Greetings from the Left Coast! It isn't very often that you'll hear me say nice things about the content of the Washington Post, but Warrick and Eggen should be commended for the piece that ran on Sunday, December 9, and exposed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senators Bob Graham and Jay Rockefeller as the deceitful scoundrels they are. (I would have just said "liars," but I'm trying to be nice here.)
These three Democrats are among those condemning the Bush administration and the CIA for using "torture" in the interrogation of prisoners at Guantanemo Bay and other locations. Now we find that they knew of the practices way back in 2002 and 2003 Here's what the article says, in part:
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...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."
"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.' "
(You can read the full article at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html?sub=new, although you'll have to register with them to get to the content.)
So, when 9/11 was fresh in everyone's mind, they had no objection. Now, when they think there's political gain to be had by accusing the Republicans of condoning "torture," they're all too happy to do so. Graham claims that he has no memory of ever being told about the harsh interrogation techniques. Pelosi now claims that she thought that the techniques were only in the planning stages and had not been put into practice. They naturally assumed that no one would call them on it. For once, they were wrong.
Thanks for listening.
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