With all the interference by the Obama CIA in the torture report, we’ll need another investigation

[bigtree]

Last edited Thu Dec 11, 2014, 10:45 PM - Edit history (2)

With the release of the Senate torture report, reportedly imminent, I want to take some space here and re-post some of the background and comment I made months ago here at DU about these committee findings; their history and some of the issues involved. If I'm not mistaken, the only report the White House intended public to see was a summary which they've heavily redacted and edited. Whether this release will be more extensive remains to be seen. At any rate, it's been reported that even this report doesn't call 'torture' by its name and fails to implicate any figure in the last administration for crimes or abuses which are detailed or described. That portends that our efforts to make government accountable will be ongoing, even after any release of this important committee's findings.

It's reported that Sen. Feinstein is prepared to release the report as early as tomorrow, over the objections of officials like John Kerry and others in the military and intelligence agencies that their revelation will spark reprisals overseas and elsewhere. It's my view that, under their cautionary standard, the more egregious and salacious the abuses, the more these same government agents will be able to obscure their abuses and crimes from the public view. Keeping these operations secret only encourages them to act even more negligently with impunity.

I found a good outlet a little while back (Mint Press News) which was starting up a blog at the same time I declined to participate anymore in discussions here (for personal reasons; most notably, my mental health) which is organized and hosted by Kit O'Connell (@KitOConnell), who left his posting at 'Firedoglake' about the same time to take over this important blog on this excellent news site. I reposted some of my DU efforts on this issue there. Just for informational purposes and, perhaps, for my own efforts' posterity, I offer these once again in the hope that we can regain the balance of control over the actions of our government in the future through understanding the process and their practices.


Can We Call The Torture Report Redactions A Cover-up?


Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, foreground left, and CIA Director John Brennan, foreground right, take their seats on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2014, prior to testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. (AP)

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Here are a couple of questions I’d like answered …

What did President Barack Obama know about the CIA’s obstruction, interference, and intimidation of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers investigating the agency’s activities?

What role did the President have in what Sen. Dianne Feinstein terms ‘eliminating or obscuring key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions?’

I’m asking, at what point do we conclude that there’s enough evidence that the Obama White House is obstructing the Senate investigation’s report? Do we wait for the Senate committee members to say so? (They’ve come very close to that conclusion.)

I’m all for waiting to see what the White House ultimately decides to leave in and leave out of it’s ‘executive summary’ of the investigation’s findings, but there’s already enough interference, obstruction, intimidation, and ‘redacting’ on the record for me to conclude that something major is being perpetrated — even if someone in or out of the WH can rationalize us away from calling it a ‘cover-up.’

Let’s talk a little more about why the CIA was spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee …

I think CIA Director John Brennan’s admission that his agents broke into the computers of the Senate committee investigating his agency (after strenuous and repeated denials) is one of the most potentially explosive revelations since the Nixon White House was discovered spying on Democrats. In that scandal Nixon used the nation’s intelligence agencies to spy on Kennedy and Muskie to try and find something to use against them to advantage his political contest. As important as those abuses of power were, and the fact that the president was directly involved, they pale in comparison to Director Brennan’s admissions in July.

This scandal involves an attempt by the Obama/Brennan CIA to intimidate and chill an active investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into past practices and criminal abuses by the agency which were committed by Bush administration officials.

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 large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court’s order,” ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said in a statement.

The defense for accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui had demanded the tapes which they believed would depict the waterboarding and other interrogation methods they were alleging occurred. Interrogations of al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah and another top al-Qaida leader were also said to be depicted in the videotapes.

At first the prosecution outright denied the tapes existed at all. Only after the trial did they finally admit their existence. Their excuse for destroying the evidence was that they were protecting the identities of the government interrogators.

From Wikipedia:

On December 6, 2007, the New York Times advised the Bush administration that they had acquired, and planned to publish, information about the destruction of tapes made of Zubaydah’s interrogation, believed to show instances of waterboarding and other forms of possible torture.

Michael Hayden, the Director of Central Intelligence, sent a letter to CIA staff the next day, briefing them on the destruction of the tapes. Hayden asserted that key members of Congress had been briefed on the existence of the tapes, and the plans for their destruction. Senator Jay Rockefeller, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disputed Hayden’s assertion, saying that he only learned of the tapes in November 2006, a year after their destruction.

Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and one of just four senior members of Congress who was briefed on the existence of the tapes, acknowledged being briefed. Harman responded to Hayden’s assertions by saying she had objected, in writing, to the tapes’ destruction. “I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it,” Harman stated.

Hayden claimed that the continued existence of the tapes represented a threat to the CIA personnel involved, saying that if the tapes were leaked they might result in CIA personnel being identified and targeted for retaliation. Hayden stated that the tapes were destroyed “only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries.”

Fast forward to Feinstein’s floor speech in March:

After we read about the tapes’ destruction in the newspapers, Director Hayden briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee. He assured us that this was not destruction of evidence, as detailed records of the interrogations existed on paper in the form of CIA operational cables describing the detention conditions and the day-to-day CIA interrogations.

The CIA director stated that these cables were “a more than adequate representation” of what would have been on the destroyed tapes. Director Hayden offered at that time, during Senator Jay Rockefeller’s chairmanship of the committee, to allow Members or staff to review these sensitive CIA operational cables given that the videotapes had been destroyed.

Chairman Rockefeller sent two of his committee staffers out to the CIA on nights and weekends to review thousands of these cables, which took many months. 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

Feinstein’s committee worked out an arrangement with the Panetta CIA to obtain those documents which resulted in a unhelpful ‘document dump’ of hundreds of thousands of un-indexed pages. Nonetheless, these were the documents that the staffers obtained and used in their investigation, following the procedures the CIA had insisted on.

Feinstein:

In addition to demanding that the documents produced for the committee be reviewed at a CIA facility, the CIA also insisted on conducting a multi-layered review of every responsive document before providing the document to the committee. This was to ensure the CIA did not mistakenly provide documents unrelated to the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program or provide documents that the president could potentially claim to be covered by executive privilege.

