Why are former Bush CIA heads welcome working closely with Obama's CIA to rebut torture report?

[bigtree]

We have a new administration which has already asserted itself in the torture debate by moving ahead of Congress in 2009 by establishing the Executive Order 13491 - Ensuring Lawful Interrogations which outlaws many of the torture policies and practices of the anti-constitutional Bush-era 'war on terror.'

Although the directive from President Obama effectively outlaws those practices, it can be easily undone by successive administrations; that eventuality demonstrated with reasonable surety by Mitt Romney in his declaration during his presidential campaign that he supported some of the most objectionable practices outlawed by the WH order.

In 2012, Attorney General Eric Holder closed without charges the only two cases the Obama administration chose to investigate that involved Bush's torture program.

from the Holder's statement on his Justice Dept. decision:

On Aug. 24, 2009, based on information the Department received pertaining to alleged CIA mistreatment of detainees, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that he had expanded Mr. Durham’s mandate to conduct a preliminary review into whether federal laws were violated in connection with the interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations. Attorney General Holder made clear at that time, that the Department would not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees. Accordingly, Mr. Durham’s review examined primarily whether any unauthorized interrogation techniques were used by CIA interrogators, and if so, whether such techniques could constitute violations of the torture statute or any other applicable statute.

In June of last year, the Attorney General announced that Mr. Durham recommended opening full criminal investigations regarding the death of two individuals while in United States custody at overseas locations, and closing the remaining matters. The Attorney General accepted that recommendation. Today, the Attorney General announced that those two investigations conducted over the past year have now been closed.

Notwithstanding an act by Congress in revising existing legislation or passing new legislation specifically outlawing the objectionable practices outlawed by President Obama's executive order, those torture policies and practices remain up to the discretion of the person in the White House. What Holder's decision represented was the last word by the Obama administration on actually bring accountability and consequence to the actions of the Bush-era torturers.

In his statement Friday, preemptively responding to revelations due to emerge from the Senate Intelligence agency report detailing abuses involving members Bush's CIA, Pres. Obama correctly condemned the practices, but also gave a curious defense of the motives behind such abuses.

President Obama:

“I understand why it happened,” Obama stated. “I think it’s important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell and the Pentagon had been hit and the plane in Pennsylvania had fallen and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent.”

“And there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this, and it’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had and a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”

“But having said all that,” he added, “We did some things that were wrong. And that’s what that report reflects. And that’s the reason why after I took office one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that were the subject of this report. And my hope is that this report reminds us once again that the character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy but what we do when things are hard. And why we engaged in some of these enhanced interrogation techniques, techniques that I believe and any fair-minded person would believe were torture—We crossed a line.”

“That needs to be understood and accepted. And we have to as a country take responsibility for that so hopefully we don’t do it again in the future.”

Much was made by observers of the fact that the President made a historic reference in that statement Friday to the practices as 'torture.' In 2009, early in his presidency, Obama took Cheney to task for his defense of waterboarding: "I believe that waterboarding was torture and, whatever legal rationals were used, it was a mistake," he said.

Again in his 2011 campaign, President Obama rebuked the republicans advocating the practice, stating, "Anybody who has actually read about and understands the practice of waterboarding would say that that is torture. And that's not something we do -- period."

Making reference to his objections to torture in reference to the Senate report is significant, in that he has relied on his stated position in favor of public release of the intelligence committee report to deflect criticisms from advocates and foes alike. His intention that Congress sort all of it out for him is reflected in his statement yesterday that "we have to as a country take responsibility for that."

"I would urge them to go ahead and complete the report and send it to us, and we will declassify those findings so that the American people can understand what happened in the past. And that can help guide us as we move forward," he told reporters in March.

What's significant about his use of the word 'torture' is that the Senate Intelligence Committee report is said to have neglected to use that word to describe any of the abuses they detail. Still, the document is said to contain chilling descriptions of practices during the Bush administration, including many not previously publicized.

Even if the release of the Senate report goes as planned, the public will not see the entire version, but will be offered a summary of the findings.

Last night, on the eve of what most folks expected would finally be the release of the Senate report, news came that the White House, obstensibly meaning President Obama, had objected to sections of the document and had 'blacked-out' portions. That lead senators involved in the investigation to delay the release, citing 'significant redactions' in the White House 'executive summary.'

