CIA Responds to Obey: Briefing Accounts Are ‘Not Transcripts And Recordings’

[struggle4progress]

By Spencer Ackerman 5/19/09 2:23 PM

Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.) wrote to CIA Director Leon Panetta yesterday to claim an inaccuracy in the CIA’s list of briefings held for members of Congress on the so-called “enhanced interrogation” program. Specifically, Obey said that a House Appropriations Committee aide named Paul Juola never attended a Sept. 19, 2006 briefing that the CIA briefing chart listed him as attending. And while a CIA official didn’t back away from the claim, he appeared to concede that the agency’s briefing account is far from an authoritative summary of what Congress knew about torture and when it knew it. Here’s a statement to me from CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano:

“While CIA’s information has Mr. Juola attending briefings on September 19, 2006 and October 11, 2007, there are different recollections of these events, which Mr. Obey’s letter describes. As the agency has pointed out more than once, its list — compiled in response to congressional requests — reflects the records it has. These are notes, memos, and recollections, not transcripts and recordings” ...

http://washingtonindependent.com/43615/cia-responds-to-obey-briefing-accounts-are-not-transcripts-and-recordings

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Why Rep. Obey should have just asked Newt what happened or any one of the dozens of RW pundits that

KNOW exactly what took place at those briefings!