“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.”

– French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Sept. 24

When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom. Just how low we’ve sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration’s satisfaction when Russia’s president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the United Nations, that “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable.”

You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as The Post inconveniently pointed out, President Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions. And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.

I should add, I don’t have the same level of disdain for the French that some in this country have. In fact, I love France, and I love the people I have met there. I have not had the experience of French people looking down their noses at me because I’m American, even in Paris. In small villages in which I’ve traveled, even with my crappy French (I took Spanish in school), and the limited English the shop keepers had, we each worked hard to understand each other. One woman didn’t speak a word of English, but would engage in pantomime (I’m sure there’s a joke there about the French and mimes) to get her point across, AND she was funny, to boot. So, while I appreciate that some people have not had this experience, I won’t jump on the French bashing bandwagon. Honestly, I can’t wait until I get to go back there.

Back to the article,and Krauthammer’s point:

Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia . . . what? An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority — and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.

Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling and pious concern about Iran’s nuclear program — whereas the real objective is stopping that program. This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.

Don’t take it from me. Take it from Sarkozy, who could not conceal his astonishment at Obama’s naivete. On Sept. 24, Obama ostentatiously presided over the Security Council. With 14 heads of state (or government) at the table, with an American president at the chair for the first time ever, with every news camera in the world trained on the meeting, it would garner unprecedented worldwide attention.

Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.

Hmmm – WWHD? You know, What Would Hillary Do? Would she reveal this nugget of explosive information? My bet is ABSO-FREAKIN’-LUTELY. How about Obama? What would he do:

Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports the Wall Street Journal (citing Le Monde), Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later — in Pittsburgh. I’ve got nothing against Pittsburgh (site of the G-20 summit), but a stacked-with-world-leaders Security Council chamber it is not.

Why forgo the opportunity? Because Obama wanted the Security Council meeting to be about his own dream of a nuclear-free world. The president, reports the New York Times citing “White House officials,” did not want to “dilute” his disarmament resolution “by diverting to Iran.”

Diversion? It’s the most serious security issue in the world. A diversion from what? From a worthless U.N. disarmament resolution?

Yes. And from Obama’s star turn as planetary visionary: “The administration told the French,” reports the Wall Street Journal, “that it didn’t want to ’spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N.”

Image? Success? Sarkozy could hardly contain himself. At the council table, with Obama at the chair, he reminded Obama that “we live in a real world, not a virtual world.”

He explained: “President Obama has even said, ‘I dream of a world without [nuclear weapons].’ Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite.”

Sarkozy’s unspoken words? “And yet, sacré bleu, he’s sitting on Qom!”

Uh, yeah. It seems like the perfect setting for exposing this information. Evidently, Sarkozy thought so, too. Others didn’t realize what had just happened:

At the time, we had no idea what Sarkozy was fuming about. Now we do. Although he could hardly have been surprised by Obama’s fecklessness. After all, just a day earlier in addressing the General Assembly, Obama actually said, “No one nation can . . . dominate another nation.” That adolescent mindlessness was followed with the declaration that “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” in fact “make no sense in an interconnected world.” NATO, our alliances with Japan and South Korea, our umbrella over Taiwan, are senseless? What do our allies think when they hear such nonsense?

Bismarck is said to have said: “There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.” Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did. (letters@charleskrauthammer.com)

Mon Dieu! Those are some pretty strong words there. Appropriate, though. Can you imagine if any other president, who had the opportunity to chair this very important committee for the FIRST time, sat on that kind of information? No doubt, it wouldn’t just be the French President who was upset about this. Thankfully, those who are less invested in the “aura” of Obama actually paid attention to this “oversight” on Obama’s part at this critical juncture.

Once again, Obama has demonstrated how woefully prepared he is for the REAL World Stage.

(And C, if you’re reading this far, I hope you appreciate the French phrases!)

Unlike previous reform proposals, the Brookings study manages to overlook the serious systemic issues that face the world of intelligence analysis and to propose a full slate of boilerplate steps. The author of the study is the well-known China scholar, Kenneth Lieberthal, who is the director of the John L. Thornton China Center at Brookings.
Since Lieberthal was a senior director for Asia on the National Security Council and a special assistant to President Bill Clinton for national security affairs and therefore a consumer of the government’s most sensitive intelligence analysis, his study is a particular disappointment.