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) released the following statement:

“The committee this afternoon received the redacted executive summary of our study on the CIA detention and interrogation program.

“A preliminary review of the report indicates there have been significant redactions. We need additional time to understand the basis for these redactions and determine their justification.

“Therefore the report will be held until further notice and released when that process is completed.”

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., a member of the committee, also remarked on the White House redactions.

from McClatchy:

“I am concerned about the excessive redactions Chairman Feinstein referenced in her statement, especially given the president’s unequivocal commitment to declassifying the Senate Intelligence Committee’s study,” Udall said. “I promised earlier this year to hold the president to his word and I intend to do so.”

Udall vowed to work with Feinstein to declassify the findings “to the fullest extent possible, correct the record on the CIA’s brutal and ineffective detention and interrogation program, and ensure the CIA learns from its past mistakes.”

Sen. Feinstein had already indicated in April that she was committed to the publicizing of information after the Intelligence Committee voted 11-3 to release the torture documents.

Sen. Udall had taken a further step in March in a letter to the President requesting that he declassify the document:

"It is my belief that the declassification of the Committee Study is of paramount importance and that decisions about what should or should not be declassified regarding this issue should not be delegated to the CIA, but directly handled by the White House," Udall wrote in the letter. "I strongly believe there should be a public and unequivocal commitment from the White House to the fullest and most expedited possible declassification of the Committee's Study. Such a commitment is especially vital in light of the fact that the significant amounts of information on the CIA's detention and interrogation program that has been declassified and released to the American public is misleading and inaccurate."

"I believe it is vital that we understand how and why the content of the CIA's internal review contradicts the CIA's official June 27, 2013, response to the Committee," Udall also wrote in the letter. "I would like to know more about the origins of the review, its authorship, the context of its creation, and why its findings were ignored in the development of the CIA's June 2013 response. I have included a classified attachment to this letter detailing some of the troubling discrepancies, as I understand them, between the CIA's internal review and the CIA's June 2012 response to the Committee."

In admissions by the CIA Director Brennan this week, there was confirmation of charges made in March by Sen. Feinstein and Sen. Udall that the agency had made an incredible and apparently illegal effort to interfere with the Intelligence Committee's investigation which produced the torture report.

Brennan had extensively denied the agency had hacked into the Senate Intelligence Committee staffer's computers which held the product of their investigation that contributed to the report. ”Let me assure you,” Brennan had assured Senators in March, “the CIA was in no way spying on the Senate committee.”

The Bush CIA had already withheld and destroyed information about its Detention and Interrogation Program in 2005 when it deliberately destroyed tapes and information about its rendition and torture program. A civil lawsuit ACLU revealed in 2009 that 92 videotapes had been deliberately destroyed.

The then-Director, Michael Hayden, assured the Senate committee under Jay Rockefeller that despite the destruction, there were adequate documents which would describe the practices in detail. When Sen Feinstein took over the committee in 2009 the committee had completed their review.

Sen Feinstein:

By the time the two staffers completed their review into the CIA’s early interrogations in early 2009, I had become chairman of the committee and President Obama had been sworn into office.

The resulting staff report was chilling. The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us. As result of the staff’s initial report, I proposed, and then-Vice Chairman Bond agreed, and the committee overwhelmingly approved, that the committee conduct an expansive and full review of CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

On March 5, 2009, the committee voted 14-1 to initiate a comprehensive review of the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program. Immediately, we sent a request for documents to all relevant executive branch agencies, chiefly among them the CIA.

The committee’s preference was for the CIA to turn over all responsive documents to the committee’s office, as had been done in previous committee investigations.

Director Panetta proposed an alternative arrangement: to provide literally millions of pages of operational cables, internal emails, memos, and other documents pursuant to the committee’s document requests at a secure location in Northern Virginia. We agreed, but insisted on several conditions and protections to ensure the integrity of this congressional investigation.

Per an exchange of letters in 2009, then-Vice Chairman Bond, then-Director Panetta, and I agreed in an exchange of letters that the CIA was to provide a “stand-alone computer system” with a “network drive” “segregated from CIA networks” for the committee that would only be accessed by information technology personnel at the CIA—who would “not be permitted to” “share information from the system with other personnel, except as otherwise authorized by the committee.”