While we viewed this as unnecessary and raised concerns that it would delay our investigation, the CIA hired a team of outside contractors—who otherwise would not have had access to these sensitive documents—to read, multiple times, each of the 6.2 million pages of documents produced, before providing them to fully-cleared committee staff conducting the committee’s oversight work. This proved to be a slow and very expensive process.

The CIA started making documents available electronically to the committee staff at the CIA leased facility in mid-2009. The number of pages ran quickly to the thousands, tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, and then into the millions. The documents that were provided came without any index, without organizational structure. It was a true “document dump” that our committee staff had to go through and make sense of.

The committee staffers took whatever documents they thought were relevant and copied them into their own computers. At some point, they noticed that their documents were disappearing …

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.

This was done without the knowledge or approval of committee members or staff, and in violation of our written agreements. Further, this type of behavior would not have been possible had the CIA allowed the committee to conduct the review of documents here in the Senate. In short, this was the exact sort of CIA interference in our investigation that we sought to avoid at the outset.

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.

After that incident, staffers were able to uncover documents related to Panetta’s internal review which appeared to provide proof of significant wrongdoing by the agency.

Feinstein:

At some point in 2010, committee staff searching the documents that had been made available found draft versions of what is now called the “Internal Panetta Review.”

We believe these documents were written by CIA personnel to summarize and analyze the materials that had been provided to the committee for its review. The Panetta review documents were no more highly classified than other information we had received for our investigation—in fact, the documents appeared to be based on the same information already provided to the committee.

What was unique and interesting about the internal documents was not their classification level, but rather their analysis and acknowledgement of significant CIA wrongdoing.

To be clear, the committee staff did not “hack” into CIA computers to obtain these documents as has been suggested in the press. The documents were identified using the search tool provided by the CIA to search the documents provided to the committee.

We have no way to determine who made the Internal Panetta Review documents available to the committee. Further, we don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistle-blower.

In fact, we know that over the years—on multiple occasions—the staff have asked the CIA about documents made available for our investigation. At times, the CIA has simply been unaware that these specific documents were provided to the committee. And while this is alarming, it is also important to note that more than 6.2 million pages of documents have been provided. This is simply a massive amount of records

The staff did not rely on these Internal Panetta Review documents when drafting the final 6,300-page committee study. But it was significant that the Internal Panetta Review had documented at least some of the very same troubling matters already uncovered by the committee staff – which is not surprising, in that they were looking at the same information.

So, 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 actually confirmed by the Panetta review.

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?

The intelligence committee took draft copies of the documents and locked them away in their own senate facilities – in their own computer system. This was understandable, given the revelations in 2009 that key evidence had been deliberately destroyed by the agency.

The documents disappeared from their computers.

Sen. Feinstein:

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.

Feinstein 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.

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.

After searching their computers Brennan began to claim that the Panetta documents were obtained improperly and declared that he was going to conduct an investigation into committee staffer procedures and activities.

Feinstein:

Director Brennan stated that the CIA’s search had determined that the committee staff had copies of the Internal Panetta Review on the committee’s “staff shared drive” and had accessed them numerous times. He indicated at the meeting that he was going to order further “forensic” investigation of the committee network to learn more about activities of the committee’s oversight staff.

Two days after the meeting, on January 17, I wrote a letter to Director Brennan objecting to any further CIA investigation due to the separation of powers constitutional issues that the search raised. I followed this with a second letter on January 23 to the director, asking 12 specific questions about the CIA’s actions—questions that the CIA has refused to answer.

Some of the questions in my letter related to the full scope of the CIA’s search of our computer network. Other questions related to who had authorized and conducted the search, and what legal basis the CIA claimed gave it authority to conduct the search. Again, the CIA has not provided answers to any of my questions.

My letter also laid out my concern about the legal and constitutional implications of the CIA’s actions. Based on what Director Brennan has informed us, I have grave concerns that the CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution, including the Speech and Debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.

I have asked for an apology and a recognition that this CIA search of computers used by its oversight committee was inappropriate. I received neither.

Besides the constitutional implications, the CIA’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.

Not only did the search and removal of documents from the committee computers indicate an attempt to cover-up the corroborating information contained in the Panetta internal review, the attempt to smear committee staffers with criminal charges for obtaining the documents (through the procedures and search tools that the CIA had actually provided them) was an interference and an attempt to intimidate the committee from conducting a thorough investigation of the agency’s activities.

Moreover, there was a conflict of interest, in that the acting general counsel attempting to criminalize the efforts of the committee staffers was a lawyer in the very division which carried out the interrogation procedures in question.

Feinstein:

As I mentioned before, our staff involved in this matter have the appropriate clearances, handled this sensitive material according to established procedures and practice to protect classified information, and were provided access to the Panetta Review by the CIA itself. As a result, there is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that Senate staff may have committed a crime. I view the acting general counsel’s referral as a potential effort to intimidate this staff—and I am not taking it lightly.

I should note that for most, if not all, of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, the now acting general counsel was a lawyer in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center—the unit within which the CIA managed and carried out this program. From mid-2004 until the official termination of the detention and interrogation program in January 2009, he was the unit’s chief lawyer. He is mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study.

And now this individual is sending a crimes report to the Department of Justice on the actions of congressional staff—the same congressional staff who researched and drafted a report that details how CIA officers—including the acting general counsel himself—provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice about the program.

Mr. President, let me say this. All Senators rely on their staff to be their eyes and ears and to carry out our duties. The staff members of the Intelligence Committee are dedicated professionals who are motivated to do what is best for our nation.

The staff members who have been working on this study and this report have devoted years of their lives to it—wading through the horrible details of a CIA program that never, never, never should have existed. They have worked long hours and produced a report unprecedented in its comprehensive attention to detail in the history of the Senate.

They are now being threatened with legal jeopardy, just as the final revisions to the report are being made so that parts of it can be declassified and released to the American people . . .

Brennan’s admissions have already answered the question of whether the chilling activities occurred. The question remains of why the agency head would go to such extreme and unconstitutional lengths to stifle the Panetta internal review and the Senate committee investigator’s efforts to present the documents as part of their report.

