Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 12:13:52 pm
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Towering Ancient Tsunami Devastated the Mediterranean
http://www.livescience.com/environment/061130_ancient_tsunami.html
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

SPEAKER PELOSI: THE CIA LIED TO ME

Pages: 1 [2]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: SPEAKER PELOSI: THE CIA LIED TO ME  (Read 488 times)
0 Members and 77 Guests are viewing this topic.
Dara Meloy
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 124



« Reply #15 on: May 15, 2009, 11:16:27 am »



--Here's Marcy Wheeler accusing the CIA of lying to ABC News a couple of times, and ABC not learning a lesson from it.

--In 2007, British intelligence officials accused the CIA of misleading them "over the arrest and treatment of terrorist suspects who were the subjects of rendition to Guantanamo Bay."

--Also in 2007, Federal prosecutors "said the CIA misled federal judges regarding the evidence against Zacarias Moussaoui."
Report Spam   Logged
Dara Meloy
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 124



« Reply #16 on: May 15, 2009, 11:16:46 am »

--In 2004, the CIA had to acknowledge that they "did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons."

--In 2008, then ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Pete Hoekstra -- who has Pelosi under fire today -- himself "called for a criminal investigation into whether the CIA lied to Congress and withheld information from the Justice Department during its inquiry into the 2001 shoot-down of an American missionary plane by the Peruvian air force with help from a CIA counternarcotics spotter plane."

--Heck, if you cast your mind back, waaay back, to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, know what you'd find? People accusing the CIA of misleading! From Howard Jones' The Bay Of Pigs: "No one accepted blame for the failure at the Bay of Pigs. The Joint Chiefs insisted that the CIA misled them. The CIA countered that the military failed to execute a sound plan. The White House held both parties responsible, asserting that they did not provide the proper advice."

--And of course, the CIA famously destroyed some ninety-two videotapes that pertained specifically to the very detention and interrogation program that's at the center of this dispute, a move that truly exemplifies the agency's towering affection for honesty and openness!
Report Spam   Logged
Dara Meloy
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 124



« Reply #17 on: May 15, 2009, 11:17:07 am »

So, look: let's not diminish the importance of uncovering all of Pelosi's what-did-she-know-and-when-did-she-know-its. But at the same time, let's not pretend that her accusal of the CIA is, in itself, some sort of eye-popping, unprecedented occurrence.

[Would you like to follow me on Twitter? Because why not? Also, please send tips to tv@huffingtonpost.com -- learn more about our media monitoring project here.]
Report Spam   Logged
Dara Meloy
Hero Member
*****
Posts: 124



« Reply #18 on: May 15, 2009, 11:18:16 am »

I don't care for Pelosi either, Bianca, but even if she was complicit in it or disagreed with it, what was she supposed to do?

Bush and Cheney called the shots, she didn't have any power in 2002 or 2003.
Report Spam   Logged
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #19 on: May 16, 2009, 09:16:00 pm »









                                                Panetta's Pelosi Smackdown



                                                  A truth too hot to handle






May 15, 2009
WSJ

Our guess is that Nancy Pelosi will come to regret her accusation on Thursday that CIA officials lied to her about their interrogation of terrorists. It took only a day for the agency to fire back, in the form of
a statement from Director Leon Panetta, a Democrat, an Obama appointee and a long-time California Congressional colleague of the House Speaker.

"CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," Mr. Panetta wrote in a memo to agency employees. "It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and
our values." A day earlier, Mrs. Pelosi had claimed that CIA officials had "misled" her at a September 4, 2002 briefing on enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding of the likes of Zubaydah.

Mr. Panetta had little choice but to publicly defend an agency whose morale he is now responsible for maintaining. However, on the merits, it seems highly implausible that the CIA would have lied to Mrs. Pelosi. Briefings are attended by more than one agency official, and a legislative liaison typically writes up a summary memo describing significant exchanges. Agency careerists hardly loved the Bush Administration after the Iraq WMD fiasco, and the controversy over "torture" has raged for years. If the CIA had misled Congress on a matter that was so politicized, surely someone in the agency would have leaked it long before now, if only to deflect blame onto the unpopular (and soon to depart) Republicans.

Mrs. Pelosi is now caught in a humiliation of her own design that will only escalate if she insists on an interrogation "truth commission."

To adapt a famous phrase, we're not sure her reputation can handle the truth.
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #20 on: May 17, 2009, 07:01:41 am »










                                  Panetta Says CIA Agents ‘Truthfully’ Briefed Pelosi
           





James Rowley
May 15, 2009
(Bloomberg)

-- Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta disputed U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s charge that the CIA misled her about interrogation tactics, saying officers of the spy agency “briefed truthfully” in 2002.

In a message to CIA employees today, Panetta cited a chart of congressional briefings that showed Pelosi was present for a Sept. 4, 2002, discussion of tactics used to interrogate suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah.

“Our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,’” Panetta said.

Pelosi insists she was never told that waterboarding, a technique to simulate drowning, was used on Zubaydah. She accused the CIA of misleading Congress and giving her “incomplete and inaccurate” information.

Asked yesterday if she was accusing the CIA of lying, the speaker replied: “Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States.â€

Panetta’s memo to CIA employees said that “it is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values.” He said, “Ultimately it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”



‘New Decibel Level’

A former member of Congress who, like Pelosi, is a California Democrat, Panetta told his CIA colleagues that while “there is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business,” the “debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress.”



Ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission

Pelosi responded with a statement late today blaming the Bush administration, not “the dedicated men and women of the intelligence community.”

“My criticism of the manner in which the Bush administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe,” Pelosi said.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs declined to say whether the Obama administration agreed with Pelosi’s charge. “The best thing we can do is look forward,” Gibbs said.