It was this computer network that, notwithstanding our agreement with Director Panetta, was searched by the CIA

After searching the committee computers and removing documents in an amazingly blatant attempt to chill the investigating staff, the CIA actually referred the staffers to the Justice Dept. for investigation into whether they had removed the documents illegally.

Committee staff confronted CIA officials about the removal of documents and were told that it was the result of 'contractors' who had been hired by the agency to declassify the material before releasing it to the committee. One of the excuses offered was that it was the White House which had demanded the removal.

Sen Feinstein:

In May of 2010, the committee staff noticed that certain documents that had been provided for the committee’s review were no longer accessible. Staff approached the CIA personnel at the offsite location, who initially denied that documents had been removed. CIA personnel then blamed information technology personnel, who were almost all contractors, for removing the documents themselves without direction or authority. And then the CIA stated that the removal of the documents was ordered by the White House. When the committee approached the White House, the White House denied giving the CIA any such order.

After a series of meetings, I learned that on two occasions, CIA personnel electronically removed committee access to CIA documents after providing them to the committee. This included roughly 870 documents or pages of documents that were removed in February 2010, and secondly roughly another 50 were removed in mid-May 2010.

I went up to the White House to raise this issue with the then-White House Counsel, in May 2010. He recognized the severity of the situation, and the grave implications of Executive Branch personnel interfering with an official congressional investigation. The matter was resolved with a renewed commitment from the White House Counsel, and the CIA, that there would be no further unauthorized access to the committee’s network or removal of access to CIA documents already provided to the committee.

On May 17, 2010, the CIA’s then-director of congressional affairs apologized on behalf of the CIA for removing the documents. And that, as far as I was concerned, put the incident aside.

At some point after that, the committee uncovered draft copies of an internal review by former director Panetta. In effect, the internal Panetta review actually corroborated the committee's own findings, rather than representing the only info available. In 2012, the Intelligence Committee approved a 6,300-page study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program and sent the report to the executive branch.

The Brennan CIA responded that they agreed with some of the report but disagreed with other parts of it. Most importantly, the parts they disagreed with were those which were actually confirmed by the Panetta review.

Sen Feinstein:

As CIA Director Brennan has stated, the CIA officially agrees with some of our study. But, as has been reported, the CIA disagrees and disputes important parts of it. And this is important: Some of these important parts that the CIA now disputes in our committee study are clearly acknowledged in the CIA’s own Internal Panetta Review.

To say the least, this is puzzling. How can the CIA’s official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own Internal Review?


Unlike the official response, these Panetta Review documents were in agreement with the committee’s findings. That’s what makes them so significant and important to protect.

When the Internal Panetta Review documents disappeared from the committee’s computer system, this suggested once again that the CIA had removed documents already provided to the committee, in violation of CIA agreements and White House assurances that the CIA would cease such activities.

As I have detailed, the CIA has previously withheld and destroyed information about its Detention and Interrogation Program, including its decision in 2005 to destroy interrogation videotapes over the objections of the Bush White House and the Director of National Intelligence. Based on the information described above, there was a need to preserve and protect the Internal Panetta Review in the committee’s own secure spaces.

DiFi wrote to the agency requesting complete copies of the Panetta review. Sen. Udall also requested the documents in a committee hearing. The CIA denied the request, claiming that it was incomplete and 'deliberative.'

That's when the CIA went into full protection mode and insisted they be allowed to conduct a search of the committee's computers.

Sen Feinstein:

In late 2013, I requested in writing that the CIA provide a final and complete version of the Internal Panetta Review to the committee, as opposed to the partial document the committee currently possesses.

In December, during an open committee hearing, Senator Mark Udall echoed this request. In early January 2014, the CIA informed the committee it would not provide the Internal Panetta Review to the committee, citing the deliberative nature of the document.

Shortly thereafter, on January 15, 2014, CIA Director Brennan requested an emergency meeting to inform me and Vice Chairman Chambliss that without prior notification or approval, CIA personnel had conducted a “search”—that was John Brennan’s word—of the committee computers at the offsite facility. This search involved not only a search of documents provided to the committee by the CIA, but also a search of the ”stand alone” and “walled-off” committee network drive containing the committee’s own internal work product and communications.

