Today marks the first Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on harsh interrogation techniques since the release of the "Torture Memos", the OLC documents that outlined the guidelines for harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding.
Today's hearing will be chaired by Rhode Island Senator and former US Attorney Sheldon Whitehouse, and it will likely play like a prosecutor's opening argument. The hearing includes two men who opposed the Bush Administration Interrogation Program but were silenced.
This hearing is the beginning of the process by which we as a nation formally address how our Government sanctioned torture. Although only at the beginning of this inquiry, it will be historical.
Marcy Wheeler will be liveblogging it at Emptywheel. While you are there, consider making a donation to continue her fabulous reporting.
The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, "What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration", will start today at 10:00 a.m. EDT. Here is the C-SPAN3 live stream link at which it will be boradcast.
The men we will hear from today who opposed the Bush interrogation program are FBI counterterrorism expert Ali Soufan and former State Department representative Philip Zelikow.
Ali Soufan was the first interrogator of accused terrorist Abu Zubaydah, but he was forbidden from continuing his participation in the interrogation after FBI Director Robert Mueller decided that FBI agents should not be involved with the CIA's questionable techniques. He wrote a recent NY Times Opinion piece in which he elucidated the basis of his opposition to the CIA's interrogation approach:
One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based.
and
There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics.
Philip Zelikow saw the Torture memos in 2005 and acting as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's policy representative to the NSC Deputies Committee, wrote a memo strongly opposing the legal "justification" of the harsh techniques. In response, The Bush Administration ordered that all of the copies of the memo be collected and destroyed. Today we will understand why those memos were so dangerous to the Bush administration and the architects of the Torture Program.
Why this is only the beginning
Today's hearing will likely be the first of many future hearings. We know that coming soon will be (1) the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) report that will likely suggest Bar referrals for Torture Memo authors Jay Bybee and John Yoo, (2) The CIA Office of Inspector General Report, which is certain to be a bombshell, and (3) the upcoming release of the remaining Abu Ghraib Photos.
In short the momentum will continue building for accountability. Future hearings are inevitable. I expect that we will soon hear formal calls from the GOP for a Special Prosecutor, so that these continuing investigations and hearings will be taken out of the hands of congressional Democrats. That's OK by me. I want the truth.