What the CIA should be, what it should do, and what it should prepare to do is less clear than at any time since the beginning of the Cold War. There should have been major reform of the CIA and the IC with the end of the Cold War, but there was none. Sen. David Boren and Rep. David McCurdy, both Democrats, made attempts in 1992 and 1994 to reform the CIA, but there was great resistance from Republicans who were under the influence of the Pentagon, and there was no support from their Democratic colleagues.

The politicization of intelligence on the Soviet Union in the 1980s and the intelligence failures that contributed to the 9/11 attacks created other opportunities for reform, but the flawed thinking of the 9/11 Commission, the Congressional rush to judgment, and unwise pressures from the families of the 9/11 victims led to changes that made a bad situation worse.

The creation of a new bureaucracy under a Director of National Intelligence (DNI or the so-called intelligence tsar) beholden to the White House led to a more centralized system of intelligence that stifles creative thinking and runs the risk of more politicized intelligence. Lieberthal’s failure to critique the role of the DNI is one of the major shortcomings of his work.

The congressional, political, and academic critics outside of the intelligence community simply have no idea of the decline and despair within the CIA that has led to a major deterioration in the ability to prepare strategic intelligence and to inform the policy community. There is no consensus whatsoever on what is needed to reform the world of intelligence. The Congress is an unlikely source for conducting a reform effort; its modus operandi calls for throwing money at problems, but the needed reforms have nothing to do with additional funds.

There has never been a time in the nation’s history when so much money has been spent on intelligence with so little accountability and so few beneficial results. We learned today that the intelligence budget is $75 billion, which more than doubles the budget for the State Department and the Agency for International Development.

The serious problems that Lieberthal fails to address include the militarization of the IC, which must be reversed; the absence of congressional oversight over a flawed intelligence product that paved the way to the Iraq War, which must be ended; the ability of the National Clandestine Service to politicize intelligence analysis, which must be stopped; and the inability of CIA to tell truth to power, which finds the Agency without a moral compass.

The Bush administration boasted of a “marriage” between the Pentagon and the CIA, which indicated its support for an intelligence community subordinated to Pentagon priorities. The current intelligence tsar, retired Admiral Dennis Blair, has strengthened this marriage, which finds the Defense Department the chief operating officer of the $75 billion intelligence industry. The Pentagon controls more than 85 percent of the intelligence budget and nearly 90 percent of the 200,000 intelligence personnel.

Most collection requirements flow from the Pentagon, and deference within the policy and congressional communities for “support for the warfighter” has elevated tactical military considerations over strategic geopolitical considerations. The Pentagon has also moved into the fields of clandestine collection and covert operations, without the constraints of oversight that limit the covert actions of the CIA.

The decline of the CIA over the past two decades coincides with the end to oversight of the IC by the Senate and House intelligence committees. These committees have become advocates for the CIA—particularly for the clandestine world of spies and covert operations. In doing so, Congress has failed to make the CIA accountable for its transgressions and has ignored the major decline in the production of strategic intelligence. It took the Senate intelligence committee more than five years to issue a report on the Bush administration’s misuse of intelligence information, and even then it merely issued a majority-only written report.

Every congressional “reform” movement on CIA has started with the need for greater clandestine collection, particularly greater assets and personnel for the National Clandestine Service, which ignores the limits and myths of clandestine collection and exaggerates the value of human intelligence. The current CIA director, Leon Panetta, has been captured by the clandestine culture and cadre, and is unlikely to lead a reform movement. It is time to separate the CIA’s directorate of intelligence from the National Clandestine Service, but Lieberthal merely notes that there “strong arguments” for and against separation. Once upon a time, we counted on “independent” studies to resolve these arguments.

Unfortunately, Lieberthal takes the easy way out with a series of thumb sucking recommendations that do not address the problem of the decline of strategic intelligence. He calls for the creation of a National Intelligence University (!) with its own campus and faculty as well as “periodic formal training opportunities.” I would expect a distinguished academic such as Lieberthal to understand the difference between education and training.

He calls for greater hiring of “people who are in their late twenties or early thirties who have had extensive experience related to the country of concern,” which ignores the need to cross-fertilize the CIA with experienced analysts from the academic and think-tank worlds who have a little more grey hair than the average 20 or 30-something and more time overseas. These senior analysts would also be able to mentor the CIA’s analytic community, which is extremely young and inexperienced.

He calls for adding another layer of review, without acknowledging the petty tutelage that already exists in the review process and without endorsing the need for protecting contrarian and out-of-the-box thinking in the analytic process. Finally, Lieberthal recommends IC briefings to incoming policy makers in order to determine how policy makers “might best be served by the IC.”

