Washington Post lede:
Timeline: Top Bush Officials Approved of Harsh Interrogations as Early as Summer 2002
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, April 22, 2009; 5:56 PM
Condoleezza Rice, John D. Ashcroft and at least 10 other top Bush officials reviewed and approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees at secret prisons, including waterboarding that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a detailed timeline furnished by Holder to the Senate Intelligence Committee....
More after the jump...
B
...At a moment when the Justice Department is deciding whether former officials who set interrogation policy or formulated the legal justifications for it should be investigated for committing crimes, the new timeline lists the members of the Bush administration who were present when the CIA's director and its general counsel explained exactly which questioning methods were to be used and how those sessions proceeded.
Rice gave a key early approval, when, as Bush's national security adviser, she met on July 17, 2002, with the CIA's then-director, George J. Tenet, and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah," subject to approval by the Justice Department, according to the timeline. Rice and four other White House officials had been briefed two months earlier on "alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding," it states. Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning....
Here we go. It's going all the way up the ladder, and Nancy Pelosi isn't going to stand in the way:
Pelosi won't rule out impeaching judge
By S.A. Miller
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday would not rule out impeachment hearings against federal Judge Jay Bybee over accusations he misled Congress about his role in shaping Bush administration policy that condoned harsh interrogation techniques that critics say amounted to torture.
Mrs. Pelosi, California Democrat, said lawmakers must determine whether Mr. Bybee lied during his 2003 confirmation hearings, which won him a lifetime appointment to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"I would not call for his impeachment without knowing what the facts are," Mrs. Pelosi said. "But I do think that the legal opinions, as we are learning now, that were issued by the [Justice Department's] Office of Legal Counsel did not serve our country well and were not based on our country's values"....
Pelosi won't rule out impeachment?
Let's rule it in.