According to Brennan, the computer search was conducted in response to indications that some members of the committee staff might already have had access to the Internal Panetta Review. The CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the Internal Review, or how we obtained it.

Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee’s computers. The CIA has still not asked the committee any questions about how the committee acquired the Panetta Review. In place of asking any questions, the CIA’s unauthorized search of the committee computers was followed by an allegation—which we have now seen repeated anonymously in the press—that the committee staff had somehow obtained the document through unauthorized or criminal means, perhaps to include hacking into the CIA’s computer network.

I outlined all of this in an earlier post which included more detail, but the point of highlighting this is that the White House and their CIA director appear to be on the same page in seeking to limit, obscure, or obfuscate from information contained in the Senate Intelligence Committee report.

The latest action from the White House in redacting portions of the report from their executive summary, and the subsequent objections of Sens. Feinstein and Udall to releasing what they obviously feel would be an inadequate and incomplete account of findings from their investigation, are cause to question the assertions from president Obama that he intends the release to "help guide us" in the effort to "take responsibility" for the abuses. At least, the Senators who crafted the report don't believe so.

Where is the pressure coming from to modify the executive summary? We know from news reports, that former Bush Officials, including the head of Bush's CIA, George Tenet, who had approved the tortures which he had called 'enhanced interrogation,' were allowed to work hand in hand with the Obama CIA to craft a defense of their actions and to basically refute portions of the Senate report they disagreed with.

CIA bio:

John Brennan served from 1999 to 2001 as Chief of Staff to George Tenet, who was then Director of Central Intelligence. Mr. Brennan next worked as Deputy Executive Director of the CIA until 2003, when he began leading a multi-agency effort to establish what would become the National Counterterrorism Center. In 2004, he became the Center’s Interim Director.

Brennan was sworn in as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on March 8, 2013. As Director, he manages intelligence collection, analysis, covert action, counterintelligence, and liaison relationships with foreign intelligence services. Before becoming Director, Mr. Brennan served at the White House for four years as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

from NBC News:

After Brennan’s return to Washington from Saudi Arabia 2002, Tenet made him deputy executive director of the CIA. The job took him out of intelligence gathering and into administration. As the No. 2 in the CIA's administrative office, Brennan was essentially "deputy mayor" of the agency, "making the trains run on time" for the worldwide operation, as one former Tenet aide put it.

In that role, he helped set up the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the predecessor to the National Counter Terrorism Center. Brennan built the unit from the ground up, finding the building, setting up security procedures and staffing it with analysts from across the intelligence community. His aggressiveness in staffing didn't sit well with those who lost analysts. In his memoir, "Hard Measures" Jose Rodriguez, then the director of the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center, accused Brennan of "ripping most, if not all, of the top CT (counter terror) analysts out of CTC."

from the NYT:

Over the past several months, Mr. Tenet has quietly engineered a counterattack against the Senate committee’s voluminous report, which could become public next month. The effort to discredit the report has set up a three-way showdown among former C.I.A. officials who believe history has been distorted, a White House carefully managing the process and politics of declassifying the document, and Senate Democrats convinced that the Obama administration is trying to protect the C.I.A. at all costs.

The report is expected to accuse a number of former C.I.A. officials of misleading Congress and the White House about the program and its effectiveness, but it is Mr. Tenet who might have the most at stake.

The detention and interrogation program was conceived on his watch and run by men and women he had put in senior positions. After virtually disappearing from public view since leaving the C.I.A. in 2004 except for a brief period promoting his memoir, Mr. Tenet is working behind the scenes with many of the same people to develop a strategy to challenge the report’s findings. And he is relying on his close relationship with Mr. Brennan to keep him apprised as the report moves through a glacial declassification process. Mr. Brennan rose to the C.I.A.’s senior ranks during Mr. Tenet’s tenure, and served as one of the former C.I.A. chief’s most trusted advisers during the post-9/11 period.

In the past, Obama's CIA director Brennan has expressed his approval of the Bush CIA's policy of 'extraordinary renditions' and voiced at least some support for the Bush-era torture policy operated by his former boss, Tenet, of 'enhanced interrogations.'

from PBS Newshour in 2007:

Brennan has defended renditions, the practice of sending terror suspects to other countries, where they might be subject to torture, as he did on the NewsHour in 2005.

