA team's arrival, the cables between Bangkok and Langley became devoid of new revelations. Agency officials decided to let the FBI back into the interrogations, but on the condition that forced nudity and sleep deprivation be allowed to continue.

The CIA team lowered the temperature in Abu Zubaida's cell until the detainee turned blue. The FBI turned it back up, setting off a clash over tactics.

Under FBI questioning, Abu Zubaida identified an operative he knew as Abdullah al-Mujahir, the alias, he said, of an American citizen with a Latino name. An investigation involving multiple agencies identified the suspect as Jose Padilla, the al-Qaeda operative later convicted of providing material support for terrorism.

"In two different bits, after sleep deprivation, is when Abu Zubaida gave clues about who Padilla might be," the former U.S. official said. "When that was put together with other CIA sources, they were able to identify who he was. . . . The cables will not show that the FBI just asked friendly questions and got information about Padilla."

This is such a blatant attempt at sleight of hand that the Washington Post should be held in contempt by all of its readers for insulting our intelligence in this fashion. Now mind you supposedly this article was put together based on anonymous sources as well as information already out in the public domain. Well lets examine Ali Soufan's account of how they came to glean information about Jose Padilla from Abu Zubaydah.

Only weeks later, this clash of cultures played out in the heated dispute over how to handle Abu Zubaydah. A Palestinian who is believed to have served as logistics chief for Afghan terrorist-training camps, Abu Zubaydah was captured after a bloody gunfight. He was transferred from Pakistan to Thailand, where Soufan and Gaudin immediately sought to gain his trust by nursing his wounds. (Soufan would not comment on the location of the interrogation; sources, who like others interviewed for this story didn't want to be named discussing sensitive information, have placed him in Thailand at this time. An FBI spokesman says Gaudin, who is still in the bureau, would not comment on his role in the Abu Zubaydah interrogations.) "We kept him alive," Soufan says. "It wasn't easy, he couldn't drink, he had a fever. I was holding ice to his lips." Gaudin, for his part, cleaned Abu Zubaydah's buttocks. During this time, Soufan and Gaudin also began the questioning; it became a "mental poker game." At first, Abu Zubaydah even denied his identity, insisting that his name was "Daoud."

But Soufan had poured through the bureau's intelligence files and stunned Abu Zubaydah when he called him "Hani"—the nickname that his mother used for him. Soufan also showed him photos of a number of terror suspects who were high on the bureau's priority list. Abu Zubaydah looked at one of them and said, "That's Mukhtar."

Now it was Soufan who was stunned. The FBI had been trying to determine the identity of a mysterious "Mukhtar," whom bin Laden kept referring to on a tape he made after 9/11. Now Soufan knew: Mukhtar was the man in the photo, terror fugitive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and, as Abu Zubaydah blurted out, " the one behind 9/11."

As the sessions continued, Soufan engaged Abu Zubaydah in long discussions about his world view, which included a tinge of socialism. After Abu Zubaydah railed one day about the influence of American imperialist corporations, he asked Soufan to get him a Coca-Cola—a request that prompted the two of them to laugh. Soon enough, Abu Zubaydah offered up more information—about the bizarre plans of a jihadist from Puerto Rico to set off a "dirty bomb" inside the country. This information led to Padilla's arrest in Chicago by the FBI in early May.

But the tenor of the Abu Zubaydah interrogations changed a few days later, when a CIA contractor showed up. Although Soufan declined to identify the contractor by name, other sources (and media accounts) identify him as James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who had worked on the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training—a program to teach officers how to resist the abusive interrogation methods used by Chinese communists during the Korean War. Within days of his arrival, Mitchell—an architect of the CIA interrogation program—took charge of the questioning of Abu Zubaydah. He directed that Abu Zubaydah be ordered to answer questions or face a gradual increase in aggressive techniques. One day Soufan entered Abu Zubadyah's room and saw that he had been stripped naked; he covered him with a towel.