 

Waterboarding Mention

During her Capitol Hill press conference yesterday, Pelosi said “the only mention of waterboarding” during the 2002 briefing “was that it was not being employed.”

Pelosi said waterboarding was discussed only as a tactic that Justice Department lawyers had declared was a legal technique for trying to extract intelligence from suspected al- Qaeda operatives.

A CIA chart of congressional briefings about interrogations that was disclosed last week showed that Pelosi, then the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was briefed along with the panel’s Republican chairman, Porter Goss, later a CIA director. The chart “summarized the best recollections” of the CIA briefers, the agency said in a letter to the committee.



Interrogation Techniques

The Sept. 4, 2002, entry says that the briefing included “a description of the particular” enhanced interrogation techniques “that had been employed.”

Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding 83 times during the month preceding the briefing Pelosi attended, according to a 2005 Justice Department memo released last month.

House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland declined yesterday to support Pelosi’s charge when asked about it on the House floor by Republican Eric Cantor of Virginia.

“I certainly hope that’s not the case,” Hoyer said. “I don’t draw that conclusion.”

In a statement today, Hoyer said: “I have known Speaker Pelosi for more than 45 years, and I believe her. The Republicans’ focus on what she knew and when is a political distraction meant to divert attention from the question of whether the Bush administration allowed torture to be used.”



Graham Comments

Former Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham said in an interview on MSNBC today that when he was briefed, “about three weeks after the speaker,” the subject of waterboarding or treatment of any detainee didn’t come up. At the time, Graham was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The disclosure of Justice Department memos authorizing harsh interrogation tactics sparked the partisan debate over whether Pelosi and other lawmakers should have taken steps to stop the practices.

Pelosi supports creation of a truth commission to investigate the CIA’s treatment and interrogation of terrorism suspects. Republicans accuse her of hypocrisy, saying she knew since 2002 the spy agency was using such tactics and didn’t protest.

The speaker acknowledged for the first time yesterday that she was told in February 2003 that the CIA waterboarded suspected al-Qaeda operatives. Pelosi said she learned of that from an aide, who attended a briefing for other lawmakers who were briefed by the CIA.

Pelosi said she didn’t object because Representative Jane Harman, who replace her as ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, “wrote the appropriate letter to protest that.”



To contact the reporters on this story:

James Rowley
in Washington at
jarowley@bloomberg.net .
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
Byron
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 3813



« Reply #21 on: May 19, 2009, 01:11:51 pm »

I hear you, Bianca, as a leader she has left a lot to be desired!

But, let's not loose perspective here - mainly, that she had nothing to do with the decisions made to torture these guys, the Repuglicans probably knew more than she did, and the only reason that the right wingers are going after her now is cause she's a woman!  Equal rights supporters, these Repuglicans sure ain't!
Report Spam   Logged

Win One for the Lion



Healthcare is a Right, Not a Privilige
Byron
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 3813



« Reply #22 on: May 19, 2009, 01:13:35 pm »

Besides, your own former Senator, Bob Graham, supports Pelosi's contention that the CIA keeps bad records, too, and I am inclined to believe him - especially after they fabricated all that intel info to get us into war in Iraq and destroyed all the torture tapes. 
Report Spam   Logged

Win One for the Lion



Healthcare is a Right, Not a Privilige
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #23 on: May 20, 2009, 07:54:06 am »









                                            Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002


                             In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say






By Joby Warrick and
Dan Eggen
Washington Post
Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007

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.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "

Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general.

GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been disclosed.

U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings.

That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced interrogation" program would be treated as one of the nation's top secrets for fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, said U.S. officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said the administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost certainly condemn as abhorrent.

Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out after a furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers over its legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of Congress -- beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its most sensitive activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the circle of those in the know widened.

In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director said during a television interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." He said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a new interrogation program that President Bush formally announced over the summer

"I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest to you that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is necessarily the program moving forward into the future." 
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #24 on: May 20, 2009, 07:55:25 am »









Waterboarding Used on at Least 3



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.

In general, the technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board or other flat surface, and then raising his feet above the level of his head. A cloth is then placed over the subject's mouth and nose, and water is poured over his face to make the prisoner believe he is drowning.

U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.

Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of its interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with direct knowledge of the briefings.

The CIA provided another briefing the following month, and then about 28 additional briefings over five years, said three U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge of the meetings. During these sessions, the agency provided information about the techniques it was using as well as the information it collected.

Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the briefings.

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.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam War prisoner who is seeking the GOP presidential nomination, took an early interest in the program even though he was not a member of the intelligence committee, and spoke out against waterboarding in private conversations with White House officials in late 2005 before denouncing it publicly.

In May 2007, four months after Democrats regained control of Congress and well after the CIA had forsworn further waterboarding, four senators submitted written objections to the CIA's use of that tactic and other, still unspecified "enhanced" techniques in two classified letters to Hayden last spring, shortly after receiving a classified hearing on the topic. One letter was sent on May 1 by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). A similar letter was sent May 10 by a bipartisan group of three senators: Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers briefed on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it."





Staff writers Josh White and Walter Pincus and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
Bianca
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 41646



« Reply #25 on: May 20, 2009, 08:09:27 am »








Many wanted to impeach Bush but Nancy Pe-lousey wouldn’t hear it.

She was in bed with them.

She bent over backwards for them.


“Nancy is


                                                        OFF THE TABLE”!!!
Report Spam   Logged

Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart what is true.
V.I.P.
Full Member
***
Posts: 28



« Reply #26 on: May 21, 2009, 08:13:11 am »

I think we should waterboard Miss Nancy Pelosi and see what she knows about these enhanced interrogation practices, when she knew it and what, for sure she said about it! 
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: 1 [2]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy