WAAS (07) Explains What Cheney Was Up To Besides Torture In Summer of 2002...

[kpete]

Don't miss really important NYT oped today by former CIA CTC deputy general counsel Vicki Divoll (that amplifies a point Marcy Wheeler has been making for weeks):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/opinion/13divoll.html?ref=global

There is no legally recognized entity under National Security Act as "gang of four."

The whole highly restrictive parameters under which Pelosi was briefed in 2002 (and she says was actively misled in that same single briefing) may be illegal.
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/14/pelosi-cia-told-us-waterboarding-was-not-being-employed/

There is also highly interesting reporting by Murray Waas http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0215nj1.htm from a couple years ago that explains the backdrop to those restricted briefings and you won't be surprised to know it all goes back to Cheney. The upshot: that in the summer of 2002 Cheney was using leaks to threaten to stop notifying Congressional intel committes about covert programs and sensitive information. His reason was that he said Congress leaks (and he meant, Congressional Democrats). But turned out the leaker the FBI identified on intel in question Cheney was fuming about at the time was not a Democrat but a Republican, then ranking R on Senate Intel committee Richard Shelby.

So - June 2002, Cheney looking for reason not to brief Congress. August 2002 - Zubaydah waterboarded 83 times. September 2002 - Pelosi and Goss briefed retractively on methods the CIA determined were "legal" to use in covert enhanced interrogation program. And according to Pelosi, she was not told that Zubaydah had already been waterboarded. Indeed, she says she was told waterboarding was not BEING used (, if technically accurate, highly misleading since it had been used 83 times on Zubaydah the past month).

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0215nj1.htm
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/009233.html

[ControlledDemolition]

1. This shows that Cheney was so desperate for false testimony linking Saddam to 911. n/t

[mod mom]

2. So did Shelby "leak" to allow Cheney to limit the number of congress people he

had to brief? He was never charged.

[mod mom]

3. Question: Did bu$h misuse his authority w signing statements to disregard the NSA of '47?

Was it his own authority that allowed him to break the law about informing congress?