A few articles of interest. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97NMSM80&show_article=1 Pelosi knew NSA had listened to Harman phone calls WASHINGTON (AP) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that she was aware a few years ago that Rep. Jane Harman had been overheard on a government wiretap. "A few years ago, maybe three years ago, they did brief me," Pelosi told reporters at an event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. She said that when a member of Congress is recorded as part of a wiretapped conversation, intelligence officials inform congressional leaders. "That happened at that time," Pelosi said. She added that the classified briefing was not detailed, and she did not tell Harman at the time. "All I knew is that she was wiretapped," Pelosi said. "When you are briefed on something, it isn't your information to share with anybody else," she added. "Even if I wanted to share it with her, I would not have had the ability to share it with her." Harman has said she first learned of the wiretapping last week from a reporter who had knowledge of the transcript of the recording. Congressional Quarterly reported Monday that Harman was overheard agreeing to seek lenient treatment for two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who were under investigation and later indicted for unlawfully possessing and disclosing classified information. In exchange, according to CQ, prominent pro-Israel contributors would press Pelosi to appoint Harman to the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee. Harman has vehemently denied contacting the Justice Department or White House to intervene in the case and has asked Justice to release a transcript of the intercepted phone conversation.
Nancy, Nancy, Nancy. Shame on you. The real question is, "did you know congress was corrupt like this?" Next thing you know, there'll be traffic jams on the freeways in LA. Next, on a more serious note: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21569.html Obama muddles torture message President Barack Obama’s attempt to project legal and moral clarity on coercive CIA interrogation methods has instead done the opposite — creating confusion and political vulnerability over an issue that has inflamed both the left and right. In the most recent instance, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair acknowledged in a memo to the intelligence community that Bush-era interrogation practices yielded had "high-value information,” then omitted that admission from a public version of his assessment. That leaves a top Obama administration official appearing to validate claims by former Vice President Dick Cheney that waterboarding and other techniques the White House regards as torture were effective in preventing terrorist attacks. And the press release created the impression the administration was trying to suppress this conclusion. The president, who has said he wants to focus on the future rather than litigate the past, also opened himself to distraction and attack by retracting the earlier assurance by top officials that they had no plans to prosecute lawyers for former President George W. Bush who approved the “enhanced interrogation” program. A Democratic strategist close to the White House said: “The president looked resolute, and like he had threaded the needle perfectly on the substance: The heat from the right was preposterous, and the heat from the left was manageable. But now they look like the scarecrow, pointing in both directions. They got the policy right, but they look confused and beaten down by critics." The implications go beyond a typical Washington spat over “message control.” Obama’s moves virtually guarantee a sharp public focus on two uncomfortable questions that his team previously sought to leave vague: *Should people be tried and even sent to prison—as many Democrats want—for what Obama regards as illegal practices under Bush? *Even if wrong, did those practices have any positive results in stopping new attacks? Obama’s own statements are murky on both questions. On the first, administration sources said that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was articulating the White House’s true position Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” when he said Obama wants to discourage prosecutions. But his blunt-spoken statement of a position the White House usually prefers to keep comfortably vague sent liberal activists, including the influential group MoveOn, into an uproar. Obama was apparently trying to soothe these critics with his comment Tuesday that Attorney General Eric Holder was free to decide the matter on his own. On the second matter, Obama as a candidate embraced the view that torture is both wrong and ineffective. But now that he has full access to the same top-secret documents cited by Cheney, the question cuts more sharply: Does he agree or disagree with Blair that coercive tactics produce valuable intelligence? In a visit to the CIA Monday, he told intelligence personnel that, “What makes the United States special and what makes you special is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and ideals even when it’s hard. So, you’ve got a harder job, and so do I and that’s OK.” Obama also shifted course Tuesday on another politically delicate issue: whether to create a blue-ribbon panel to investigate alleged anti-terror excesses from the Bush era. “If and when there needs to be a further accounting of what took place during this period, I think for Congress to examine ways that it can be done in a bipartisan fashion….to the extent that there are independent participants who are above reproach and have credibility, that would probably be a more sensible approach to take,” the president said.
