UPDATE: One caveat is in order here.... Before we take this article at face value - something I clearly do below - we must keep in mind the sourcing: "two officials present" at the briefings." Given the way the administration initially tried to lie its way out of the CIA tapes mess by falsely suggesting that members of congress had been told in advance about the destruction of evidence, it is entirely conceivable that this is yet another lie designed to shield the people involved from scrutiny.
Over the past 48 hours, it has seemed increasingly likely that the destruction of the interrogation tapes by the CIA will serve as the wedge that opens the entire detention and torture program to legal scrutiny. Torture is a war crime, and we now have concrete evidence of something we have long suspected, that the program was authorized at the highest levels of government by very senior government officials. Given the history of this administration, we should expect their initial reaction will include a concerted effort to confuse the story with lies and misinformation.
Is this story part of that campaign? My hunch says that it is. But that only makes it all the more urgent that the members of congress implicated here tell their side of the story quickly and clearly.
Speaker Pelosi, its time to step up and lead. What did you know and when did you know it? You took an oath. Live up to it.
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Suddenly it all makes sense.... The reason that congress has been so slow to investigate the Bush administration's use of torture? They may already know everything they need to know:
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.
Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."
Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.
I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. Not even nearly. Waterboarding was, is, and must always be illegal. I don't care if this was 2002 or 2003, nor does it matter if there was "an atmosphere of deep concern." The law is the law is the law, and if the CIA admitted to members of congress that they were waterboarding suspects, then those members of congress knew that the CIA was breaking the law.
We need answers about this, and we need them now. If this story is accurate, then Speaker Pelosi better start providing answers ASAP. What did she know? When did she know it? And why didn't she do anything to stop it?
Maybe I'm crazy, but I think members of congress ought to take their oath to "support and defend the Constitution" seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they ought to be willing in extreme circumstances to break the law in its defense. If we expect average citizens to engage in civil disobedience in extreme circumstances, why shouldn't we expect it from members of congress too?
Anyone who knew about this program had both a constitutional and moral duty to do whatever was necessary to stop it. They represent us. If our government is torturing people, it is doing it in our name, with our moral authority. They are our eyes and ears in government. We have placed them in a position of immense power, and yes, with great power comes great responsibility. Risking your career and placing yourself in legal jeopardy obviously would not be easy, but no one said representing millions of people should be easy. Sometimes doing the right thing is hard, but the degree of difficulty is no excuse for doing the wrong thing.
Speaker Pelosi has been implicated directly in this story. She needs to answer these charges and tell her side of the story. What did she know and when did she know it? And no, this isn't going to cut it:
Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or other harsh tactics. Graham left
the Senate intelligence committee in January 2003, and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn't object," Graham said in an interview. He said he now believes the techniques constituted torture and were illegal.
Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.
"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."
Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices. "I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday.
Harman's excuse is particularly pathetic. I don't care what kind of oath she took when she accepted her committee assignment. It doesn't supersede her oath to the defend the constitution.
As for the rest of the article, credit where credit is due. Although the Post buried it dead center in the article, they provided the best summary I've yet seen on this issue:
Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.
That is everything you need to know about torture in three sentences, minus one thing. Since the end of WWII and the signing of the Geneva Conventions, torture has been explicitly considered to be a war crime under both US and international laws. The people who directed this program, together with the people who approved it, are war criminals. If members of congress tacitly approved this program, then yes, I would indict them too.
This isn't hard. Civil disobedience is an option. Imagine what would happen if a member of congress stood up and willing broke the law to defend the constitution. Imagine the impact that would have. Is it really asking too much of our representatives that they be willing to sacrifice for us? They chose this life for themselves. No one is forcing them to run for office. No one.
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UPDATE II: Glenn Greenwald is mad. Very mad:
Jay Rockefeller was one of the key Democrats briefed on the torture methods who never objected. But it's far worse than that. In September, 2006, Rockefeller was one of 12 Senate Democrats to vote in favor of the Military Commissions Act, one of the principal purposes of which was to explicitly authorize the CIA's "enhanced interrogation program" to proceed (even though it continues to be illegal under the Geneva Conventions). Thus, not only did Rockefeller remain silent when continuously briefed on illegal torture methods by the CIA, he then voted to legalize those methods by voting in favor of one of the most Draconian laws in modern American history. That law also retroactively immunized government officials from any liability for past lawbreaking.
Rockefeller is not just any Democrat. He is the individual whom the Democratic Senate caucus thereafter elected -- and still chooses -- to lead them on all matters relating to intelligence. Just consider how compromised he is and they are when it comes to investigating abuses by the intelligence community over the last six years. Rockefeller was complicit in all of those abuses, and the Democrats voted for him -- and still support him -- as their Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. How can Rockefeller possibly preside over meaningful investigations into conduct and policies -- including the destruction of the videotapes and the conduct which those videotapes would reveal -- of which he approved? And how can Senate Democrats pretend to be outraged at such policies when the leader they chose supports them?This is exactly why I was so ambivalent, at best, about the Democrats' melodramatic protest that Michael Mukasey's refusal to condemn waterboarding as torture somehow placed him beyond the realm of the mainstream. Torture didn't become an American policy despite the best efforts of a righteous Democratic leadership to stop that. Torture became an American policy precisely because a meek and often outright supportive Democratic leadership continuously allowed it....
Beyond the complicit Jay Rockefeller, consider whom Nancy Pelosi installed as his House counterpart on the Intelligence Committee -- Silvestre Reyes. As Harper's Ken Silverstein reports today, Reyes has numerous, overlapping close personal ties with the CIA official at the center of the scandal over the destroyed interrogation videotapes, Jose Rodriguez. Silverstein also references a report that a key contractor with extensive business before the House Intelligence Committee not only contributes extensively to Reyes' campaign, but now employs both his son and daughter.
How can Reyes be expected to exercise meaningful oversight over the intelligence community when he is so intricately linked to its leading members? Reyes just issued a statement urging that the "destroyed video" investigation not dump everything on a "scapegoat" (meaning Rodriguez) -- a fair enough point, but one he's in no position to make given that Rodriguez is such a close confidant of his and any such statement would be understood as his wanting to protect his "very close friend."
Joe Kelin, meanwhile, falls into his ever so predictable defense of the establishment:
Some of the more extreme elements on the left-wing of the Democratic Party will lapse into their traditional wailing about the Bush-appeasing weakness of their party leaders. But the Washington Post reporters and their sources make clear that these briefings took place in the months after the September 11 attacks. There was fear that we would be attacked again by terrorists, and on a regular basis. Few were thinking clearly about the nature of the threat and how to deal with it. (By the time Harman was briefed, in 2003, people were thinking more clearly--hence her letter of protest.)
I lived in DC during 9/11. I lived there for most of the year after it. I'll never forget what that was like.
But that's not an excuse for failing to do the right thing. It was hard for rosa to refuse to give up here seat on that bus, but she did it. It was hard for those people to march across that bridge in Selma, but they did it. It was hard for those men and women in Warsaw to resist in 1944, but they did it. And in each and every one of those cases, the threat of death wasn't just hypothetical. It was real.
Doing the right thing isn't always easy. That's why we admire those who are able to do it. But degree of difficulty is no defense for inaction. Saying that "everyone panicked" isn't an excuse. For god's sake, shouldn't we expect that at least some of the people we elect to represent us won't panic? And if we can't expect that, what hope is there for self government?
Klein sets the bar for leadership so low that it becomes meaningless. It was the "post-9/11 panic," so we ought just let it slide? He actually believes this nonsense? Really?
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