Charlie Rose Show: Obama, Holder, Cheney and CIA Torture and Spying (video)

Charlie Rose, video (26:28):

A conversation about the Bush Administration's Intelligence Programs with Scott Shane of "The New York Times" and Jane Mayer of "The New Yorker."

Barack Obama

"More Democrats call for investigating the CIA" (with video)

Alex Isenstadt (Politico) with video (00:28):

Calls for an investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency intensified this weekend amid revelations that former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the concealment of a covert agency spy program from Congress.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said that the Senate Intelligence Committee should “absolutely” investigate the program.

"The executive branch of government should not create programs like these programs and keep Congress in the dark," Durbin said on ABC’s “This Week”. "To have a massive program that was concealed from the leaders in Congress is not only inappropriate, it could be illegal."

In an article posted to its website on Saturday, the New York Times reported that CIA Director Leon Panetta notified House and Senate intelligence committee members that Cheney ordered the concealment of a surveillance program from Congress.

The article, which sourced the claim to "two people with direct knowledge of the matter," follows on the heels of reports this week that Panetta had told House intelligence committee members that the CIA had misled Congress for eight years about the program.

Lawmakers have declined to offer any details about the covert program, citing the sensitivity of intelligence information. Intelligence officials have told POLITICO that the program was "on-again, off-again over the years," and that it "never went fully operational."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that Congress should have been told about the classified program.

"I think you weaken your case when you go outside the law," Feinstein said on "Fox News Sunday." "That's something that should never happen again."

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who chairs the House Intelligence Oversight & Investigations Subcommittee, said in an interview with POLITICO that the New York Times report only reinforced the need for the launch of formal investigation into the CIA’s practices.

“What it does is really propel a prompt investigation,” Schakowsky said. “An explicit decision was made at the highest levels not to report this program.”

But Republicans insist there is no need to rush into an investigation into the CIA - and are accusing Democrats of trying to make political hay out of the revelations.

"What if it's a top secret program?” Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl asked on “This Week.” “Let's don't jump to conclusions is what I'm saying."

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), meanwhile, said Democrats were turning the CIA into a “whipping child.”

"That isn't a reason to disassemble the CIA and make them a whipping child in the middle of public opinion, which basically undermines the whole agency," Gregg said on CNN's "State of the Union." "This is a national attempt by some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle to basically undermine efforts to collect intelligence."

But Democrats are making the case that the New York Times report offers vindication for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who has come under fire from critics after asserting earlier this year that the CIA had misled her on its use of controversial water-boarding practices.

“It certainly confirms her characterization of the level of openness the intelligence community and the CIA have given to Congress,” Schakowsky told POLITICO.

Asked if Panetta's charge – which does not seem to directly relate to the question of what the CIA Pelosi about waterboarding – offered validation to the Speaker's complaint of being misled by the agency, Schakowsky responded: “Absolutely.”

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano declined to comment on the New York Times report, saying, “It’s not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing."

“When a C.I.A. unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect,” Gimigliano said.

Howie P.S.: As Joe Sudbay says on AMERICAblog, "Even Dianne Feinstein thinks the Bush admin. might have broken law." I see the investigations as more about manipulation of the CIA by Bush-Cheney than just about the CIA itself.

"CIA Lied to Colin Powell"

Bob Fertig:

Republicans and the Corporate Media are trying to destroy Speaker Pelosi because she dared to accuse the CIA of misleading her during her (only) torture briefing on September 4, 2002.

Of course Pelosi isn't the only one who was misled by the CIA during the march to war in 2002-2003. We were all misled - the Media, Congress, the American people, and the entire world.

As Bush's CIA even misled members of the Bush Administration, including Secretary of State Colin Powell! Powell's CoS Larry Wilkerson shared more details with CIA veteran Ray McGovern:

“Powell and I had a one-on-one — no one else even in the room — about his angst over what was a rather dull recounting of several old stories about Al Qa’ida-Baghdad ties [in the draft speech],” Wilkerson said. “I agreed with him that what we had was bull___t, and Powell decided to eliminate all mention of terrorist contacts between AQ and Baghdad.

“Within an hour, [CIA Director George] Tenet and [CIA Deputy Director John] McLaughlin dropped a bombshell on the table in the [CIA] director’s Conference Room: a high-level AQ detainee had just revealed under interrogation substantive contacts between AQ and Baghdad, including Iraqis training AQ operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons.”

Though Tenet and McLaughlin wouldn’t give Powell the identity of the al-Qaeda source, Wilkerson said he now understands that it was Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, an al-Qaeda operative who later claimed he gave the CIA false information in the face of actual and threatened torture.

Not realizing that the new intelligence was tainted, “Powell changed his mind and this information was included in his UNSC presentation, along with some more general information from the previous text about Baghdad's terrorist tendencies,” Wilkerson said...