So you have Ali Soufan putting his name on it when he says that Mitchell wasn't even at GITMO when Zubaydah gave up Jose Padilla and thus there is no way the information could have come from torture. And on the other hand you have an anonymous former Bush official (probably a Dick Cheney lackey or Cheney himself) anonymously lying about the very timeline of events and the Washington Post doesn't even take the time out to acknowledge that the timeline is even in dispute. Are we really supposed to be that stupid or maybe that woefully under informed that we just accept this anonymous sources' word over a man who has testifed under oath about what went down with Zubaydah and continues to put his life on the line battling terrorist all over the world?

The Washington Post is quickly hastening its own demise with this kind of slppy and lazy, intellectually dishonest work.

But even with all of the misdirection thrown around in the article there is still one major takeaway. There is no way these people can claim that what was done to Zubaydah was not torture.

Abu Zubaida was waterboarded 83 times over four or five days, and Mitchell and Jessen concluded that the prisoner was broken, the former U.S. official said. "They became convinced that he was cooperating. There was unanimity within the team."

One More Time

CIA officials at the Counterterrorist Center were not convinced.

"Headquarters was sending daily harangues, cables, e-mails insisting that waterboarding continue for 30 days because another attack was believed to be imminent," the former official said. "Headquarters said it would be on the team's back if an attack happened. They said to the interrogation team, 'You've lost your spine.' "

Mitchell and Jessen now found themselves in the same position as Soufan, Shumate and others.

"It was hard on them, too," the former U.S. official said. "They are psychologists. They didn't enjoy this at all."

The two men threatened to quit if the waterboarding continued and insisted that officials from Langley come to Thailand to watch the procedure, the former official said.

After a CIA delegation arrived, Abu Zubaida was strapped down one more time. As water poured over his cloth-covered mouth, he gasped for breath. "They all watched, and then they all agreed to stop," the former official said.

A 2005 Justice Department memo released this year confirmed the visit. "These officials," the memo said, "reported that enhanced techniques were no longer needed."

It is apparent that the chickenhawks inhabiting the White House were so afraid of their own shaddow that they didn't give a shit about whether Abu Zubaydah or any other prisoner they used torture on was giving them good information. All they cared about was torturing the guy over and over again so there was at least the appearance of intelligence coming in so they could cover their ass in case another attack happened. What a joke it is to hear them now try to claim they kept this country safe and beat their chests as if they are some kind of heros.

They truth is every single one of them were and are cowards and that torture is the tool of cowards. Its the brave man who sticks to his values and morals in the face of grave consequences, the coward is the one who gives them up in the interest of cutting corners.

If there is any justice in the world these people who ordered torture will be held accountable for their crimes, sooner rather than later.

Just ....Wrong

But I couldn't help but chuckle. Here is a little gallows humor from the New York Observer.


The 83 Waterboardings of Abu Zubaydah


(h/t wvng

Why Everyone Should Read Greg Sargent's Blog

All day since Nancy Pelosi said that the CIA had misled her in her briefing in 2002 I have seen people from every political stripe question whether the CIA intelligence report proved that Nancy Pelosi had been briefed on waterboarding or if it hadn't. The point of contention is the wording of the entry where it say she and Porter Goss were briefed on techniques that had already been used. That's big because we now know that Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded already by the time Speaker Pelosi attended that briefing. But the thing about it is Greg Sargent noticed that wording on the very day the report came out last week. And he didn't wait for Speaker Pelosi to make a statement. Instead like a REAL journalist he asked the CIA what it really meant:

In the newly-released documents detailing the torture briefings given to members of Congress, the portion describing Pelosi’s single briefing says she was told about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in general, but doesn’t specify whether she was told about the use of waterboarding. That was specified about some briefings given to others.

I asked CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano why. His answer: Because the notes and memos on the Pelosi meeting that form the basis for the docs didn’t allow them to go that far, meaning that they didn’t specify that she’d been briefed on waterboarding in particular.

