Greg Miller, of the Washington Post, reveals the CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says, providing yet more evidence that our intelligence agencies were not being honest and operating outside of our constitutional framework (updated from "out of control) under the Bush-Cheney administration.
A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.
The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.
“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”
The details of the torture described here will make you ill, however, some of the most disturbing details in this report are not about the torture, but the extent to which senior officials in the CIA lied about the sources of their intelligence.
Officials said millions of records make clear that the CIA’s ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence against al-Qaeda — including tips that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 — had little, if anything, to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Almost all of the information obtained from Abu Zubaida was obtained when he was in a hospital in Pakistan, well before he was transferred to, and tortured by the CIA. The CIA waterboarded him 83 times. The information from Pakistan was passed up the chain of command as if it was obtained by the CIA through waterboarding.
This weekend I reported a speech former V.P. Dick Cheney gave where he asserted he had no regrets, denied he was a war criminal, and repeated his opinion that waterboarding, and other techniques he authorized, were not torture but "enhanced interrogation." I'll put a link in an update.
Yes, President Obama deserves credit for shutting down these programs, in 2009, to the best we can tell, however, we need to declassify this report and hold congressional oversight hearings to restore public confidence and reestablish that our constitution and congressional oversight still has meaning.
7:53 PM PT:
This weekend I posted this little noticed article: “If I would have to do it all over again, I would,” Cheney says about 'enhanced interogations"
Simbi Ntahorbari, of the Eagle Online, reports, Dick Cheney denies war criminal allegations at KPU event, describing former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech at the AU community hosted by the Kennedy Political Union. In a scene remenicent of Richard Nixon, Cheney denied he was as war criminal.
“The accusations are not true,” Cheney said. ... Some people called it torture. It wasn’t torture,” Cheney said in an interview with ATV.
Cheney believes the Geneva Conventions do not apply to "unlawful combatants," a name we gave to the prisoners so we could do anything we wanted to them.
“If I would have to do it all over again, I would,” Cheney said. “The results speak for themselves.”
“The president indicated that if the Syrians used chemical weapons there would be consequence,” he said. “They used chemical weapons and there were no consequences. That conveyed a sense of weakness; that you don’t have to pay attention to what he [the president] says because he won’t follow through.”
As you might expect, Cheney believes President Obama is being weak in response to the Russians in the Crimea, although the report does not say what he would do instead.
Cheney also said he has no problems with NSA surveillance, and that the U.S needs to "take advantage of advantage of technology in the face of constant threat of cyberwarfare." He called Edward Snowden a traitor.
Some things never change, and some people never learn.
8:22 PM PT: "our intelligence agencies were not being honest and operating outside of our constitutional framework (updated from "out of control) under the Bush-Cheney administration." upon observations by Meteor Blades and Lefty Coaster that historical evidence indicates they were following order of the president, vice president, and secretary of defense.