“As you can see, nowhere were we told that the high-level AQ operative had a name, or that he had been interrogated [in Egypt] with no US personnel present or much earlier rather than just recently (the clear implication of Tenet's breathtaking delivery),” Wilkerson said.

“And not a single dissent was mentioned (later we learned of the DIA dissent) … All of this was hidden from us – the specific identity, we were informed, due to the desire to protect sources and methods as well as a cooperative foreign intelligence service. …

“As for me in particular, I learned the identity of al-Libi only in 2004 and of the DIA dissent about the same time, of al-Libi's recanting slightly later, and of the entire affair's probably being a Tenet-McLaughlin fabrication – to at least a certain extent – only after I began to put some things together and to receive reinforcement of the ‘fabrication’ theme from other examples.”

So the CIA lied to Colin Powell and Larry Wilkerson, just as they did to Nancy Pelosi, Jay Rockefeller, Bob Graham, and everyone else who wasn't a card-carrying Neocon.

Why isn't the Corporate Media outraged at Bush's CIA and its overlord Dick Cheney, rather than Pelosi and all the other victims of their lies?

Andy Worthington has much more.

McGovern was interviewed by The Real News.

"Pelosi’s Claims Getting Much More Media Scrutiny Than CIA’s Assertions"

Greg Sargent:

Whichever side of the torture debate you’re on, it’s a simple matter of fact that Nancy Pelosi’s claims about what she was told and when about torture are getting far more intense media scrutiny than the CIA’s claims are.

Simple fairness demands that both side’s claims get treated with a similar level of skepticism. And they’re not.

Multiple news accounts this morning report that Pelosi’s credibility is in question after yesterday’s press conference, in which she accused the CIA of lying about what they told members of Congress about the agency’s use of torture. This theme was sounded by MSNBC, WaPo’s Dan Balz, the New York Times write-up, and many others.

That’s as it should be. But I challenge you to find a news account that stated with equal prominence that the CIA’s credibility is also in question.

Let’s briefly recap. Three senior Democrats — Pelosi, Bob Graham, and Jay Rockefeller — have all publicly claimed that the CIA didn’t brief them about the use of torture in the manner the agency has claimed. Meanwhile, the CIA itself has conceded that its own accounting may not be accurate.

Yet key facts that cast doubt on the CIA’s claims have been buried or completely omitted from multiple news reports. The Times’s first mention of Graham’s claims came today, five days after he first made them, and they were buried in the 22nd paragraph of the paper’s write-up. Neither The Time nor The Post have even mentioned Rockefeller’s claims once. The networks have refused across the board to mention the CIA’s own unwillingness to vouch for the accuracy of its information.

There are notable exceptions. McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay, for instance, has talked up the importance of the CIA’s caveats. And to its credit, The Politico has shined a spotlight on the dissents of Graham and Rockefeller and on some of the contradictions in the GOP’s criticism of Pelosi.

This is not only about Pelosi. It is a dispute. One side is claiming one thing, and the other is claiming the opposite. Simple fairness demands that equal levels of skepticism are applied to people on both sides of this argument. And that isn’t happening. There’s no way around it.

"The Military Resisted" (torture)

Andrew Sullivan:

The torture policy was Cheney's baby, not the military's. They resisted, as my email in-tray over the years is testimony to. Cheney himself told us when he warned us of his walking over to the "dark side" what he was going to do, and a pliant, ignorant, overwhelmed president with a sadistic streak was powerless to resist, even if one clings to the hope he might have wanted to. Why torture for Cheney? I cannot know for sure, but suspect it was a way to gain some personal traction against an amorphous enemy that had no territory to defend and no army to destroy; it was a means of feeling in control; it was a way to reverse what Cheney believed was the neutering of the post-Watergate presidency; it was revenge; and it was secret, allowing Cheney and his small circle total control over the bodies of individuals they wanted to penetrate and destroy.

Fatally, it was also, according to the Senate report, a way to coerce evidence of an al Qaeda-Saddam link. Remember that the Bush-Cheney techniques were most aggressively used by the Communist Chinese to extract false confessions. These false confessions legitimized the torture and provided the justification for the next torture. This is the Imaginationland some of us have been worried about for quite a while now. Once you have abandoned the rule of law and placed your trust in the hands of human beings with the power to torture, there is no returning. All you can do at some point is turn the lights on and see exactly the human wreckage and reality that remains.

"CIA Exempt On Torture, But Not Lynndie England"

Liz Halloran, NPR:

President Obama's decision not to prosecute government lawyers who wrote Bush-era memos authorizing torture at CIA prisons — or the CIA officers who carried out the harsh tactics — has incited bitter debate.

White House aides making the talk show rounds have defended the decision as a deliberate effort to look forward instead of back, and to maintain morale at the CIA during perilous times.