Now can we find a way to get the MSM to report this so we can move on from this stupid sidenote? The CIA, in their own words, have no proof that Speaker Pelosi was specifically briefed on waterboarding. Now would be a good time to get the focus back on who ORDERED the torture rather than who was briefed or not briefed on it.

Recap

Senator Whitehouse went on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann" last night to recap the hearing he held yesterday about the Bush Administration torture program.

Details Details

Here is the link to Ali Soufan's prepared testimony he submitted to the Senate committee today for the hearing. A few important excerpts:

Immediately after Abu Zubaydah was captured, a fellow FBI agent and I were flown to meet him at an undisclosed location. We were both very familiar with Abu Zubaydah and have successfully interrogated al-Qaeda terrorists. We started interrogating him, supported by CIA officials who were stationed at the location, and within the first hour of the interrogation, using the Informed Interrogation Approach, we gained important actionable intelligence.

The information was so important that, as I later learned from open sources, it went to CIA Director George Tennet who was so impressed that he initially ordered us to be congratulated. That was apparently quickly withdrawn as soon as Mr. Tennet was told that it was FBI agents, who were responsible. He then immediately ordered a CIA CTC interrogation team to leave DC and head to the location to take over from us.

Sounds like a case of penis envy on the part of George Tennet.

We were once again very successful and elicited information regarding the role of KSM as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and lots of other information that remains classified. (It is important to remember that before this we had no idea of KSM's role in 9/11 or his importance in the al Qaeda leadership structure.) All this happened before the CTC team arrived.

This was already known from Soufan's op-ed but you have to reiterate that it destroyed the lie put forward, and referenced again today by Senator Lindsey Graham, that torture gave us the information on KSM.

We then returned to using the Informed Interrogation Approach. Within a few hours, Abu Zubaydah again started talking and gave us important actionable intelligence.

This included the details of Jose Padilla, the so-called "dirty bomber." To remind you of how important this information was viewed at the time, the then-Attorney General, John Ashcroft, held a press conference from Moscow to discuss the news. Other important actionable intelligence was also gained that remains classified.

That destroys the lie that torture gave us Jose Padilla.

Throughout this time, my fellow FBI agent and I, along with a top CIA interrogator who was working with us, protested, but we were overruled. I should also note that another colleague, an operational psychologist for the CIA, had left the location because he objected to what was being done.

This is HUGE. If that operational psychologist can be found and will talk on the record it might do a great deal toward pushing for an investigation. Up until now the right wing pro-torturists talking point was that it was just the "soft" FBI that didn't want to get their hands dirty. If members of the CIA were also upset about the torture going on that is going to be a blockbuster story.

As you can see from this timeline, many of the claims made in the memos about the success of the enhanced techniques are inaccurate. For example, it is untrue to claim Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before August 1, 2002. The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him.

In addition, simply by putting together dates cited in the memos with claims made, falsehoods are obvious. For example, it has been claimed that waterboarding got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Jose Padilla. But that doesn't add up: Waterboarding wasn't approved until 1August 2002 (verbally it was authorized around mid July 2002), and Padilla was arrested in May 2002.

The same goes for KSM's involvement in 9/11: That was discovered in April 2002, while waterboarding was not introduced until almost three months later. It speaks volumes that the quoted instances of harsh interrogation methods being a success are false.

Nor can it be said that the harsh techniques were effective, which is why we had to be called back in repeatedly. As we know from the memos, the techniques that were apparently introduced after I left did not appear to work either, which is why the memos granted authorization for harsher techniques. That continued for several months right till waterboarding was introduced, which had to be used 83 times – an indication that Abu Zubaydah had called the interrogator's bluff knowing the glass ceiling that existed.

The whole Conventional Wisdom about the fruits of torture is now effectively up in flames.

