CIA Lying to Congress?
The CIA has been lying to Congress about somethingoranother for years now, sources tell NYT. The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed “significant actions” from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said. In a June 26 letter to Mr. Panetta discussing ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 9, 2009 08:37
How the FBI Broke Saddam
James Gordon Meek has a very interesting two-part story on how FBI Special Agent George Piro successfully interrogated Saddam Hussein. Shockingly, it does not involve waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, nudity, or German shephards. The FBI prides itself on “rapport-based” interrogations that have a high success rate for yielding confessions from the likes of 1993 World trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 28, 2009 07:51
Overstatement of the Day - Torture Edition
"It appears that waterboarding - a torture technique popularized by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney - has been picked up overseas." - Andrew Sullivan Now, look, I'm opposed to torturing suspected terrorists. But the United States Government waterboarded a grand total of three of them during the Bush-Cheney tenure. So let's not pretend it was somehow a favorite pastime of ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on June 10, 2009 11:20
Levin: Cheney Lying About CIA Memos
Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Carl Levin claims that former Vice-President Dick Cheney is lying when he claims that classified CIA memos show that Bush Administration ordered torture/enhanced interrogation techniques produced actionable intelligence that saved American lives. Levin, speaking at the Foreign Policy Association's annual dinner in Washington on Wednesday, said an investigation by his committee into detainee abuse ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 29, 2009 14:19
Alexander vs. Cheney on Interrogation
The video embedded below features arguments presented by Dick Cheney in favor of torture (or, if you prefer, "enhanced interrogation techniques"), which are ably demolished by Matthew Alexander, a former member of the United States Air Force who served as an Interrogator in Iraq. He was part of a task force charged with determining the location of Abu Zarqawi.There's ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 27, 2009 22:53
Rumsfeld Bible Quotes
Apparently, a lot of people who use Yahoo! are searching for "Rumsfeld bible quotes" today. This rather odd happenstance is apparently a function of a story that circulated earlier in the week about Rumsfeld putting bible verses on the cover sheets of "Worldwide Intelligence Updates" intended for President Bush. Apparently, the story is largely untrue.Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 22, 2009 13:11
White House Lawyers vs. Military Lawyers on Torture
One thing that's also worth noting in the debate over the Bush Administration's torture program is that while the Office of Legal Counsel did sign off on the techniques used (with memos so bad that the lawyers in question are soon to be under investigation for a breach of their professional duties), the fact remains that the Administration also sought ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 22, 2009 09:35
Cheney: Debate Makes America Look Weak
In his speech on national security before the American Enterprise Institute today, Former Vice-President Dick Cheney made the rather surprising argument that debate over the treatment of detainees makes American look weak. And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 21, 2009 13:47
Quote of the Day - Torture Trials Edition
"Well, conservative, conshmervative - even Karl Rove would pay good money to see Pelosi handcuffed to Dick Cheney." - Kate McMillan responding to news that the then-Minority Whip and top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee was briefed on the use of "enhanced interogation techniques" in the fall of 2002 and "gave it her stamp of approval." And, no, the fact ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 8, 2009 08:28
Not Enough Pashto Speakers but Pashto is Not Enough
Stephen Walt repeats the popular lament (and specifically Gareth Porter's) that the United States Government employs a ridiculously small number of Pashto speakers and that this negatively impacts us in Afghanstan. Pat Porter agrees but issues some important caveats: 1) Languages are extremely hard to develop at a sufficient level. Except for the most outrageously talented, most folk can study intensively ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on May 4, 2009 06:14
UN Demands Torture Prosecutions
Manfred Nowak, the U.N.'s special rapporteur on torture, proclaimed yesterday that the United States must prosecute the lawyers who drew up the torture memos and that if we fail to do so it is the duty of other states to step in and bring charges. In my New Atlanticist piece, "UN: United States Must Prosecute Torture Lawyers," I wonder how ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 25, 2009 11:28
Quote of the Day - Repugnant Edition
"For those most committed to the ridiculous crusade for terrorist rights, 'enhanced interrogation' is not only immoral and illegal, it's ineffective. That argument, like Khalid Sheik Mohamed, doesn't hold water." - Michael Goldfarb One wonders what John McCain, who suffered torture for five years as a guest of the North Vietnamese and whose campaign employed Goldfarb as deputy communications director, thinks ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 24, 2009 06:00
Rogue Agents Tipped Pelosi To Harman Wiretap
"Intelligence officials, angry that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had blocked an FBI investigation into Democratic Rep. Jane Harman's interactions with a suspected Israeli agent, tipped off Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader, that Harman had been picked up on a court-ordered National Security Agency wiretap targeting the agent," CQ's Jeff Stein reports. "In doing so, the officials flouted an ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 23, 2009 10:16
Torture and Sex: Moral Relativism or Morally Unrelated?
Kevin Drum observes, When the subject has anything to do with sex, the right in America is the party of moral absolutes. We know what's right, we know what's wrong, and even if there's a price to pay we can't shirk our responsibility to set a proper example and do the right thing. But when the subject is torture, suddenly it's all ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 22, 2009 13:07
Torture Worked! Foiled Los Angeles Attack! Yay Torture!
After several days of inflamed public debate following official confirmation that the United States government tortured suspected terrorists under specific authorization from the Bush administration, the inevitable pushback has begun. Several reports now suggest that these extreme interrogation techniques had the desired effect, yielding valuable intelligence that saved lives. The most interesting of these, alas, comes from CNS and is headlined ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on April 22, 2009 07:42