So that's kind of big news, right? What's it all about though. The White House released NSA or CIA documents saying we used waterboarding on TWO, just TWO, of the top Al Qaeda guys we captured. Apparently, the White House is censoring the documents to cleanse the fact that information was obtained that thwarted a second wave of planes into buildings, this time in LA. And that all other methods of getting the info out of those two had failed and time was running out. Silly me, I thought it was THREE of the top Al Qaeda guys we captured who were waterboarded. Which brings up the real point. It's old news. It's not about all sorts of wide spread abuse and torture that I've been told about so many times. Two guys. Why release this stuff now? It's drowning out something else they don't want us to know about. Or it's time to pander to the far left, Obama's ATM, since he's failed to pass several more spending initiatives at $1T or more each.
http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=D97NL6N81&show_article=1 Analysis: Interrogation debate testing White House Apr 22 01:26 PM US/Eastern By BEN FELLER Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) - No wasting time digging up the past? So much for that. President Barack Obama said Tuesday that his attorney general would determine whether anyone from the Bush administration broke the law by crafting a legal rationale for drastic, demeaning interrogations of terror suspects. On the surface, it was a pragmatic call: Let the Justice Department lawyers check it out. Trouble is, the White House had been sending the opposite signal for days. Obama tried last week to close a dark chapter, not open a messy one, as he made public the memos detailing the brutal interrogation methods. Nothing, he said, is gained by "spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." In a flash, the story was not Obama's decision, but whether he had changed his position. The White House said no, but struggled to explain why not. So what happened? Outside forces, some muddled communication within a tight-ship White House, and a president determined to try to get the debate back on his terms. Obama also gave Congress a piece of advice: If you are going to order a full looking-back investigation of Bush-era interrogation policies, give it to independent people who are "above reproach and have credibility." He contrasted that to Congress' own hearing process "that can sometimes break down." The decision itself to release the memos weighed on Obama; he calls it one of the tougher ones he's had to make, which is saying something considering he's widened the war in the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier, ordered deadly force to halt the hijacking of a U.S. sea captain and grappled with a crippling recession. Yet the tricky part is still going on. He is out to find just the right balance—hold those accountable who may have broken the law but do nothing to encourage the kind of partisan, perfect-for-television investigatory hearings on Capitol Hill that could steal time and attention away from his agenda. The turn of events also underscored that even a powerful president doesn't have control of all the events. He released the memos last Thursday en route to Latin America and the Caribbean and quickly followed up with a reassuring stop at CIA headquarters Monday soon after he got back. Both went smoothly. But in between, criticism from the left and right built, and the White House message got a little murky. White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said over the weekend the administration did not support prosecutions for "those who devised policy." Aides later said he was referring to CIA superiors who ordered the interrogations, not the Justice Department officials who wrote the legal memos allowing them. Then came Obama's comments Tuesday when a reporter asked him if he backed prosecution for those who devised the interrogation policy. He had already shot down the idea of prosecuting any of the CIA agents who carried out the interrogations on grounds they were following the law at the time. "With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general, within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said. It immediately seemed like a huge, surprising opening. Which is exactly what some of the liberal and human rights groups that helped get Obama elected want. MoveOn.org, an influential advocacy group with millions of grass-roots advocates, has launched a petition drive to persuade Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate what it calls "the architects of Bush's torture program." When asked if Obama was giving into pressure from the left, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, "I doubt the president has been on MoveOn.org in the last 24 hours. So, no." It was also unclear exactly whom Obama was talking about in opening the door to potential prosecutions. Just the lawyers who formulated those "legal decisions" to allow simulated drowning, physical violence and other grim tactics? Or the people who actually ordered those policies to be put in place? "You know, I obviously—without parsing that, I