JOHN BRENNAN: I think it’s an absolutely vital tool. I have been intimately familiar now in the past decade with the cases of rendition that the U.S. government has been involved in.

And I can say without a doubt that it has been very successful as far as producing intelligence that has saved lives.

from CBS News in 2007 (Early Show, 11/2/07):

The CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as enhanced interrogation tactics, and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures…. There have been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives. And let's not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.

Brennan insisted at the time of his nomination by the President that his opposition to torture comprised what he said were objections he claimed to have raised during the Bush years and, remarkably, in his defense, the White House has pointed to his tenure as Obama's 'chief counterterrorism adviser' to insist that Brennan was instrumental in crafting the executive decision the President made to outlaw the practices.

from Jake Tapper in 2008:

In a letter released to the media, apparently by Brennan or someone operating on Brennan’s behalf, the former CIA official wrote, “It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush Administration such as the preemptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, too include waterboarding. The fact that I was not involved in the decision making process for any of these controversial policies and actions has been ignored. Indeed, my criticism of these policies within government circles why I was twice considered for more senior-level positions in the current Administration only to be rebuffed by the White House.”

Whether Obama's CIA chief is presently opposed to the torture policies of his former boss, Tenet, or not, there is a clear conflict of interest in allowing him to direct the crafting of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee torture report - the only public view of the committee findings that is likely to be allowed.

That conflict is made even more egregious in the way that former CIA officials, including two other former C.I.A. directors - Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden - have reportedly been allowed to actively participate in that process of declassification and editing the documents.

One of the questions which need answering concerning Brennan's grudging admission that his agency had, in fact, interfered in the Senate committee's investigation into CIA activities is what extent these former operators contributed to the process of omitting portions of that report from the public as well as the private version of the Senate's findings?

It's disturbing to hear President Obama actually offering his own justifications for torture practices and policies he's already identified as far outside or constitution or our national conscience. It's chilling to see that even a summary of that report - in effect, itself auguring an inadequate and incomplete accounting to the American people - is being redacted in such a 'significant' way by one of the partners to those abuses; now an integral partner to this President's representation of the only significant and extensive official accounting of all of that.

With all of the admitted interference by the Obama CIA in the committee investigation, and all of the collusion of the principal subjects in the Bush-era practices in revising and rebutting the investigator's findings, it may well be that we'll need yet another investigation to provide an un-redacted accounting of events and actions and to provide that 'responsibility' for the abuses that President Obama says we deserve.

[HooptieWagon]

1. My suspicion...

... is that Obama is attempting to give a pass to BushCo war criminals, because he has a few skeletons of his own he hopes to get a pass on. Perhaps a "deal" has already been made.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Kinda like getting John Gotti to investigate Mafia crimes. K&R

[TwilightGardener]

3. The two big questions: Why did Panetta set up the "alternative"

agreement of a separate closed computer system? I'm guessing his underlings proposed it and set it up, considering Panetta knew pretty much nothing about the CIA when he took it over. This gave the CIA an advantage in controlling and monitoring access. And who leaked the Panetta Review, which was supposed to be INTERNAL only, and was also only a draft and not a final report? I doubt Panetta did. I doubt Panetta knew very much at all, actually.

[deminks]

4. Over many years, I have often wondered outloud

if someone in Bushco, perhaps Smirky hisownself, had a jones for torture, as in liked to watch, or took a more direct management of torture than Americans realized. I have not a single shred of evidence of this. But, it would explain why we would be 'so shocked' at the report, why we have had years and years of redaction, why the tapes were destroyed, why several administrations seem to be involved in the coverup, why Obama refuses to look back, why the CIA would spy on Congress and risk a constitutional crisis, why we would waterboard anyone 183 times.

IMHO only.

[CJCRANE]

8. It's more likely to be...

Cheney and/or Rumsfeld.

But I'm sure Shrub didn't mind having a quick peek!

[99th_Monkey]

12. I remember something about Face-shooter Cheney having live feeds to torture chambers n/t

[Octafish]

5. Justice or ''Just-Us''

No real middle ground, there.