Unfortunately, the CIA already spends too much time determining the interests of the policy maker and, as a result, often skews intelligence to serve those interests.
CIA directors Richard Helms, James Schlesinger, George H.W. Bush, William Casey, Robert Gates, George Tenet, and Porter Goss were guilty of politicizing intelligence, but Lieberthal doesn’t deal with the problem. The only protections against politicization are the integrity and honesty of the intelligence analysts themselves, as well as the protection of competitive analysis that serves as a safeguard against unchallenged acceptance of conventional wisdom.
The creation of a centralized director of national intelligence and the placement of key IC positions in the hands of the military do not augur well for the restoration of CIA’s moral compass.
_____

Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, is The Public Record’s National Security and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

This op-ed was first published Sep. 14th at The Public Record and is reprinted with the express permission of Mel Goodman.

Although Holder’s inquiry will only target those who acted beyond so-called legal guidelines, Broder is concerned that we will ultimately see Vice President Dick Cheney “standing in the dock.” Broder should be concerned with the need to explicitly repudiate the policies and actions of President George Bush and Cheney that violated domestic and international law. These actions require a public hearing and an open record of some kind. Holder’s inquiry is the first step in what Mark Danner of the New York Review of Books called a “complicated political process.”

Broder’s lamest and most disingenuous reasons deal with CIA director Leon Panetta and the methodology of the Post’s news staff. Broder calls Panetta a “conscientious director” of the CIA, but Panetta has surrounded himself with the ideological drivers of the policies of detention and interrogation, Steve Kappes and Michael Sulick, and has fought every effort of the Obama administration to bring transparency and accountability to the Bush-Cheney policies.

Broder adds that Panetta’s “judgment” is supported by the reporting of Ignatius and others with “excellent sources inside the CIA.” Their sources, of course, are Kappes and Sulick, the very officers who seek to cover-up their own activities and have the freedom to talk to reporters. Good reporting and journalism require an honest effort to seek all sources and not merely those who reify one’s own positions.

Broder echoes Panetta when he argues that any investigation will have a “harmful effect on the morale and operations of his agency.” No, morale was compromised by high-level CIA officials such as George (“slam dunk”) Tenet, who tailored intelligence to go to war against Iraq, and Porter Goss and Michael Hayden, who used outside contractors to build secret prisons, conduct extraordinary renditions, and engage in torture and abuse.

The CIA Inspector General (IG) responsible for the 2004 report on interrogations and torture told Der Spiegel this week that he decided on preparing a report because “some agency employees involved with the program…were uneasy about it; he told the Washington Post last week that he “could not walk through the cafeteria without people walking up to me, not to complain but to say ‘More power to you.’”

CIA torture and abuse as well as extraordinary renditions also compromised valuable liaison relations with European intelligence services that are needed to combat international terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. As a result of CIA’s illegal activities, intelligence services in Germany, Italy, and Spain were refusing to cooperate with their CIA counterparts. Nevertheless, the CIA is still resisting the release of hundreds of pages of internal documents on detentions and interrogations, arguing that national security is at stake. No, national embarrassment is involved and not national security.

At some point, Broder and his colleagues should be forced to read the 2004 IG Report on detentions and interrogations; the 2004 CIA report on interrogation techniques; the 2004 Taguba report on military abuse of detainees; the 2005 collection of “secret” documents by Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel in their The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib ; the 2007 International Committee of the Red Cross Report on CIA’s treatment of detainees; the 2008 Senate Armed Services report on U.S. treatment of detainees; and Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side.

Then, they need to compare the treatment of the detainees, some of whom were totally innocent or erroneously detained, with what the Justice Department memoranda on interrogations permitted. Of course, Broder believes that the Justice Department torture memoranda demonstrate that the Bush administration engaged in a “deliberate, and internally well-debated policy decision, made in the proper places…by the proper officials.” Meanwhile, the Post has presented no evidence of policy debates on torture and abuse, extraordinary renditions, and secret prisons.

Broder and his colleagues could also try to interview those individuals who watched some or all of the 92 torture tapes before they were destroyed by high-ranking officials from the CIA’s National Clandestine Service. This destruction of evidence has been investigated for the past two years by John Durham, who will conduct the current inquiry for Attorney General Holder.