Evidently, the CIA felt those documents were damning enough to attempt to withhold and conceal them. It still begs the question of why this administration would go so far to conceal and obfuscate the misdeeds of the previous one. What was their stake in working to muddle the record and discredit the investigators? What are they hiding?

I tend to believe his reluctance to allow full disclosure of the Bush-era abuses are mostly a protection and defense against revelations about his own administration’s conduct which has co-opted/inherited many material aspects of Bush’s ‘war on terror.’

In many ways he appears to be protecting his own prerogatives to employ many of those objectionable and institutionally embarrassing methods and operations, like ‘extraordinary renditions’ and allowing interrogation techniques to be performed on the U.S. behalf in other countries which look the other way regarding such abuses. That’s reflected in the way that the administration is opposing the Senate committee efforts to reveal those countries that aided the Bush administration in those efforts.

I truly believe that we are already suffering from the refusal to hold the previous administration accountable. I think that is evident in the manner in which this White House appears to be holding onto many of the more egregious of abuses that we’re decrying about the last one; notably, the continued renditions; the continued use of other nations to carry out acts on behalf of our nation in the name of ‘national security’ which our own country has either outlawed or has determined objectionable conduct.

I don’t think it’s sufficient to point to the executive order the President correctly directed early in his administration which only covers “some” of the abuses in question, as he mentioned in his statement lecturing us about getting too ‘sanctimonious’ in our expectations of accountability and judgment of those who ordered the criminal and immoral abuses.

I think there’s ample evidence that there are a number of actions that fall within the President’s admonitions that “we did some things that were wrong;” including some conduct that’s continuing right in front of us, like at Gitmo, where some tortures are not considered by this administration as crimes or even as objectionable.

Those are some of the areas that I feel would bear, should bear more scrutiny from our legislature. I don’t think anyone would be seriously talking about the President’s responsibility in any of that if he hadn’t inserted himself into the debate so overtly in several ways.

One of the more obvious is his refusal to move forward with any accountability beyond ‘allowing’ the publicizing of the Senate Intelligence report. Even at that, under President Obama’s ultimate authority, the CIA has foot-dragged and outright obstructed the intelligence committee’s attempt to investigate and report their findings.

Instead of fumbling through my own understanding of events, let me offer some accounts that I believe are credible.

Marcy Wheeler was a high profile journalist reporting on the Scooter Libby trial. In 2013, Newsweek published an article about Wheeler titled “The Woman Who Knows The NSA’s Secrets.”

Here’s Marcy in March:

We can be sure about one thing: The Obama White House has covered up the Bush presidency’s role in the torture program for years. Specifically, from 2009 to 2012, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to keep a single short phrase, describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program, secret.

Some time before October 29, 2009, then National Security Advisor Jim Jones filed an ex parte classified declaration with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, in response to a FOIA request by the ACLU seeking documents related to the torture program. In it, Jones argued that the CIA should not be forced to disclose the “source of the CIA’s authority,” as referenced in the title of a document providing “Guidelines for Interrogations” and signed by then CIA Director George Tenet. That document was cited in two Justice Department memos at issue in the FOIA. Jones claimed that “source of authority” constituted an intelligence method that needed to be protected.

. . . The White House’s fight to keep the short phrase describing Bush’s authorization of the torture program hidden speaks to its apparent ambivalence over the torture program. Even after President Obama released the DOJ memos authorizing torture – along with a damning CIA Inspector General Report and a wide range of documents revealing bureaucratic discussions within the CIA about torture – the White House still fought the release of the phrase that would have made it clear that the CIA conducted this torture at the order of the president. And it did so with a classified declaration from Jones that would have remained secret had Judge Hellerstein not insisted it be made public.

Now, you might respond that this is still mostly about the actions of the previous administration. That’s correct, but there’s obviously some institutional reason for resisting disclosure of their activities in court and in outright refusal to comply with information requests from interested parties in the legislature. Most notably is the drone program which has the same authorization structure that the Bush-era actors practiced and are presently defending against this report.

That’s an area (and several others like GITMO) where I believe, and many others believe, is where the President’s desire to protect his prerogative is influencing his foot dragging on a complete accounting of the previous administration’s conduct. If that speculation seems obtuse and hard to confirm, it’s because it’s designed to by the administration, many feel, to hide the fact that it is his own order which allows these objectionable, and possibly illegal, programs to operate or continue.

Certainly all of those policies can be debated and resolved in some way through making those actions available to the legislature to mitigate and judge. That’s not a course this administration has chosen to take on a number of remnants from Bush’s ‘war on terror;’ like renditions, detentions of suspects in torture-friendly nations, ‘extra-judicial killings, and the like. Authorization on all of these may well be successfully mitigated through Congress, but the President has made a determination to hold back accountability for whatever authority he’s assumed to carry out these policies and actions (to order them).

Those are areas where the Bush-era abuses and the present activities of the Obama CIA collide. Those are the prerogatives of President Obama which he shares with the former administration that he’s fought to obscure and keep secret through many questionable moves.

That obstruction, that collusion with the prerogatives of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ may well have withstood legislative attempts to delve deeper and demand more public accountability, but the Senate was spurred to investigate the CIA activities under Bush because of deliberate, and admitted destruction of key evidence. having been confronted about that by Congress. the agencies involved agreed to provide dual paperwork which they claimed contained the same evidence that had been discarded. That’s where the present investigation took over, first under Jay Rockefeller, then under Sen. Feinstein in 2009.

In the course of that investigation, there was systematic and blatant interference, obstruction, surveillance, and intimidation of committee staffers by the Brennan/Obama CIA. It was first denied by the director when confronted in March; later admitted in July. Added to that, the president put this same interfering and obstructing CIA in charge of editing the ‘executive summary’ of the Senate Intelligence Committee findings which is to be the ONLY public accounting of the actions of the former administration.

Right after the President addressed reporters on the torture report, it was revealed by Senate committee members that the documents they submitted to the White House, to the President, for approval for release had been heavily redacted and had “eliminated and obscured key information” which supported the report’s conclusions.

