Reply #34: CIA Manipulating Briefing Process!![/

[flyarm]

i have been posting this since early this morning..and will continue to post until enough people read it!

do read the comments at emptywheel as well..chock full of info!!!!!!!!!!!!


http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/08/breaking-news-cia-manipulating-briefing-process/#more-4088

Breaking News!! CIA Manipulating Briefing Process!!
By: emptywheel Friday May 8, 2009 6:49 am

No. Not really breaking. We knew that CIA was playing around with its obligation to inform the intelligence committees before it starts any big new projects--like opening torture factories around the world.


snip;

Second, look at when--according to the CIA's specific assertions--they first talked about waterboarding to members of Congress:

February 4, 2003: Pat Roberts and a Republican and a Democratic staffer (but not Jello Jay); according to the CIA there was no specific mention of waterboarding in the February 5, 2003 briefing for Porter Goss and Jane Harman

July 13, 2004: Porter Goss and Jane Harman

July 15, 2004: Pat Roberts and Jello Jay



snip;
Given the way the SSCI narrative focuses on the constitutional amendments named under CAT (the 5th, 8th, and 14th), I suspect CIA was informed in no uncertain terms they would have to account for these in the briefing. If they did not record the fact, it suggests they were trying to claim deniability for that key issue (though that is speculative on my part).

The CIA seems to have no memory of the details of the 2005 briefings (and, as WO has pointed out, seems to have been unsure who was HPSCI Chair and who was DCIA, since it claims that Porter Goss, then head of CIA, attended a March 8, 2004 hearing as HPSCI Chair). That's rather curious as Mary McCarthy has alleged that the CIA briefers in two hearings in 2005 lied to Congress. At least one of these briefings would have also featured the Senators asking why they fuck OLC ignored the 8th Amendment (and the CAT generally) in its December 2004 opinion. It includes briefings when Jello Jay was beginning to ask for more details on the torture program, to no avail. And, finally, it includes briefings when Congress should have been briefed about the destroyed torture tapes, but wasn't. All of that? The CIA seems to have little memory of it.

Then there's the slew of Republican-only briefings in 2005, just after the Senate approved the McCain Amendment limiting torture use. As I've explained the most suspicious of those is the briefing of the two pro-torture Republicans holding DOD's purse strings.

Until, finally, in 2006, it finally gets around to briefing the full intelligence committees but not yet the full Gang of Eight, leaving off the House leadership, including Nancy Pelosi. Anyone wonder why Jane Harman got her very own briefing on September 6, 2006, the day Bush finally came clean as a tortuer? I do.

In short, in spite of what Republicans tell you (and therefore ABC prints), this is actually an utter damning chronology of CIA contempt for their obligations to inform Congress (particularly Democrats in Congress).