Sen Bob Graham: Majority on Senate Intelligence Committee Supported Interrogation Oversight in 2002

[kpete]

Senator Bob Graham: Majority on Senate Intelligence Committee Supported Interrogation Oversight in 2002
By: emptywheel Monday March 8, 2010 11:03 am

.............

But contrary to what the CIA represented to Roberts, Graham wasn’t asking to “review the interrogations in real time.” He was planning initial oversight of the interrogation program. He wanted to ask basic questions about what was going on:

* What’s going on?
* Who authorized the program?
* What intelligence are we getting out of it?

Graham told me that “well over a majority” of the committee supported doing such oversight. When I asked, he said Jay Rockefeller, who replaced him as the Ranking Democrat on the Committee, supported the effort. Though Graham didn’t remember precisely who was on the Committee at the time (here’s the list-http://intelligence.senate.gov/members107thcongress.html ), he named Richard Lugar and Mike DeWine as two of the Republicans who were probably in the majority supporting this kind of oversight over the program.

But between CIA’s apparent misrepresentations to Roberts and Roberts’ own disinterest in asking even the most basic questions about the CIA’s interrogation programs, those efforts ended when Graham left the committee and Roberts took over as Chair.

And that’s how Pat Roberts and CIA agreed to avoid asking or answering even the most basic questions about the Bush Administration’s torture program.

more:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2010/03/08/senator-bob-graham-a-majority-of-senate-intelligence-committee-supported-interrogation-oversight-in-2002