That editing process was/is being led by Brennan, who admitted his agency’s role, the agency he oversees, in obstructing those findings. Further, an effort to rebut the report is reportedly being directly aided by all three former CIA directors under Bush and others who participated in or ordered the activities and abuses in question in the report’s findings.

Let’s go back to the questions I asked in the opening: What did the President know about the CIA’s obstruction, interference, and intimidation of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers investigating the agency’s activities?

What role did the President have in what Sen. Feinstein terms ‘eliminating or obscuring key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions?’

I’m asking, at what point do we conclude that there’s enough evidence that the Obama White House is unlawfully obstructing the Senate investigation’s report? Do we wait for the Senate committee members to say so? (they’ve come very close to that conclusion) I’m all for waiting to see what the White House ultimately decides to leave in and leave out of it’s ‘executive summary’ of the investigation’s findings, but there’s already enough interference, obstruction, intimidation, and ‘redacting’ on the record for me to conclude that something major is being perpetrated – even if someone in or out of the WH can rationalize us away from calling it a ‘cover-up.’

I would further ask or seek to uncover, what role the Obama CIA has played in not only protecting or defending the prerogatives of the Bush-era abuses, but how many of those have been continued or perpetuated in this administration and into the future for other Presidents to advantage their own actions?

In all of that, I see serious questions of obstruction of justice; violations of the Fourth Amendment; violations of the separations of powers, including the Speech and Debate clause; and as Sen. Feinstein put it, actions which may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.

As in all important and consequential inquires, they are just that: inquiries. That is, if and up until something is revealed in that inquiry which is found to be illegal, unethical, or out of the bounds of what Congress is willing to allow. The process of inquiry isn’t necessarily a determinative one. Nor does a prosecution effort necessarily mean a conviction.

What most people are asking for is due process of law, and a responsiveness to the oversight responsibilities of our legislature. that is the area where this administration has, I believe, inserted itself in an overt and questionable manner. I wonder why?

What is is about the prerogatives of the present Obama CIA that is preventing them from being as open as the Senate Intelligence Committee desires and expects? That’s the pretext the President is giving critics and investigators to tie him to the abuses and activities of the Bush-era tortures; the cover-up. That’s what has been the sticking point in most ‘scandals’ involving the Executive Branch. I happen to believe that most of the obstruction is unnecessary, but obviously, this administration, this President, feels there’s something in that process for him to defend.

The manner in which it’s being defended by the administration is the subject of debate, as it should be. This isn’t inadvertent obstruction, it’s deliberate and highly questionable behavior which is trampling on more than a few laws. I happen to think the President would be better served to order all relevant information be revealed. I think he would disagree with that. So, there we are.

We’ll see how far President Obama is willing for his CIA to bend to the wishes of the Senate investigators in the coming weeks, but I don’t think we should lose sight of, or refuse to seek accountability for the obstruction from those offices, over which he has ultimate authority, that’s already occurred.

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“We Tortured Some Folks!”


Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, right, and CIA Director John Brennan, left, sit in the front row before President Barack Obama spoke about National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance, Friday, Jan. 17, 2014, at the Justice Department in Washington.

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In his remarks in Aug. 1, President Obama took his first stab at explaining away the Bush-era tortures — as if there was some national imperative that we excuse away renditions and torture.

From the National Journal:

Obama addressed post-9/11 America in remarks about the Central Intelligence Agency. “We tortured some folks,” he said. “We did some things that were contrary to our values. I understand why it happened. 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 a 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.”

He continued: “A lot of those folks were working hard and under enormous pressure, and are real patriots. But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong.” The president also said that he has “full confidence” in CIA Director John Brennan, despite the agency admitting this week that it had hacked Senate computers.

Is that the best he can do — mouth the same mind-numbing drivel about 9-11 and terror that Bush and his cronies used to deflect blame and accountability from their anti-constitutional abuses? The committee findings he’s deflecting blame from on behalf of the Bush administration aren’t the product of anything he’s done. Those investigations are the work of a diligent and thorough Senate investigative committee which Pres. Obama’s CIA did everything in their power to stall and conceal.

What about addressing CIA Chief Brennan’s attempts to intimidate and discredit the investigators of that report he’s explaining away? All of this ‘confidence’ he’s falling all over himself to heap on Brennan ignores the amazing and absolutely damning admission by his CIA director that he had, in fact, engaged in surveillance of the very Senate committee which produced the report he’s referring to and, incredibly, lifted documents related to their investigation of his agency right out of their computers.

We don’t need lectures from Pres. Obama about the dangers of 9-11. Aside from the killings perpetrated by bin-Laden and his accomplices, real and serious damage was done to America in the way that Bush, Cheney, Tenant, and others in the past administration took advantage of the nation’s fears and embarked on a mission to tear down decades of civil liberties and privacy protections of American citizens; and embarked on an opportunistic war of aggression in Iraq which created even more individuals bent on harming the U.S. and our interests.

Refusing to seek prosecution for the Bush-era torture and rendition abuses amounts to retroactive approval, no matter what lip service the President offers us about his objections; no matter how many times he says the word torture with concern and consternation; no matter how the word ‘patriots’ falls from his lips like some papal absolution.

John Brennan, an intelligence official under George Tenet, was chosen by Obama early in his presidency to lead the review of intelligence agencies and helped make recommendations to his new administration. Brennan had supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition under Bush. It’s understandable that he would seek to stifle and obfuscate from anything he and his former employers might have had a hand in.

What’s not understandable is why President Obama sees a need to cover for the previous administration – not unless you consider that his own might well have engaged in some of the same abuses. Despite all of the talk from Obama about his own reforms and remedies there have been reports that rendition abuses actually continued under his watch. There are even reports that torture has continued on our nation’s behalf in other countries where the law or morality permits.

Those are the concerns that Americans should expect this president to address behind this Senate report. We certainly deserve more than cheap propaganda designed to deflect blame from war criminals. We have a second 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 specific practices (with significant loopholes), it can be easily undone by successive administrations. That eventuality was 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.