The mistake was so costly precisely because the situation was, and remains, too risky to allow someone to experiment with amateurish, Hollywood style interrogation methods- that in reality- taints sources, risks outcomes, ignores the end game, and diminishes our moral high ground in a battle that is impossible to win without first capturing the hearts and minds around the world. It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaeda.

Thats what you call "Keeping It Real".

At first blush earlier today I wasn't sure that Soufan's testimony could be described as game changing. But on review of his written testimony its clear that if the mainstream media actually reports on what he said it will take away most if not all of the talking points the right wing has used to try to justify torture. Of course that leads to the biggest question again. Will the media actually do their job and inform the population? I hope so but I don't have much confidence in them anymore.

ABC News Should Post A Retraction

All day today the cable news shows have been buzzing over an ABC News story about the CIA intelligence report on the briefings given to Congressional leaders over the torture program. To hear ABC News tell it the report proved that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was lying when she said she wasn't briefed on Abu Zubaydah having been waterboarded. And dutifully all of the cable news shows repeated this throughout the day. Well Greg Sargent over at the Plum Line Blog (did I mention his blog is awesome) actually did some REAL investigative reporting and he called the CIA and came up with this.

In the newly-released documents detailing the torture briefings given to members of Congress, the portion describing Pelosi’s single briefing says she was told about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in general, but doesn’t specify whether she was told about the use of waterboarding. That was specified about some briefings given to others.

I asked CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano why. His answer: Because the notes and memos on the Pelosi meeting that form the basis for the docs didn’t allow them to go that far, meaning that they didn’t specify that she’d been briefed on waterboarding in particular.

In a statement to me, he explained that that “the language in the chart” is “faithful to the language in the records.”

“Nothing is being hidden or hyped,” he continued. “CIA is simply being true to the records. That’s all there is to it.”

Now to be clear this doesn't qualify as proof that Speaker Pelosi wasn't briefed on waterboarding, but what it does do is prove that the CIA didn't have any information that showed that she WAS briefed on Abu Zubaydah having been waterboarded and thus no such information could have been in or inferred from the report. I will now patiently await the retraction from ABC News that I know will not be forthcoming.

"Conformed Their Conduct To That Advice"

Holder also stressed that intelligence community officials who acted reasonably and relied in good faith on authoritative legal advice from the Justice Department that their conduct was lawful, and conformed their conduct to that advice, would not face federal prosecutions for that conduct.

Statement from Attorney General Eric Holder concerning the release of OLC memos and any potential prosecutions of CIA personnel.


Yesterday ABC News posted a breaking a story about an intelligence report released by the CIA on the briefings that took place going back to 2002 and beyond of the members of Congress on the enhanced interrogation torture techniques authorized by the now infamous OLC memos. The focus of the ABC News story was on whether or not Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was briefed on Abu Zubaydah being waterboarded, something she previously denied had happened during one of the briefings. Now personally reading the report, to me, doesn't refute Speaker Pelosi's story at all. There is no notation of a specific mention of waterboarding during this briefing as there are in subsequent briefings to other members of Congress. And about the only thing it does say is that she was briefed on the techniques used against Abu Zubaydah. But I think the focus of the article is totally off, perhaps intentionally or perhaps not. But here is the thing to keep in mind. This briefing took place accordiing to the intelligence report on September 4th of 2002. The OLC memo authorizing EITs was dated August 1st of 2002.

Why do those dates matter? Well allow me to quote from that August 1, 2002 memo:

You have informed us that the use of these techniques would be on an as needed bases and that not all of these techniques will necessarily be used. The interrogation team would use these techniques in some combination to convince Zubaydah that the only way he can influence his surroundings is through cooperation. You have, however, informed us that you expect these techniques to be used in some sort of excalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.

Now to go back to the dates. The OLC memos authorizing 10 torture techniques to be used against Abu Zubaydah including waterboarding was dated on August 1, 2002. Thats just 34 days before the September 4, 2002 briefing to Speaker Pelosi. So if we are to believe that the CIA briefed Speaker Pelosi and told her that waterboarding had already been used on Abu Zubaydah on Sept 4th, how does that square with using the 9 other techniques in escalating fashion from just 34 days earlier? Now obviously perhaps the truth is that the intelligence report just confirms that Speaker Pelosi was telling the truth. But then there is also the evidence that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in the month of August. Now if in fact the CIA had employed the techniques prior to August 1st and or they did not use waterboarding as a last resort, wouldn't that imply that they hadn't "conformed their conduct to that advice" the litmus test that Attorney General Holder put forth as to whom would be open to prosecution for torture?

I have posted before about the timeline discrepancy with respect to Khalid Sheik Muhammed. From all the public reports it would seem that in the same month that KSM as captured he was waterboarded 183 times. That would lead a reasonable person to believe that waterboarding wasn't the last resort but the first resort of these CIA interrogators. But thats not the bill of goods that has been sold to the public at large. Lets just go to Dick Cheney's words a few days ago in an interview published on Politico:

Cheney: Well, I don’t believe that’s true. That assumes that we didn’t try other ways, and in fact we did. We resorted, for example, to waterboarding, which is the source of much of the controversy ... with only three individuals. In those cases, it was only after we’d gone through all the other steps of the process. The way the whole program was set up was very careful, to use other methods and only to resort to the enhanced techniques in those special circumstances.

I personally believe that Cheney and the rest of the pro torturists are framing the issue this way so as to get people to believe that we waterboarded only when we had no other choice. In fact he specifically wants you to believe that the CIA had tried "all other steps" before resorting to waterboarding. Now reasonable people might hear that and think "Well gee, they tried everything they could but the detainees wouldn't talk so they felt they had to do something drastic". This plays into the "24" ticking time bomb mindset that is prevalent in our country these days. I have seen and heard many people say stuff like "You have to do what you have to do to protect the homeland" or some version of that. But what if it was shown that we DIDN'T have to use these techniques to get the information as FBI interrogator Ali Soufan has asserted several times? What if it was shown that we didn't even try to get the information any other way and went straight to torture. And bigger than that, if these people didn't follow the advice of the OLC memos? Do you think that would affect public opinion? I do.

The intelligence reports should actually be furthering the push towards prosecutions for torture, but our MSM is instead going to use it to push a flame war. We deserve better and we should demand better!

Glenzilla Tears Brian Ross A New One

Its really a joy to behold!

Years In The Making

Several recent polls on the subject of torture have been pretty surprising to many on the left. While most of the polls show a majority of respondents wanting more investigations, on the other hand there were bigger majorities that actually said they felt that torturing detainees was justified. Greg Sargent tried to tackle the question of how that dichotomy could make sense yesterday, but I think he might have, for once, gotten it wrong. But it wasn't because of a failure of Sargent's analytical skills, it was because he didn't have all of the information.

This morning the New York Times published an article that should be the lede on every cable news station as well as the headline of every major mainstream media outlet that runs a story about the torture program enanacted under the Bush Administration. The story details the abject failure of our mainstream media to scratch below the surface of a story to see whether its fact or fiction when its the hot story of the moment. It also shows how a supposed "whistleblower" can actually be a vehicle to promote propaganda for the people they are supposedly blowing the whistle on. And it also explains exactly why many Americans have now settled into the narrative that torture helped to save lives and is "no big deal". Its because thats the story we were spoonfed by the media outlets and it was the story the CIA planted through one of their agents, the "whistle blower" John Kiriakou:

In late 2007, there was the first crack of daylight into the government’s use of waterboarding during interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. On Dec. 10, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who had participated in the capture of the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, appeared on ABC News to say that while he considered waterboarding a form of torture, the technique worked and yielded results very quickly.

Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds,” Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. “From that day on he answered every question.”
His claims — unverified at the time, but repeated by dozens of broadcasts, blogs and newspapers — have been sharply contradicted by a newly declassified Justice Department memo that said waterboarding had been used on Mr. Zubaydah “at least 83 times.”

Some critics say that the now-discredited information shared by Mr. Kiriakou and other sources heightened the public perception of waterboarding as an effective interrogation technique. “I think it was sanitized by the way it was described” in press accounts, said John Sifton, a former lawyer for Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group.

During the heated debate in 2007 over the use of waterboarding and other techniques, Mr. Kiriakou’s comments quickly ricocheted around the media. But lost in much of the coverage was the fact that Mr. Kiriakou had no firsthand knowledge of the waterboarding: He was not actually in the secret prison in Thailand where Mr. Zubaydah had been interrogated but in the C.I.A. headquarters in Northern Virginia. He learned about it only by reading accounts from the field.

I would think it wouldn't have been very hard to at least find out that Kiriakou wasn't even involved in Zubaydah's interrogation but the problem is I doubt if anybody in the media actually asked.

Still, he told ABC that the actions had “disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.” A video of the interview was no longer on ABC's website.

“It works, is the bottom line,” Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the next day. “Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works.”

Mr. Kiriakou subsequently granted interviews to The Washington Post, The New York Times, National Public Radio, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and other media organizations. A CNN anchor called him “the man of the hour.”

We of course know now that Kiriakou was obviously talking out of his ass. So the question is what gave him any credibility on the issue with so many media sources other than his status as a supposed "whistle blower". Shouldn't it have been some what of a clue that he was there for propaganda and not blowing the whistle when he so zealously defended the waterboarding and, while acknowledging that it was torture, minimalizing the supposed actual harm it had done and maximizing the supposed benefits? I mean I would think that even the world's biggest idiot would ask themselves why someone would be blowing the whistle on a program that its obvious they believed was both important and useful. Maybe I could understand if Kiriakou at least attempted to sell this as something other than propaganda, but he was pretty straight forward about what he was doing but yet and still our media pushed his story out there like it was truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

His ABC interview came at an especially delicate juncture in the debate over the use of torture. Weeks earlier, the nomination of Michael Mukasey as attorney general was nearly derailed by his refusal to comment on the legality of waterboarding, and one day later, the C.I.A. director testified about the destruction of interrogation videotapes. Mr. Kiriakou told MSNBC that he was willing to talk in part because he thought the C.I.A. had “gotten a bum rap on waterboarding.”
At the time, Mr. Kiriakou appeared to lend credibility to the prior press reports that quoted anonymous former government employees who had implied that waterboarding was used sparingly. In late 2007, Mr. Ross began pursuing Mr. Kiriakou for an interview, “leaning on him pretty hard,” he recounted.

On Dec. 10, in the subsequent interview, Mr. Kiriakou told Mr. Ross that he believed the waterboarding was necessary in the months after the 9/11 attacks. “At the time I was so angry,” he told Mr. Ross. “I wanted so much to help disrupt future attacks on the United States that I felt it was the only thing we could do.”

Mr. Kiriakou was the only on-the-record source cited by ABC. In the televised portion of the interview, Mr. Ross did not ask Mr. Kiriakou specifically about what kind of reports he was privy to or how long he had access to the information. “It didn’t even occur to me that they’d keep doing” the waterboarding, Mr. Ross said last week. “It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

He added, “I didn’t give enough credit to the fiendishness of the C.I.A.”

Such WEAKSAUCE from Brian Ross. It wasn't the fiendishness of the CIA that was the problem, it was the fecklessness of Brian Ross and the rest of the members of the media who couldn't be bothered to actually check the guy's story before running their "exclusives". And predicibly the usual suspects picked up the story and carried water for the Bush administration.

In the days after Mr. Kiriakou’s media blitz, his claims were repeated by an array of other outlets. For instance, the Fox News anchor Chris Wallace cited the 35 seconds claim to ask a congressman whether the interrogation program was “really so bad.”