don't know the answer to that," Gibbs said. Critics say the methods outlined in the Justice memos are torture. Obama said they revealed "us losing our moral bearings." What was clear is that Obama wants any investigation to be methodical and productive, not politically distracting or vindictive. He cannot control whether or how Congress investigates the Bush era, but Obama can influence those decisions, said Norman Ornstein, a government scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "Let's face it," Ornstein said. "If the president sends a firm signal, most in Congress, including the leadership, will tend to follow it. You're not going to see congressional committee chairs trying to go after this in a vicious way if the president says, 'This is how we're going to go.'" And after getting assailed by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans for, in their view, undermining national security and tipping off the enemy, Obama mounted a blunt defense to reporters, even though he wasn't directly asked about that point. "I wake up every day thinking about how to keep the American people safe, and I go to bed every night worrying about keeping the American people safe," Obama said, sounding remarkably like the man who was in office during the controversial interrogations, George W. Bush. "I've got a lot of other things on my plate," Obama said. "I've got a big banking crisis, and I've got unemployment numbers that are very high, and we've got an auto industry that needs work. ... But the thing that I consider my most profound obligation is keeping the American people safe." Critics of Obama's decisions on the matter said they knew more investigations were coming. As Michael Hayden, the CIA chief under Bush, put it over the weekend: "Oh, God no, it's not the end of it."
Ironically, it would have been the same Hollywood stars who decry interrogation methods like waterboarding who would have been at the forefront of protesting the Bush Administration for not keeping the US safe if a strike against Los Angeles would have worked. These are not people who should be protected by the Geneva Convention. Read the GC on what it takes to be covered by it and you'll see my point.
Actually, I have read the Geneva Conventions (it's plural, FWIW). I do think there's a gray area regarding the status of terrorists (not fighting as a member of an armed forces of a recognized or even unrecognized govt.) who are captured on an actual battlefield by our military and a POW, and certainly a distinction between such an enemy combatant and a plain old criminal (even of the worst crimes). The combatants are effectively like POWs and should be treated as such. They're not entitled to habeas corpus or our court system. They belong in something like a POW camp until the hostilities cease or the military deems it appropriate to release them, even if the hostilities are unending. The key factor being they were captured by our military in a combat scenario, not by our police within our borders. Guantanimo resembles a POW camp, and it was a fairly good choice of place to have such a camp since it would have to be attacked by the enemy by sea, and there's minimal risk of escape or an escapee being able to return to the battlefield to harm the military. Support the troops! However, I always thought the argument that these are not people who should be protected by the GC is a specious one at best. The GCs covers their situations as POWs or as persons on our soil, and no matter where we (ourselves as official USA) hold them, it's our soil. The hard truth about the GCs is that we might abide by it, but Saddam didn't, the vietcong didn't, the japanese didn't, the germans didn't, and so on. The far more bogus argument made by folks, including Obama, is that if we don't obey them, the enemy won't either. Newsflash - the enemy doesn't, never has, never will. From a moral standpoint, we should take pretty good care of these people because it's our way, and what we stand for. On the other hand, Alan Derschowitz, who's no right wing idealogue, approves of torture in rare cases (I'd say 2 high value detainees is rare). While argues below that KSM should not be tortured, it's now well known that there was a ticking time bomb (attacks on LA). KSM is mentioned specifically here, and he was one of the two subjected to waterboarding (along with numerous of our own military personnel during training - go figure). http://edition.cnn.com/2003/LAW/03/03/cnna.Dershowitz/ I'd point out that members of both parties, in both the house and senate, were briefed on all this all along - the accountability was there.
Briefed all along? Here's one of the bigger liars among our currently elected officials. http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0409/Pelosi_I_didnt_know_about_waterboarding.html Oops! http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0409/Pelosi_briefed_on_waterboarding_in_02_.html
Pelosi is in deep shit if all this is true. She'll not only be attacked on the right as a liar, but she'll be attacked by her own far-left base as knowing about waterboarding and doing nothing about it. It couldn't happen to a nicer person.
