Another day, another, what did they know and when did they know it?  Today's New York Times reports that CIA lawyers gave written approval for the destruction of videotaped interrogations of alleged Al Qaeda  prisoners, approval given by some unnamed lawyers, not then General Counsel, John Rizzo.  In fact, although Rizzo had been involved in the discussions about the tapes for two years, he was not involved in giving the final approval.  And according to a former intelligence official:

...there had been nearly two years of debate among government agencies about what to do with the tapes, and that lawyers within the White House and the Justice Department had in 2003 advised against a plan to destroy them. But the official said that C.I.A. officials had continued to press the White House for a firm decision, and that the C.I.A. was never given a direct order not to destroy the tapes.

"They never told us, ‘Hell, no,’" he said. "If somebody had said, ‘You cannot destroy them,’ we would not have destroyed them."

And if the White House had been pressed for two years on a decision, when did George Bush become involved in the process?  According to Dana Perino, Bush:

...has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday.

Well, it seems that the Decider is seriously out of the loop these days.  This eleventh-hour awareness is reminiscent of when Bush found out that Iran had suspended their nuclear weapons program:

And it wasn't until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.

Reminiscent and just as believable.

So, who in the White House was involved in this two year back and forth?

As I said -- I already said that I asked about the President -- look, if we can get you answers on other people, I will.

Don't hold your breath waiting for those answers.  

I've been pretty angry with the actions of Senate Democrats recently, but I have to give them props when they do do the right thing.  In this case, they forced Bush to withdraw his nominee for CIA general counsel, John Rizzo, because of his connections to the CIA's use of torture enhanced interrogation techniques at secret foreign prisons.  Here's the press release from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence [Ed. note:  I'm sorry there's no link, as I received this in an email.  The Committee's own website doesn't yet have it up.]:

Crossposted from West Virginia Blue.

It's 1:43 a.m. and I'm awake posting on torture. I have to be at work in a few short hours. I have a life and family outside of politics. Yet I'm not asleep. If anyone can take charge of investigating the torture issue, it's Senator Jay Rockefeller, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He's always been known as a fair-minded man who has worked in a bipartisan spirit throughout his political career. I'm not sure if this will come out the way I mean it too, but I'd sleep better if I knew Senator Rockefeller was losing sleep too because of the torture issue.

Yesterday was one example as to why people are faulting the Democrats for talking the talk but not walking the walk.

John A. Rizzo faced confirmation in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday.  During a 2-hour session, few of the Senators on the Committee asked pointed questions about what he knew and when he knew it.  That would be fine if Rizzo was vying to be WH dog catcher (or assistant deputy director of the Departmant of Agriculture--hmmm, maybe not.)