This is one of the more convoluted stories of the week. Intelligence Appropriations is up this week, and in Republicans want to use the opportunity to further their "Pelosi lied" storyline (they only think illegal torture's a problem if a Democrat who wasn't responsible for ordering it might have known about it).
In order to head off this Republican effort, Intelligence Committee chair Silvestre Reyes fired off a letter to ranking Republican Pete Hoekstra, reminding him that the preponderance of evidence put the lying squarely on the side of the CIA, and that the committee had recently received information from the CIA proving that.
"These notifications have led me to conclude this committee has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to," Reyes wrote....
"Like you, I was greatly concerned," Reyes told Hoekstra, about what the committee learned on June 24 and another unspecified date from CIA Director Leon E. Panetta . "As you know, I have begun to take steps to gather information on the recent notifications," Reyes wrote. "This may well lead to a full committee investigation. I believe that you share my concern, and I look forward to working on this issue with you."
Since news of that communication broke, we've also learned about another letter, one from seven Democrats on the Intelligence Committee written to Leon Panetta expanding a bit on Reyes' hints. The letter is dated June 26, two days after Panetta appeared before a closed door session with the committee.
"Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week." The letter — which doesn’t explain what those "significant actions" concerned* — asks that Panetta "publicly correct" his May 15 statement that it isn’t CIA "policy or practice to mislead Congress." TWI acquired a copy of the letter, which comes after CQ reported that committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) also nebulously stated that CIA "affirmatively lied" to the committee.
Sam Stein adds to the reporting that those "significant actions" were indeed related to Bush administration interrogation practices--torture.
After which, Reyes releases another statement:
I appreciate Director Panetta's recent efforts to bring issues to the Committee's attention that, for some reason, had not been previously conveyed, and to make certain that the Committee is fully and currently briefed on all intelligence activities. I understand his direction to be that the Agency does not and will not lie to Congress, and he has set a high standard for truth in reporting to Congress.
I believe that CIA has, in the vast majority of matters, told the truth. But in rare instances, certain officers have not adhered to the high standards held, as a rule, by the CIA with respect to truthfulness in reporting. Both Director Panetta and I are determined to make sure this does not happen again.
The men and women of the CIA are honest, hard-working patriots, and they do not deserve the distraction to their mission that this current issue has caused.
As Marcy says, who are those "certain officers" and would they "happen to be named Jose Rodriguez and/or Porter Goss, I wonder? Both of whom would fit the description the 7 members of Congress used, 'top CIA officials.'" Maybe, but according to the letter from the seven Dems, Panetta told them in the closed-door briefing that "misleading" had continued through last month.
All of which does two things: it backs up Pelosi's position that she was misled by the CIA when first briefed about "enhanced interrogation techniques." It also strengthens the Democrats' rationale for revamping the notification system of covert ops to expand it beyond the Gang of Eight to open the briefings to all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. The limited briefings were used by the Bush administration to avoid briefing the full intelligence committees about things they should have been told, particularly warrantless wiretapping and torture.
Unfortunately, President Obama has threatened to veto the bill if it contains this provision for greater accountability and transparency--the checks and balances we're supposed to have between the executive and legislative branches. As Marcy says,
With all due respect, Mr. President. But are you fucking nuts?!?!?!
The Gang of Eight briefing system has been a central instrument of abuse of power, by which the President does things that violate fundamental tenets of the Constitution, but gets legal "sanction" for those things by telling eight four people who are all but hamstrung to do anything about those things. And when people "lie affirmatively" to you you can't really say that's part of "comity" or a "fundamental compact." The Gang of Eight briefing system has been neither an element of "comity" nor a "fundamental compact" but rather a keystone of a dysfunctional, abusive relationship that guts our Constitution.
Update: Sam Stein reports on speculation that the program at issue was Cheney's "executive assassination ring" that Seymour Hersh discussed a few months ago.
"It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently," Hersh said. "They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. ...
"Congress has no oversight of it," he added. "It's an executive assassination ring essentially, and it's been going on and on and on. Just today in the Times there was a story that its leaders, a three star admiral named [William H.] McRaven, ordered a stop to it because there were so many collateral deaths. Under President Bush's authority, they've been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That's been going on, in the name of all of us."
Asked if this was the basis of her letter to Panetta, Eshoo said she could not discuss what was a "highly classified program." She did, however, note that when Panetta told House Intelligence Committee members what it was that had been kept secret, "the whole committee was stunned, even Republicans."
This has the hallmarks of becoming a rather major scandal for the CIA. It's a bad time for the administration to be arguing for more secrecy in intelligence matters.