[rhett o rick]

10. "No real middle ground" in any of this. We are at a crossroads.

Actually we past the crossroads and took the wrong path. The question is will we recover and go back and take the correct path?

[polynomial]

6. This is so ugly...it must be flushed out

Poppy Bush or George Herbert Walker Bush, Georgie’s dad was once director of the CIA. Likely loaded the whole CIA system with cronies is a frightening thought yet so real.

Staying in slight humor however there is nothing funny about the law and torture. It is evil with Nazi tendencies. It is very convincing Bush and Company is the new age Nazi Conservative Party, they lie about anything for power and money.

But that’s being real, however, to be more serious or freighting a very curious thought occurred to me, that is the Republicans opened the a new era.

Now the Nazi Republican secret Conservative Party invent a new Water Gate to “Fraud-Gates”, create another razzle, dazzle gaming theater with the complicit main stream media in this idea of suing the President for not doing his job.

Here is the perfect chance to use the current denouncement of the Iraq war the momentum of 911 as a wrong war, and to make Bush and Company accountable would fill the definition of turning on their own.

While creating the best game changing tactic, the whole election could turn to their favor to take power all over the place.

In other words sue President Obama for not engaging 911 investigations to indict Bush for war crimes. The Democratic Party would lose by a landslide with a platform like that even if it was not carried out.

Talk about a game changer plus a way for the Republicans to get the presidency; then after the election say well didn’t find anything wrong in the investigation with the Iraq war. That’s the plan…then the Democratic Party gets punked again.

[bigtree]

9. if that scenario played out, it would be indeed a travesty that Obama be held accountable for Bush

. . . couple of things.

Measuring our responses to actions and positions taken by the President in terms of how those responses benefit or hinder him politically is an abdication of responsibility to our democracy, or to our own consciences.

I normally take the position that the pols are mostly in control of how the American public regards their actions or positions. That doesn't include defending against distortions or misrepresentations of the President's prerogatives, of course. That's an effort I believe we should always be vigilant to.

In this case, we're challenged to remember why we worked so hard to elect a Democrat to the White House in the first place. Many of us struggled for years and years of our lives to hold the Bush administration to task on these issues. Amazingly, we're into this president's second term, and we've yet to establish any meaningful accountability from the former administration officials abusive policies and practices regarding torture.

That effort was completely abandoned by Pres. Obama's Justice Dept., effectively excusing the Bush-era power grabs, notwithstanding the president's own executive directives outlawing many of those objectionable policies. Those directives, however do nothing to address any future president's autocratic disregard of the principles expressed in his order; moreover, they are easily overturned at the whim of any future president.

That reality, it would seem, should trump any concern that seeking accountability from the Obama administration would advantage the republican party. Indeed, allowing this policy to remain but a whim away from a future president's own prerogative is a sure way of perpetuating the anti-constitutional impetus to abuses.

That said, I fail to see how an investigation which would uncover the worst of republican abuses and their support for them would necessarily benefit some republican campaign. I can, however, envision some republican candidate attempting to separate themselves from their party's solid support and approval of torture techniques and associating their campaign with the effort to reveal and account for all of that.

If President Obama was found to be materially involved interfering in the investigations into the CIA activities, or significantly suppressing damaging information from that report, I would support an investigation. But, I think we're a long, long, way from that possibility. I want to disbelieve that with every political fiber of my being.

[KoKo]

7. Richard Haass (Council on Foreign Relations) on why advocates of torture should not be prosecuted.

Last edited Sat Aug 2, 2014, 08:39 PM - Edit history (3)

Apologize for Typo's in OP...corrected..

(In searching for a PBS Documentary on Torture today I came across this interesting You Tube from Richard Haas explaining why torture should not be prosecuted. Haas has an interesting background and he's often on Bloomberg Business News discussing foreign policy. Anyway, watching his viewpoint in the YT..I think PBO might agree with Haas because of his "looking forward" not backward viewpoint. But...IMHO if no one is held accountable...then history will repeat and torture will happen again..and we will be lied into more wars. )

Published on Apr 23, 2012

Richard Haass on why advocates of torture should not be prosecuted.
…
BACKGROUND from WIKIPEDIA:
Richard Nathan Haass is an American diplomat. He has been president of the Council on Foreign Relations since July 2003, prior to which he was Director of Policy Planning for the United States Department of State and a close advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Senate approved Haass as a candidate for the position of ambassador and he has been U.S. Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. He succeeded George J. Mitchell as the United States Special Envoy for Northern Ireland to help the peace process in Northern Ireland, for which he received the State Department's Distinguished Service Award. At the end of 2003, Mitchell Reiss succeeded him as special envoy. In late 2013, Haass returned to Northern Ireland to chair inter-party talks aimed at addressing some of the unresolved issues from the peace process such as parades, flags and "the past".