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.

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. 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

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.

In his statement Aug. 1, 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 to the interrogation practices as ‘torture.’ Yet, 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 new 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 remark Aug. 1 stating, “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 is actually 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

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.”
[link:http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=de39366b-d66d-4f3e-8948-b6f8ec4bab24|
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 in July, there was clear 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 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.
[link:https://www.cia.gov/about-cia/leadership/john-o-brennan.html|
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 New York Times:

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.



related:

APA “Independent” Torture Review Led by Attorney Who Worked With CIA’s Tenet http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2014/12/07/apa-independent-torture-review-led-by-attorney-who-worked-with-cias-tenet/

Treatment of Conflict­ Related Detainees in Afghan Custody, United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, 2011

Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool, Los Angeles Times

Researchers found credible evidence of torture at nine NDS facilities and several Afghan National Police (ANP) facilities, including beatings, suspension from the ceiling, electric shocks, threatened or actual sexual abuse, and other forms of mental and physical abuse, which were routinely used to obtain confessions or other information.

Detained American Says He Was Beaten in Kuwait, New York Times

Torture’s Loopholes

Renditions continue under Obama, despite due-process concerns

Afghans Detail Detention in ‘Black Jail’ at U.S. Base, New York Times

Obama administration stops short of saying that the torture treaty bars cruelty in overseas prisons where the United States had a detainee in its effective control but was not a governing authority. Such places appeared to include former secret prisons where the Central Intelligence Agency tortured suspects during the Bush administration and detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan during wars there.




ron fullwood @ronfullwood

[blm]

1. Sorry, big, but LOLOL that you still believe that any president, let alone THIS one, has

the control over the CIA's inner circle that has been running the most egregious ops.

You really think just because Poppy Bush left the WH in Jan1993 that he ever gave up control of the entire security and intelligence network that HE and his cronies have been building for decades?

[bigtree]

2. well. I don't think I've said anything that assumes I'm naive about any of that

...however, there is clear interference and activity by the Obama WH which leaves the president vulnerable to questions about his own input and involvement in the efforts to cover-up the report on the abuses and crimes; including his own attorney general's failure to prosecute.

[blm]

5. Obama couldn't be naive enough at this point to even THINK he runs the CIA.

.

[woo me with science]

6. +1

Don't allow the diversion machine to divert.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5767160

[blm]

17. LOL - pretty funny that you would ASS Ume that I am even close to being 3 way.

I always saw Obama as a more of a centrist than center-left, and I view HRC as to the right of him.

I am an anti-corruption Democrat, and that is why I know so much of Kerry's actual history that many Dems ignore because the mainstream corporate media has ignored it.

I am quite certain that big knows where I stand and doesn't need advice from you on how to 'handle' me.

[Jesus Malverde]

21. The CT is strong with this one....

Wow.. the latest meme is that President Obama is a puppet of "the man" or that is he a naive dupe who fell into a job he has no control over.

Either option is insulting to the President who may have disappointed you but certainly is in charge.

[woo me with science]

3. Who defends torture and calls torturers "patriots"?

Those complicit in torture and defending it.

Note how many of these discussions are now missing from DU. I had to go looking for many of the original sources online. This is why it's important to title articles with the actual titles of the sources...

Pres. Obama Never Rescinded Bush Memo On Torture- Still Part of Military Interrogation Doctrine
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025347198

Obama Justice Department indicts ex-CIA agent for exposing torture
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002528908

Obama has stated flat out the USA does not Torture, BUT does it ...
(original discussion missing)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8817920

Obama's Torture Problem (Cover-up of torture at Guantanamo and CIA black sites)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9640662
(original discussion missing)
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/nov/18/obamas-torture-problem/

Fellow Nobel Peace Laureates to Obama: Stain of US Torture Your Job to Repair
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025722026

Obama's Torture Bind (Torture, CIA "black sites&quot
(original discussion missing)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5454518

What Is Obama Doing At Bagram? (Part One): Torture Under the Obama Administration
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x540433

Target of Obama-era rendition alleges torture
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6277906
(original discussion missing)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/11/target-of-obama-era-rendi_n_256499.html

The ACLU on Obama and Core Liberties
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2069714
(original discussion missing)
http://www.salon.com/2011/09/07/liberties_3/

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

4. Yep. Kinda like having the Mafia bosses investigate the mob and then refuse to release the findings

because some mob bosses might kill some other mob bosses.

[bigtree]

10. Goodfellas

"Goodfellas don't sue Goodfellas....goodfellas kill goodfellas." - Salvatore Profaci

[woo me with science]

7. To the Greatest Page.

Thank you for all your work on this.

We are fighting for the soul of our nation.

[bigtree]

9. thanks for the kicks, woo

...and your support for this important issue.

'We are fighting for the soul of our nation.'

[kentuck]

15. That is very true.

Thanks.

[KoKo]

8. Thank you "Big Tree" for updating our memories of the path of torture policy..

I read Feinstein is threatening to go ahead and reveal the report over Kerry's resistance.

I don't have much hope since DiFi often speaks with a forked tongue. If she doesn't come through, hopefully Udall will.

Good to see your post. You've been missed.

[bigtree]

11. you're welcome, KoKo

...nice to see folks here still interested in the substance of it all.

Truth will out.

Good to see your post, as well.

[G_j]

12. thanks for your contribution

to this most important issue!

[bigtree]

22. thanks for the kick, G_j

...

[kentuck]

13. The CIA does one thing very well...

They lie.

[bigtree]

23. or, they get those they torture to do the lying for them

Last edited Tue Dec 9, 2014, 12:37 PM - Edit history (2)

...from @emptywheel

The Debate about Torture We’re Not Having: Exploitation
Published December 8, 2014 | By emptywheel

As the Senate Armed Services Committee Report on torture (released over 5 years ago, in far less redacted form than tomorrow’s summary will be) makes clear, the Bush regime embraced torture not for “intelligence” but for “exploitation.” In December 2001, when DOD first started searching for what would become torture, it was explicitly looking for “exploitation.”