Broder, Ignatius, Hiatt, and Cohen have relied entirely on those CIA operatives who are trying to put the best possible face on CIA transgressions; the ethics of good journalism requires that they seek sources to learn about the details of the sordid and sadistic activities that put the nation at risk. President Barack Obama should be credited with closing the secret prisons and ending the practice of torture and abuse, but the nation still needs to confront and understand the evidence and the events of the past six years.

Finally, the news and editorial reporters of the Washington Post need to compare their findings of the evidence with the laws that govern the illegalities that have taken place. They could start with the 8th amendment of the Constitution against “cruel and unusual punishments” (it has the virtue of being short); the War Crimes Act of 1996; the Convention against Torture of 1984 (yes, the United States is a signatory); and of course Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions.

Broder and his colleagues do not understand that the stature of international and domestic law is diminished when a nation violates it with impunity. The stature of a nation is diminished when it commits crimes against humanity. And the national leadership and the nation itself are diminished when it ignores the need for accountability and explicit repudiation. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had it right when he called for a “truth commission” to gather information on the CIA programs that the Bush administration endorsed and protected.

This would represent a good start in restoring our moral compass on the crimes of the post-9/11 era. The judgment of history will be harsh if we choose not to do so.

***
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, is The Public Record’s National Security and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

This op-ed was first published Sep. 3rd at The Public Record and is reprinted with the express permission of Mel Goodman.

President Barack Obama is permitting CIA Director Leon Panetta to weaken the Agency’s’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). The OIG has produced the only official and authoritative study of the abuses of the CIA detentions and interrogations program; it also has published seminal studies of the CIA’s involvement in the shoot down of a missionary plane in Peru in 2001 (and the subsequent cover-up of its role) as well as the controversial 9/11 accountability study.

These reports angered senior CIA managers and led to efforts by three successive directors (George Tenet, Porter Goss, and General Michael Hayden) to restrict the investigative work of the office. Panetta is continuing the campaign they began. Although John Helgerson, the inspector general who produced these reports, announced his retirement seven months ago, Panetta and the White House have not named a replacement. They clearly prefer that the OIG remain without the strong leadership it requires to pursue difficult investigations in the face of management resistance.

The creation of an independent, statutory OIG at CIA resulted from the Agency’s involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s. CIA’s internal investigation of its role in that scandal was inadequate, particularly in comparison with congressional and independent investigations. CIA had an administrative inspector general, but he was appointed by the CIA director, had limited access to sensitive information, and had no more than a handful of professionals on his staff.

The congressional oversight committees were not given full access to his reports and not even the Justice Department received all IG reports of suspected illegalities. In fact, it was the efforts of CIA director William Casey to prevent the Attorney General from receiving reports on Iran Contra illegalities that led Senators Arlen Specter and John Glenn to sponsor a bill to create an independent IG, appointed by the President and responsible to Congress.

CIA director William Webster opposed the bill, and President George H.W. Bush signed it reluctantly in 1989; as a former CIA director, Bush feared that an independent IG would be “out of control,” a junkyard dog that could not be controlled by the bureaucracy. Bush waited a year before appointing Frederick Hitz, a lawyer and former CIA operations officer, as the first statutory IG. Hitz and his successors did perform independently, producing reports critical of the Agency’s performance in a number of areas.

Helgerson, appointed in 2002, proved more tenacious than many expected, even criticizing CIA director Tenet and other senior CIA leaders in the 9/11 report. His tenacity angered Agency directors, however, and they have subsequently tried to weaken the office, primarily by attacking the professionalism of its work.

If the Agency’s director believes the work of the OIG is flawed, he has several options. He can go to Congress, the president’s intelligence oversight board, the President’s Commission on Integrity and Efficiency—the watchdog of the government’s inspectors general—even to the president himself. Instead, CIA’s leadership chose to mount an unprecedented attack on the OIG.

In 2006, in an effort to intimidate the OIG, Goss ordered a leak investigation that led to the unprecedented polygraphing of the IG himself and the firing of a senior OIG official for having unreported conversations with journalists—even though the conversations had nothing to do with the leak investigation.

Hayden, seeking to rein in the OIG, appointed a special assistant, Robert Deitz, to ”investigate” the office, an action that infringed on the IG’s independence and that Congress should have stopped immediately. (Deitz was Hayden’s General Counsel at the National Security Agency when Hayden was director there, and crafted the internal legal opinions to justify warrantless eavesdropping.) Deitz’s so-called investigation was designed to intimidate the OIG.

