"Still More Doubts Arise About CIA’s Info On Torture Briefings"

Greg Sargent:

Today’s Washington Post has a big story about Dick Cheney and torture that’s important for a number of reasons, not least because it raises still more doubts about the CIA documents that purported to detail what members of Congress were told and when about the use of torture.

The story reports that Cheney personally oversaw four or more briefings of members of congress about the torture program as part of an aggressive campaign in 2005 to maintain support for the use of torture.

But here’s the thing: The CIA documents that Republicans have widely cited as proof that Nancy Pelosi lied about what she knew didn’t mention Cheney’s presence at these briefings. Instead, as WaPo notes, the docs said that the info about who oversaw those particular briefings was “not available.”

Pelosi was broadly pilloried by Republicans and neutral observers for saying the CIA lied. Yet here’s yet more evidence that the CIA’s documents were incomplete at best and willfully misleading at worst.

The story also raises an important question: Why did the CIA omit from those documents any mention of Cheney’s presence at any of these briefings? Was the claim that the info was “not available” an outright falsehood designed to cover up Cheney’s role?

Marcy Wheeler has some must-reading on the WaPo story.

I’m hoping to dig into this more today, so please let me know your thoughts.