As Administration lawyers began to reconsider U.S. adherence to the Geneva Conventions, the DoD Office of the General Counsel also began seeking information on detention and interrogation. In December 2001, the DoD General Counsel’s office contacted the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), headquartered at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, for information about detainee “exploitation.

And as a footnote explaining that reference makes clear, “interrogation is only one part of the exploitation process.”



Some other things exploitation is used for — indeed the very things the torture we reverse-engineered for our own torture program was used for — are to help recruit double agents and to produce propaganda.

And we have every reason to believe those were among the things all incarnations of our torture were used for. We tortured in Abu Ghraib because we had no sources in the Iraqi resistance and for some reason we believed sexually humiliating men would shame them into turning narcs for the US.

read more: https://www.emptywheel.net/2014/12/08/the-debate-about-torture-were-not-having-exploitation/


from @emptywheel “The Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification

Bob Woodward provides an extensive discussion of what George Tenet (Obama CIA's Brennan's boss at the time) and Cofer Black requested in a critical MON in Bush at War.

Tenet had brought a draft of a presidential intelligence order, called a finding, that would give the CIA power to use the full range of covert instruments, including deadly force. For more than two decades, the CIA had simply modified previous presidential findings to obtain its formal authority for counterterrorism. His new proposal, technically called a Memorandum of Notification, was presented as a modification to the worldwide counterterrorism intelligence finding signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986. As if symbolically erasing the recent past, it superseded five such memoranda signed by President Clinton.

... as Woodward describes it, the MON authorized the CIA to engage in these general activities without having to come back for a new finding. Jane Mayer elaborates what this meant:

To give the President deniability, and to keep him from getting his hands dirty, the finding called for the President to delegate blanket authority to Tenet to decide on a case-by-case basis whom to kill, whom to kidnap, whom to detain and interrogate, and how.


related:

Some torture facts.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2014/12/08/some-torture-facts/

Obama authorized war crimes using the same Presidential Finding the Bush Admin used to authorize torture @emptywheel
https://www.emptywheel.net/2014/12/09/obama-would-not-cannot-deem-any-activities-authorized-by-gloves-come-off-finding-illegal/

[Scuba]

14. "A lot of those folks were working hard and under enormous pressure, and are real patriots."

Excuse me while I vomit.

[napkinz]

16. ...

[bigtree]

33. infuriating

. . . the disconnect from the horrendous reality that we now know Obama had even more extensive knowledge of than this summary is stunning and appalling.

[woo me with science]

38. Revolting.

No adequate words for how revolting.

[KingCharlemagne]

18. Charlie Pierce of Esquire's "The Politics Blog" got off the definitive

word on the CIA spying scandal:

It is not too much of an exaggeration to say that, in one very important way, the president has lost control of his own government. The current constitutional crisis between the CIA and the Senate committee tasked with investigating its policies regarding torture during the previous administration has only one real solution that is consonant with the rule of law. Either CIA director John Brennan gets to the bottom of what his people were doing and publicly fires everyone involved, or John Brennan becomes the ex-director of the CIA. By the Constitution, this isn't even a hard call. The Senate has every legal right to investigate what was done in the name of the American people during the previous decade. It has every legal right to every scrap of information relating to its investigation, and the CIA has an affirmative legal obligation to cooperate. Period. The only way this is not true is if we come to accept the intelligence apparatus as an extra-legal, formal fourth branch of the government.

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/obama-cia-john-brennan-031414 (Emphasis added)

The whole piece merits the time taken to read it, esp. Pierce's observation that in 2008 we thought we were getting an antidote to Bush but instead all we got was an anesthetic.

[bigtree]

25. Brennan is (ostensibly) operating under the authority of the President

...who has gone to great lengths to help obscure and block information about the torture program and practices from the public view.

from Marcy Wheeler (Some Torture Facts):

(12) Obama’s role in covering up the Bush White House’s role in torture has received far too little attention. But Obama’s White House actually successfully intervened to reverse Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s attempt to release to ACLU a short phrase making it clear torture was done pursuant to a Presidential Finding. So while Obama was happy to have CIA’s role in torture exposed, he went to great lengths, both with that FOIA, with criminal discovery, and with the Torture Report, to hide how deeply implicated the Office of the President was in torture.

[Solly Mack]

19. K&R

[bigtree]

34. thanks for the k&r, Solly Mack

. . . longtime advocate of peace and justice.

[TheKentuckian]

20. Thank you for a hell of an effort on this critical issue, bigtree

[bigtree]

35. you're welcome, Kentuckian

. . .thank you for your own interest and dedication to this important issue.

[wavesofeuphoria]

24. Sincere thanks for writing and posting this.

Trying to share this with others as well.

Thanks for this effort. I hope we can do something about this -- if not our government, then perhaps others can.

[bigtree]

36. you're welcome, wavesofeuphoria

. . . one thing it will do is give that majority of folks polled out there pause about their support of tortures. Another effect will be a more scrutinized government when it comes to their military and intelligence activities. We desperately need to involve more Americans in speaking out about the workings of our government and military.

Thank you for your call to action and your support.

[librechik]

26. to believe the President controls the CIA instead of the other way round

is to believe the propaganda the CIA puts out 24/7.

This agency, and the justice department, allow the president some facade of leadership. But they have been on their own and self-limiting since they killed a president. All the rest have been puppets kept on short strings.

We need to solve the problem we have--and that problem is not named Obama or "Obama's Justice Department" Those guys are the Military Industrial Complex, or the Security Corporate Dictat or whatever. THAT's our problem. They will never allow us to elect a President who will "save us." They have won. and they aren't letting go.

[bigtree]

27. this is a line that ignores the history of the original authorization and this admins use of it

..to further Obama's own extension of Bush's terror war in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

The very same strategy for authorization of military and intelligence activity against targets believed associated with al-Qaeda which was engineered by George Tenet, Cofer Black, and Dick Cheney, has been used by President Obama to justify his ordering of drone strikes and renditions. They have a definite basis in the 2001 AUMF, as admitted by Obama's CIA chief nominee Brennan in his 2013 hearing, but the assumed authority is based in memorandums of understanding which are used as 'notifications' of Congress for blanket authority to conduct operations - operations like the drone strikes which increased under the Obama administration.

from the National Journal:

(Chief architect of Obama's counterterrorism policies during his first campaign) Brennan gives one of his most extensive answers (to the Senate committee]) on the explicit question of drone strikes -- when, how, and where the United States can carry them out. Note the last paragraph where he lays out the specific legal justification for conducting strikes in non-theaters of war.



Marcy Wheeler gives an excellent summary of the history of the torture 'authorizations' in her article, “The Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification - April 21, 2012

Bob Woodward provides an extensive discussion of what George Tenet and Cofer Black requested in a critical MON in Bush at War.

Tenet (Obama's CIA head Brennan was Tenet's Chief of Staff) had brought a draft of a presidential intelligence order, called a finding, that would give the CIA power to use the full range of covert instruments, including deadly force. For more than two decades, the CIA had simply modified previous presidential findings to obtain its formal authority for counterterrorism. His new proposal, technically called a Memorandum of Notification, was presented as a modification to the worldwide counterterrorism intelligence finding signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986. As if symbolically erasing the recent past, it superseded five such memoranda signed by President Clinton.

Woodward describes other things included in Tenet’s request:

-Providing hundreds of millions to “heavily subsidize Arab liaison services,” effectively “buying” key services in Egypt, Jordan, and Algeria
-Equipping Predator drones with Hellfire missiles for lethal missions to take out top al Qaeda figures
-Working with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan (in the earlier discussions, Woodward made clear that Rashid Dostum, whose massacre at Dasht-i-Leili we subsequently covered up] was the key figure Black had in mind)
-Conducting covert ops in 80 countries, including the use of breaking and entering, and lethal force (what Jane Mayer, in The Dark Side, refers to as paramilitary death squads)
-Working with Libya and Syria (and also, in the context of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan)

. . .The legal fight between the Administration and the ACLU is fundamentally about whether–given the way Tenet constructed his Interrogation Guidelines–Bush (and now Obama) could sustain that claim of plausible deniability.

from Marcy Wheeler: 'White House Has Been Covering Up the Presidency’s Role in Torture for Years'

As other documents and reporting have made clear, the source of authority was a September 17, 2001 Presidential declaration authorizing not just detention and interrogation, but a range of other counterterrorism activities, including targeted killings.

Both former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo have made clear that the torture program began as a covert operation. “A few days after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush signed a top-secret directive to CIA authorizing an unprecedented array of covert actions against Al Qaeda and its leadership.” Rizzo explained in 2011. One of those actions, Rizzo went on, was “the capture, incommunicado detention and aggressive interrogation of senior Al Qaeda operatives.”

As Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, noted in 2009 – shortly after Hayden revealed that torture started as a covert operation – this means there should be a paper trail implicating President Bush in the torture program. “There should be a Presidential ‘finding’ authorizing the program,” he said, “and such a finding should have been provided to Congressional overseers.”

...there is evidence that those Congressional overseers were never told that the finding the president signed on September 17, 2001 authorized torture. For example, a letter from then ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, to the CIA’s General Counsel following her first briefing on torture asked: “Have enhanced techniques been authorized and approved by the President?” The CIA’s response at the time was simply that “policy as well as legal matters have been addressed within the Executive Branch.”

Nevertheless, the finding does exist. The CIA even disclosed its existence in response to the ACLU FOIA, describing it as “a 14-page memorandum dated 17 September 2001 from President Bush to the Director of the CIA pertaining to the CIA’s authorization to detain terrorists.” In an order in the ACLU suit, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein confirmed that the declaration was “intertwined with” the administration’s effort to keep the language in the Tenet document hidden. When the Obama administration succeeded in keeping that short phrase secret, all effort to release the declaration also ended...

But, more to your point, it's a curious argument to insulate President Obama from blame for these military actions that he ordered or approved by claiming the CIA is waging some kind of independent war without his approval or consent. You're free, of course, to make that argument, but it flies in the face of Pres. Obama's deliberate efforts to obscure and limit the public view of the previous administrations policy and practices related to torture and other coercions and exploitations of prisoners and captives.

His recent defense of the policies and practices should be enough to conclude that he believes there's something in his own administration's interest and prerogative to protect and preserve. Indeed, the executive order he touts as 'outlawing' torture only bans some practices, while preserving a whole range of others. To believe that the CIA has such control over his own executive actions is to assert that he's some sort of hostage, or puppet; a figurehead with some sinister, secret government operating behind the scenes; directing him to authorize each and every military action that advantages these very same objectionable and anti-constitutional findings which buttressed the previous tortures and renditions under Bush.

It's a ludicrous suggestion, and not very well thought out, which ignores almost two terms of military and intelligence directives from the White House advantaging the very same 'authorities' Bush used, actively presented and defended by this President, President Obama.

[librechik]

28. yes it's the same strategy, of course--because the real bosses haven't changed

just the kidnappee in chief. Of course he signs everything he is handed. And defends it, more or less. They make it impossible not to.

If you want to read more, I suggest the book by Tufts professor Michael Glennon. "National Security and Double Government"
I'm not just making stuff up. And I have thought about it deeply for many years. Oh, Peter Dale Scott's new book "The American Deep State" is good to read for people who think we still have an elected government that controls things. We don't.

[bigtree]

29. such an acquiescence as you describe would be treasonous

...it's impossible to disassociate President Obama from these policies and practices, off of which he's furthered and advantaged his own expansion and escalation of Bush's terror war- even if you assume he's some sort of dupe in it all. We elect him; we hold him responsible as our Commander-in-Chief for the actions of those who serve under him.

[librechik]

30. yes. It is traitorous, and I happen to think a President wouldn't voluntarily do it

But when a gun is held to your head, sometimes you do things you wouldn't ordinarily do. So I hear.

Or your bosses make sure you are as dirty as them, say, by forcing you to murder some people when you've barely been in office for 3 days, just to make sure you are as guilty as your bosses and they can control you.

That's how they operate, just like organized crime.