"We have turned the page on this episode in our history," senior adviser David Axelrod said Sunday. "We're moving past all that."

But the lack of punishment for the severe interrogation actions that ravaged the nation's moral standing in the world has infuriated civil libertarians here and abroad.

And it has raised questions about punishments — including prison terms — already meted out to nine soldiers convicted in the 2004 abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

'This Is Not Justice'

"Every American should be outraged," says Roy T. Hardy, who represents Pfc. Lynndie England. The 22-year-old Army clerk became the international face of the Abu Ghraib scandal when photos of her in poses with naked Iraqi detainees shocked the world.

"Obama, who I love to death, is not going to punish CIA agents for doing what they were told to do," says Hardy, England's civilian lawyer, "when those torture memos gave them permission to do more than what was ever done at Abu Ghraib?"

Convicted in 2005 of maltreatment and conspiracy for posing in those pictures, including one in which she held a leash around a prisoner's neck, England has already served one and a half years in military prisons, and an equal time on parole.

Now 25, she is living with her family and 4-year-old son in Fort Ashby, W.Va., and is appealing her dishonorable discharge.

"This is not justice," Hardy says. England's military lawyer, Capt. Tim Thomas, could not be reached for comment Monday.

England's former military counsel, Jonathan Crisp, who represented her at trial, said Monday that he was in the midst of a murder trial and didn't have time to comment on her case.

But both Hardy and author Gary Winkler — whose biography of England, Tortured: Lynndie England, Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked the World, is expected to be released in June — say they hope that the advance exoneration of the CIA and its officers will help England at least soften the terms of her discharge.

Best case? A presidential pardon, both say, but a highly unlikely prospect.

'How Can We Prosecute Young People Caught Up In A Mess?'

"The injustice really smacks you in the face," says Winkler, whose writings focus on the people and places of Appalachia.

"If we're not going to prosecute the higher-ups, or even the civilian contractors, how can we prosecute young people caught up in a mess for doing stuff that was mild compared to Bagram?" he says.

Bagram is a U.S. internment center in Afghanistan where prisoners were tortured, and at least two were murdered, according to military coroners. The White House has not ruled out prosecuting those involved in abuses that went beyond harsh actions allowed in the so-called torture memos written by Bush administration lawyers.

Neither Hardy nor Winkler said they were speaking out to condone England's participation in the picture-taking humiliations at Abu Ghraib. Both say there were situations she could have walked away from.

Winkler has spent the past eight months interviewing England and those who know her. He describes the young woman as compliant and deferential to authority figures.

That included her boyfriend at the time, Charles Graner Jr., an Army reservist sentenced to 10 years in prison for his role at Abu Ghraib. Graner, who has since married fellow Abu Ghraib guard Megan Ambuhl, has challenged England's claim that he's the father of her son, and recently demanded a DNA test to prove paternity. Ambul pleaded guilty to two minor charges related to the Abu Ghraib scandal, but served no prison time.

England and her family are still "shell-shocked," Winkler says. With a felony conviction, she has been unable to find work. Though she has yet to be formally discharged from the Army, her pay and benefits were halted with her conviction.

Winkler says his book will be an attempt to put England's life in context.

Part of that context, Hardy says, is the government's reliance on people like England, poor and patriotic, to fight the country's wars.

'Not Much That Can Be Done At This Point'

Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale University, says that "there is a bind between the fact that England did time, and the people who many Americans believe have done far worse are not going to be criminally punished."

"I wouldn't fault her for making the argument," he says. "But there's not much that can be done at this point besides changing the character of her discharge."

If England successfully argues to change her dishonorable discharge to a bad conduct or an administrative discharge, she may be eligible for some health benefits, Hardy said.

President Obama could also give instructions to abate the proceedings against England, and he could even give her a pardon, Fidell says.

But that would be a rare presidential move, he says, and not something Obama is likely to do.

"I know that there are a lot of people who are very disappointed in the president," Fidell says. "But people should really be angry with President Bush and the people who brought us to this dreadful set of choices in the first place."

He adds: "I'm sure [Obama] is very conflicted in having to give people a free pass simply because some people holding law degrees cranked out some bad advice under his predecessor."

That's small consolation to Hardy, who sees his client as a convenient and powerless scapegoat for bad that happened during the Bush years.

"She was never convicted of abusing a prisoner, of withholding medical aid, food or water," Hardy says. "She was convicted of the act of jumping in the picture."

"That's nothing compared to what President Obama just said we're going to excuse," he said. "Nothing."

Barack Obama

"Hitchens talks torture memo release" (video)

MSNBC-Morning Joe, video (09:17).

Howie P.S.: Christopher Hitchens also accuses the CIA of illegality, stupidity, laziness and sadism.