Months later the claims continued to be amplified; the National Review editor Jonah Goldberg used Mr. Kiriakou’s assertions in a column last year to argue that the waterboarding was “right and certainly defensible.”

And now, knowing everything that we know now about just how full of shit Kiriakou was back then what do you think the response is from the people who brought him to us in the first place?

Mr. Ross, who received a George Polk Award for a series on interrogation, expressed no regret about the Kiriakou interview and praised him for speaking publicly. He said ABC was preparing a story that would address the previous reporting.

“Kiriakou stepped up and helped shine some light on what has happening,” Mr. Ross said. “It wasn’t the huge spotlight that was needed, but it was some light.”

Yeah you read that right. Even though Kiriakou's story was basically made up from whole cloth to cover the CIA's ass and just about every single part of it has now been debunked Brian Ross still has nothing but praise for him. If this doesn't make you angry about the state of the media in this country I don't know what will. And bigger than any personal outrage is the fact that because people like Ross advanced this bogus story over a year and a half ago, there are men and women who authorized and ordered torture in the Bush Administration who will likely never face the justice they deserve. This preemptive perversion of the facts is without a doubt the reason for the disconnect in the polling that you see nowadays and honestly I don't know how you unring that bell. But what I do know is that both Kiriakou and Ross should have to answer for pushing this propaganda out there and be held to account. Helping to insure that people aren't prosecuted for breaking the law isn't something Ross should get an award for, its something that should earn him a pink slip.

Marc Thiessen Is a Liar And Propagandist

Marc Thiessen who continues to spout pro torture propaganda to defend the Bush administration has a post up over at NRO purporting to prove that torture saved lives. Here is an excerpt.

In fact, what Abu Zubaydah disclosed to the CIA during this period was that the fact that KSM was the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks and that his code name was “Muktar” — something Zubaydah thought we already knew, but in fact we did not. Intelligence officials had been trying for months to figure out who “Muktar” was. This information provided by Zubaydah was a critical piece of the puzzle that allowed them to pursue and eventually capture KSM. This fact, in and of itself, discredits the premise of the Post story — to suggest that the capture of KSM was not information that “foiled plots” to attack America is absurd on the face of it.

Now first of all lets get something straight. Marc Thiessen is not some expert on national security. Marc Thiessen is nothing more than a speech writer. By trade he was the spin doctor for the Bush Administration. Why the mainstream media is giving this guy any credibility on this issue is beyond me because he doesn't deserve any. But lets get to why its dangerous to allow propaganda into legitimate policy discussions. First and foremost its because propaganda is usually built on false premises and lies. Such is the case with Theissens's post as we find from this Newsweek story on Ali Soufan, the actual FBI interrogator who was intimately involved in evidence gathering on al Qaeda post 9-11.

But Soufan had poured through the bureau's intelligence files and stunned Abu Zubaydah when he called him "Hani"—the nickname that his mother used for him. Soufan also showed him photos of a number of terror suspects who were high on the bureau's priority list. Abu Zubaydah looked at one of them and said, "That's Mukhtar."

Now it was Soufan who was stunned. The FBI had been trying to determine the identity of a mysterious "Mukhtar," whom bin Laden kept referring to on a tape he made after 9/11. Now Soufan knew: Mukhtar was the man in the photo, terror fugitive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and, as Abu Zubaydah blurted out, " the one behind 9/11."

Not only was it NOT the CIA that Zubaydah revealed that Khalid Sheik Muhammed was "Mukhtar", it also wasn't the result of any torture techniques committed BY the CIA. Rather normal FBI interrogation techniques lead to perhaps the biggest break in the case of trying to find the mastermind behind 9-11.