Update. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/05/cia_says_pelosi_was_briefed_on.html CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of 'Enhanced Interrogations' By Paul Kane Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used. In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered "EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah." EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him. The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a matter of heated debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of knowing for many years precisely the techniques CIA agents were using in interrogations, and only protesting the tactics when they became public and liberal antiwar activists protested. In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi's office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations. "As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used," said Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman. Pelosi's statement did not address whether she was informed that other harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah interrogations. In December 2007 the Washington Post reported that leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees had been briefed in the fall of 2002 about waterboarding -- which simulates drowning -- and other techniques, and that no congressional leaders protested its use. At the time Pelosi said she was not told that waterboarding was being used, a position she stood by repeatedly last month when the Bush-era Justice Department legal documents justifying the interrogation tactics were released by Attorney General Eric Holder. The new memo shows that intelligence officials were willing to share the information about waterboarding with only a sharply closed group of people. Three years after the initial Pelosi-Goss briefing, Bush officials still limited interrogation technique briefings to just the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the so-called Gang of Four in the intelligence world. In October 2005, CIA officials began briefing other congressional leaders with oversight of the intelligence community, including top appropriators who provided the agency its annual funding. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam and an opponent of torture techniques, was also read into the program at that time even though he did not hold a special committee position overseeing the intelligence community. A bipartisan collection of lawmakers have criticized the practice of limiting information to just the "Gang of Four", who were expressly forbidden from talking about the information from other colleagues, including fellow members of the intelligence committees. Pelosi and others are considering reforms that would assure a more open process for all committee members.
http://www.humanevents.com/downloads-pdfs/EIT%20Briefings.pdf All these democrats briefed before 2006: Nancy Pelosi Bob Graham John Rockefeller Jane Harman Harry Reid *Full Committee John Murtha Evan Bayh Russ Feingold Diane Feinstein Carl Levin Barbara Mikulski
So those Democrats are either willfully ignorant, liars or just stupid. I'm going with Door #2, Monty.
Maybe in order to save all those other democrats, they have a plan. Sacrifice Pelosi? http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jH6pV2iQrgquerGyDffV8LVmaJKwD984UT0O0 House No. 2: Explore Pelosi interrogation briefing By LARRY MARGASAK – 14 hours ago WASHINGTON (AP) — The House majority leader reluctantly agreed Tuesday that congressional hearings should investigate Speaker Nancy Pelosi's assertion that she wasn't informed, more than six years ago, that harsh interrogation methods were used on an al-Qaida leader. Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., called Republican challenges to Pelosi's assertion a diversion from the real question of whether the Bush administration tortured terrorist suspects. Nonetheless, he acknowledged the controversy should be resolved. Democrats will hold a series of hearings on Justice Department memos released last month that justified rough tactics against detainees, including waterboarding — simulated drowning — and sleep deprivation. While Democrats want the hearings to focus on what they call torture, Republicans have tried to turn the issue to their advantage by complaining that Pelosi and other Democrats knew of the tactics but didn't protest. Pelosi was briefed in 2002 while on the House Intelligence Committee. Hoyer, asked at a news conference whether Democrats were inviting political problems for themselves by holding hearings, said, "I think the facts need to get out. "I think the Republicans are simply trying to distract the American public with who knew what when. My response to that is, look, the issue is not what was said or what was known; the question and focus ought to be on what was done." But he added that the controversy over "what was said and when it was said, who said it ... is probably what ought to be on the record as well." Hoyer also was asked whether he believes Pelosi's support has been undermined among Democrats. "No, I don't," he said. A Senate Judiciary subcommittee holds the first hearing on the interrogation policy on Wednesday, but has scheduled testimony unrelated to the Pelosi matter. A CIA document made public last week shows that Pelosi received a briefing in September 2002 on the tactics used on Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaida leader and one of three prisoners subjected to waterboarding. Pelosi said she was told the agency was discussing its legal right to use the tactic in the future. "We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used," said Pelosi, D-Calif.