Life and career

Haas was born in Brooklyn, the son of Marcella (née Rosenthal) and Irving B. Haass.[2][3] From 1989 to 1993, Haass was Special Assistant to United States President George H. W. Bush and National Security Council Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs. In 1991, Haass received the Presidential Citizens Medal for helping to develop and explain U.S. policy during Operation Desert Shield and Operation Desert Storm. Previously, he served in various posts in the Department of State (1981–85) and the Department of Defense (1979–80).

Haass's other postings include Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution, the Sol M. Linowitz Visiting Professor of International Studies at Hamilton College, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and a research associate at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. A Rhodes Scholar, Haass obtained a B.A. from Oberlin College in 1973 and went on to earn both a Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy from Oxford University.[4]

Throughout the 2008 Presidential campaign, Haass advised several members of both the Republican Party and Democratic Party on issues regarding foreign policy, but did not publicly endorse a candidate due to the Council on Foreign Relations' non-partisan stance.[5]

[rhett o rick]

11. I think it's safe to say that any attempt to place blame for the illegal war and subsequent war

crimes would be devastating to our country. Would we survive? I don't know but I know that if we don't set this straight, we will have taken one giant step toward tyranny. And who will throw the first rock? Both parties are complicit to a degree.

[TheKentuckian]

17. Haas is full of shit with the old lame policy debate cap and deflecting the debate

to advocacy, where virtually none of the discussion lies. I'm not familiar with any push to punish anyone for advocating any policy whatsoever but rather prosecution of those who implemented and executed the criminality advocated for. AKA lying ass distraction and willful avoidance of the topic at hand to beat up on a strawman.

What a waste of almost 3 minutes watching this kat circle around and mislead.

There is no debate we hung Japanese for water boarding, there is no question in the world of it being illegal. There is no need for a policy debate on torture, it is banned even under our most basic law. The pretense that there is any question at all is damn near as appalling as the actions themselves.

Lying liars that lie without honor or ethics.

[KoKo]

18. Please don't get angry with me for posting Haass Video.. but at Hass, Himself....

I could understand his viewpoint but DID NOT AGREE!

[TheKentuckian]

19. I'm not angry with you though I don't "get" his point save as a distraction and a lie.

[JEB]

13. K&R&bookmark

[kentuck]

14. Why do they even ask these guys questions??

They are expected to lie. That is what they are paid to do. Even to Senators.

[bigtree]

15. I'm out of the loop of understanding why the Senate can't just release what they want

. . . as if the WH and the CIA are the font of all authority and the guardian of all knowledge.

[KoKo]

16. We used to think they "worked for US...American People"...but,

now we know ....they work for their Donors...and it's isn't us "little people" with our $25. donations ....one by one...but the BIG BUCKS..and we can blame the Supremes for much of that even though it has gone on before in the past few decades. "Citizens United" Decision just make it the NORM..

[KoKo]

22. Kick..

[bigtree]

20. kick

[2naSalit]

21. Some insight

or perhaps a reminder of our past...

Lest we forget how we came to be the world's faux savior/political bully... the Dulles Bros. and how they helped cast us into this current abyss many years ago. They might be dust now but some who are still among us are their protegees.

On the Dulles' ability to overthrow regimes in Iran and Guatemala but not in Cuba or Vietnam

They were able to succeed [at regime change] in Iran and Guatemala because those were democratic societies, they were open societies. They had free press; there were all kinds of independent organizations; there were professional groups; there were labor unions; there were student groups; there were religious organizations. When you have an open society, it's very easy for covert operatives to penetrate that society and corrupt it.

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

Might be too late to stop this long term train wreck, I honestly hope not but I am afraid it may well be.