The rest of the Newsweek piece is full of other important revelations and its definitely worth the full read. But for now I just want to say that it is totally irresponsible for the MSM to continue allowing Thiessen to take part in the public debate over whether or not we should investigate the torture of enemy detainees. He has now shown that either he lacks the knowledge to be credible on the issue or, more nefariously, is willing to lie about the facts in order to sway public opinion his way. Whichever is the case what is apparent is that his words are not to be trusted and I really hope that his microphone is taken away from him.

Some other useful excerpts from the Newsweek piece:

The agent, Ali Soufan, was known as one of the bureau's top experts on Al Qaeda. He also had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator who could work fluently in both English and Arabic. Soufan yelled at one CIA contractor and told him that what he was doing was wrong, ineffective and an affront to American values. At one point, Soufan discovered a dark wooden "confinement box" that the contractor had built for Abu Zubaydah. It looked, Soufan recalls, "like a coffin." The mercurial agent erupted in anger, got on a secure phone line and called Pasquale D'Amuro, then the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism. "I swear to God," he shouted, "I'm going to arrest these guys!"

D'Amuro and other officials were alarmed at what they heard from Soufan. They fretted about the political consequences of abusive interrogations and the Washington blowback they thought was inevitable, say two high-ranking FBI sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. According to a later Justice Department inspector general's report, D'Amuro warned FBI Director Bob Mueller that such activities would eventually be investigated. "Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt tables having to testify about all of this," D'Amuro said, according to one of the sources.

Mueller ordered Soufan and a second FBI agent home. He then directed that bureau personnel no longer participate in CIA interrogations. In the corridors of the White House, Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, heated debates ensued. Three months later, on Aug. 1, 2002, Justice lawyers issued a chilling memo blessing everything the CIA contractors had proposed—including waterboarding, or simulated drowning, a ghoulish technique that was administered to Abu Zubaydah 83 times.

snip

As the sessions continued, Soufan engaged Abu Zubaydah in long discussions about his world view, which included a tinge of socialism. After Abu Zubaydah railed one day about the influence of American imperialist corporations, he asked Soufan to get him a Coca-Cola—a request that prompted the two of them to laugh. Soon enough, Abu Zubaydah offered up more information—about the bizarre plans of a jihadist from Puerto Rico to set off a "dirty bomb" inside the country. This information led to Padilla's arrest in Chicago by the FBI in early May.

But the tenor of the Abu Zubaydah interrogations changed a few days later, when a CIA contractor showed up. Although Soufan declined to identify the contractor by name, other sources (and media accounts) identify him as James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who had worked on the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training—a program to teach officers how to resist the abusive interrogation methods used by Chinese communists during the Korean War. Within days of his arrival, Mitchell—an architect of the CIA interrogation program—took charge of the questioning of Abu Zubaydah. He directed that Abu Zubaydah be ordered to answer questions or face a gradual increase in aggressive techniques. One day Soufan entered Abu Zubadyah's room and saw that he had been stripped naked; he covered him with a towel.

The confrontations began. "I asked [the contractor] if he'd ever interrogated anyone, and he said no," Soufan says. But that didn't matter, the contractor shot back: "Science is science. This is a behavioral issue." The contractor suggested Soufan was the inexperienced one. "He told me he's a psychologist and he knows how the human mind works." Mitchell told NEWSWEEK, "I would love to tell my story." But then he added, "I have signed a nondisclosure agreement that will not even allow me to correct false allegations."

The tipping point came when, after a few weeks, Soufan saw the coffinlike box that Mitchell had constructed. Soufan refuses to say what he was told the box was for. But other sources who heard accounts of the confrontation say the idea was to stage a "mock burial." (A CIA spokesman says, "The CIA's high-value-detainee program did not include mock burials. That wasn't done.") When an incensed Soufan told his superior what was happening, the response was quick: D'Amuro told him to leave the scene of the interrogations. Then, a few days later, he was told, "Come on home." Now the debate Soufan began in Thailand has come home, too. If given the opportunity, he may again play a starring role