LOL @ Steny Hoyer. He was a PG county hack before he went to the House. He'd step on his own mother to get ahead.
You're joking, right? A democratic President, a heavily democratic US Congress, a heavily democratic media... and you expect there to be a fallout? I might add that even though they were briefed, they were not in a position to make policy for these issues at that time.
Sorry. Too much time in DC. PG is shorthand for Prince George's County. It's the county that borders the east side of Washington, DC. It's now where the black middle class lives, but it used to have its own political machine which handed out favors and greased palms. Chicago Aldermen would say to themselves, "Wow, that Hoyer guy is corrupt."
The Democratic Party isn't a monolith. There are plenty of Dems who would like to see Pelosi be forced to resign.
This is true, I'm a Dem and no big fan of Pelosi. However I think this issue will forgotten very soon, it isn't enough to even make a dent. barfo
Agreed on it being forgotten. No way the loyal opposition is going to be able to make hay with this issue when Speaker Pelosi controls the Congress, Eric Holder controls the Justice Department and the left controls the media.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/house/pelosi-fuels-torture-fire.html Pelosi Fuels Fire on Interrogations House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (Calif.) assertion at a press conference this morning that the Bush administration and the Central Intelligence Agency misled her and the Congress regarding the treatment of suspected terrorists adds further fuel to the fire on an issue that has been on a low boil for weeks. Asked whether she was accusing the CIA of lying to her during a 2002 briefing on the use of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," Pelosi said: "Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am." She went on to call on the CIA to release the details of briefings they provided to Congress and for the creation of a truth commission to "determine how intelligence was misused and how controversial and possibly illegal activities like torture were authorized within the executive branch." Pelosi's press conference comes amid a series of allegations from Republicans -- inside and outside of Congress -- that she knew far more about the treatment of detainees in the early part of the decade than she initially let on. "The Speaker has had way too many stories on this issue," said House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio) at a press conference moments ago. He added that he has "not one doubt" that interrogations of detainees were conducted "within the law" and that he was opposed to the idea of a truth commission. As the Post's Paul Kane notes, Pelosi acknowledged publicly for the first time today that she was aware that detainees were being waterboarded as long ago as 2003 when a member of her staff was part of a briefing in February of that year in which it was revealed that waterboarding was ongoing. Pelosi's press conference has both short term and long term political impact. In the short term, it snuffs out President Obama's preferred message of the day -- pushed at a scheduled town hall today in New Mexico -- regarding credit card reform. Obama and/or White House press secretary Robert Gibbs are certain to face questions about Pelosi's remarks whenever reporters are given access to them today. Pelosi's comments -- and the firestorm they will almost certainly set off -- could speed up the timetable for an announcement of Obama's Supreme Court nominee, which has been speculated as coming either next week or shortly after Memorial Day. If the torture debate dominates the news for the next several days, the White House may want (or need) a way the change the subject and the announcement of a Supreme Court justice would almost certainly provide the necessary distraction. The long-term political prognosis is less clear. The Obama administration has made no secret of the fact that they would prefer not to spend time looking back at what happened under President George W. Bush since it distracts from what they believe to be the important tasks at hand -- most notably turning around the economy. And, it's hard to imagine that the White House is pleased with Pelosi's press conference today -- knowing that the allegations she has made further complicate an already sticky political entanglement, making it far more difficult for the issue to be dismissed out of a desire to look forward rather than backward. Pelosi's comments are also -- almost certainly -- not her last words on this subject. As indicated by Boehner's comments, Republicans are going to continue to paint Pelosi as telling a series of conflicting stories about what she knew and when she knew it. While Pelosi's press conference this morning was clearly intended to put to rest a process story that all politicians hate, it may well have the opposite effect -- raising more questions about her timeline and her past statements. Make no mistake: Pelosi would not have held this sort of press conference unless she and her inner circle believed that she was losing altitude -- politically -- on the issue. But, her decision to do so could have wide-ranging political implications that will reach from Congress to the White House and back.