Me, I'm not turning on my president, because I KNOW he is a captive and has no choice. I want to solve the problem we actually have, instead of finding an Obama to blame. That's what they have in mind. So we never look for "Them"

The pirates took over the ship back in the sixties. Those are the enemy. Not the puppets.

[bigtree]

31. as I said

. . .a curious defense.

Obama's actions deemed by you to be traitorous - forced into compromising criminal acts by Bush cronies and forced to further and defend their objectionable practices and policies - yet, you decry 'turning on' him. That prospect, I believe, would constitute much more than a political prosecution. On its face, it would be a constitutional crisis of the highest order our nation has ever experienced. That's the most damning defense of President Obama that I can imagine. But, thank you for an interesting discussion.

[bigtree]

32. addendum

Last edited Fri Dec 12, 2014, 12:55 PM - Edit history (2)

Tina Issa @tinaissa
Copy of Torture report: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf

Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald
Alternative link for the torture report, also searchable https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3158659/sscistudy1.pdf

Foreign Policy @ForeignPolicy
The long-awaited torture report was released Tuesday morning. You can read it here http://atfp.co/1D3RKoD .

Washington Post @washingtonpost
CIA employees subjected detainees to "rectal rehydration" and other painful procedures that were never approved http://wapo.st/1ywxE3x

ACLU National @ACLU
President Obama's statement on release of Senate #TortureReport http://go.wh.gov/KNVQFD



STLtoday @stltoday
Senate report: Harsh CIA tactics didnt' work http://bit.ly/1vKiBkE

emptywheel @emptywheel
Here's my series on role of 9/17/01 Finding role in torture. https://www.emptywheel.net/2012/04/21/the-gloves-come-off-memorandum-of-notification/ … And Obama's attempt to hide it.

Nicole Perlroth ?@nicoleperlroth
Worth a re-read: Scott Shane's profile of the two psycho(logist)s who architected the CIA's torture program: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/us/12psychs.html

Art Vandalay ?@soxfaneast
Condoleeza Rice Gave Early Approval For CIA Waterboarding (From A 2009 Report) - Democratic Underground http://demu.gr/10025933239

CNN Breaking News ?@cnnbrk
Sen. #Feinstein on #torturereport: "#CIA's actions are a stain on our values." http://cnn.it/1wWIIX3

Eric Lichtblau-NYT ?@EricLichtblau
CIA official told hq that interrogators were incompetent and that torture tactics produced "useless intelligence" http://nyti.ms/1Iv6fSL

Peter Tinti ?@petertinti
MT @mehdirhasan: Remember this: to date, only CIA officer jailed over torture program is guy who helped reveal it: http://motherboard.vice.com/en_uk/blog/torturer-whistleblower-reporter-spy-john-kiriakou …

Anonymous ?@AnonyOps
#PardonJohn: Plz support John Kiriakou, who is in jail for blowing the whistle on CIA torture http://www.defendjohnk.com/wordpress/

Jameel Jaffer ?@JameelJaffer 10m10 minutes ago
Why the Justice Department should appoint a special prosecutor, and what that special prosecutor should do. https://www.aclu.org/national-security/why-criminal-investigation-necessary … @ACLU

Zeke Miller @ZekeJMiller
CIA Director Brennan statement on Senate report https://www.cia.gov/news-information/press-releases-statements/2014-press-releases-statements/statement-from-director-brennan-on-ssci-study-on-detention-interrogation-program.html …

Ujamaadam Serwer ?@AdamSerwer
CIA Made Cash Payments To Countries That Hosted Black Sites, Report Says http://www.buzzfeed.com/rosiegray/cia-made-cash-payments-to-countries-that-hosted-black-sites … via @rosiegray

Morning Edition ?@MorningEdition
Report: In '02, a detainee died from hypothermia after he was held "partially nude and chained to a concrete floor." http://n.pr/132RTsB

Jennifer Granick ?@granick
The #torture was so extreme that CIA. personnel cried, tried to put a halt to it, but internal channels did not work. http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html?_r=0 …

R Jeffrey Smith ?@rjsmithcpi
Bush himself expressed discomfort when shown pic of detainee in diaper chained to ceiling & forced to defecate on self, sez Intell Rpt

NurseMom ?@zpg410
“@fordm: Buried in a largely-redacted footnote: at least one officer played Russian roulette with a detainee. ” Sick



Ujamaadam Serwer ?@AdamSerwer 2h2 hours ago
This is what Dick Cheney and his fan club described as not torture.



Craig Whitlock ?@CraigMWhitlock
Report: CIA sometimes tortured Ramzi Binalshibh when he failed to call his interrogators "Sir," or because he "complained of stomach pain."

Senate Democrats ?@SenateDems
The death of an individual who was detained in a case of mistaken identity.



Alex Koppelman ?@AlexKoppelman
Chilling: Abu Zubaydah was so compliant he was basically a trained dog and still they kept torturing him.

Patrick Toomey ?@PatrickCToomey 2h
12 Years of #CIA Lawlessness: More than a decade after the Torture Memos, America still awaits accountability. https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-human-rights/happy-anniversary-cia-12-years-lawlessness … @ACLU


____ Incredibly, more than 200 CIA employees who were involved in the torture program are today still employed at the CIA. The acting general counsel of the CIA until this past March was the very same person who had been one of the CIA's top torture lawyers a decade ago . . .
read more: https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security-human-rights/happy-anniversary-cia-12-years-lawlessness


AmnestyInternational ?@AmnestyOnline
USA: Senate summary report on CIA detention programme must not be end of story http://bit.ly/1vAk5sL

Washington Post @washingtonpost
Feinstein: CIA report is 93% complete, 7% redacted http://wapo.st/1BwtZUu

bmaz @bmaz
“We tortured some folks,” - Barack Obama. Remember that condescending antipathy before giving Obama credit for the Torture Report release.

pourmecoffee @pourmecoffee
Dick Cheney should be forced to do the narration of the CIA torture report audiobook. That's fair.

[woo me with science]

39. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[woo me with science]

37. kick

[bigtree]

40. .