Hitz, who had served as IG from 1990 to 1998, labeled Hayden’s internal investigation an effort to “call off the dogs.” He said that it would “lead to an undercutting of the IG’s authority and his ability to investigate allegations of wrongdoing.” It is difficult enough to gain cooperation from the rank and file for an IG investigation; once Agency officers understand that their leadership is not respectful of the office, the OIG’s ability to ferret out the truth becomes far more difficult.

Hayden’s intimidation campaign ignored provisions in the 1989 law that required the CIA director to inform the Congress of any attempt to hinder the IG in the execution of his duties. His efforts were consistent with the Bush administration’s campaign to weaken the role of the IG throughout the government, including trying to limit a bill in the House of Representatives to strengthen the independence of IGs by giving them seven-year terms and to permit the White House to fire them only for cause.

Helgerson announced his retirement the same week Panetta was confirmed as CIA director. Panetta, however, has not named a new IG and has continued to convey disapproval of the work of the office by his defense of actions that were criticized in the IG’s report on detentions and interrogations. Perhaps as a result, Helgerson has started talking to journalists. This is an unusual step for a CIA officer, even one who is retired; it is particularly surprising for Helgerson, who is extremely discrete.

In a statement last week, Helgerson emphasized that the CIA had conducted waterboarding in a manner inconsistent with the understanding between the CIA and the Justice Department and that the CIA had reneged on its assurance that repetitive use of this technique would “not be substantial.” Helgerson concluded that the CIA was “abusing this technique.”

Helgerson also questioned whether it had been necessary to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” and recommended the creation of a panel of experts to “evaluate the quality of intelligence gained as related to the specific techniques used.” Helgerson took issue with Panetta’s claim that the CIA itself had commissioned the OIG’s 2004 study, stating that he had initiated the 2004 report because many officers had told him that CIA techniques were “fundamentally inconsistent with long established U.S. Government policy and with American values, and were based on strained legal reasoning.”

Helgerson added that he “could not walk through the cafeteria without people walking up to me, not to complain but to say ‘More power to you.’” He emphasized that it is the mission of the IG to make sure that CIA operations are “efficient, effective, and run in a manner that is consistent with law and regulation, and to recommend improvements as appropriate.” He expressed particular disappointment with the fact that all ten of the OIG’s recommendations had been redacted.

The fact that Panetta and President Obama have not nominated an individual to replace Helgerson is not surprising. It is surprising, however, that both Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee and Congressman Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House intelligence committee, have ignored the issue. The weakening of the OIG by CIA leadership is an affront to Congress, particularly to Feinstein and Reyes; they are demonstrating a dereliction of duty.

Panetta and the White House are obviously slow rolling the appointment, leaving a weak acting IG in place as long as possible, probably searching for just the right candidate to acquiesce in their campaign to weaken the only effective oversight body that exists to investigate CIA activities.

***
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, is The Public Record’s National Security and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA .

This op-ed was first published Sep. 2nd at The Public Record and is reprinted with the express permission of Mel Goodman.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was photographed shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.

The lead story in today’s Washington Post, headlined “How a Detainee Became An Asset,” provides a one-sided and distorted account of the torture and abuse of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (KSM) and demonstrates the need for a blue ribbon bipartisan commission to create a comprehensive and authoritative narrative of the misgovernment of the Bush administration over the past eight years.

The prosecution of low-level CIA officials and government contractors for resorting to torture and abuse beyond the sordid guidelines of the Justice Department will allow the major players of the Bush administration as well as the lawyers of the Justice Department to escape retribution and judgment. Since President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney would never be held accountable, the entire nation would be better served by a full understanding of the war crimes that they authorized in our name.

Today’s article argues that the techniques of torture and abuse turned KSM into the CIA’s “preeminent source” on al-Qaeda. Citing an intelligence assessment by the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, which was presumably prepared for Vice President Cheney, the Post article argues that waterboarding was the key to breaking KSM’s spirit and eliciting valuable intelligence on the “inner workings of al-Qaeda and the group’s plans, ideology, and operatives.”

This view contradicts the findings of the authoritative 2004 report on detainees and interrogations of the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) as well as the personal views of the Inspector General (IG) himself.

As the Post acknowledges, John Helgerson, the former IG who commissioned the 2004 study, said that the work of the OIG did not permit “definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of particular interrogation methods.” Helgerson acknowledged that waterboarding and sleep deprivation “elicited a lot of information,” but the OIG didn’t “do a careful, systematic analysis of the use of particular techniques with particular individuals and independently confirm the quality of the information that came out.”

As a result, Helgerson recommended (but the Post article chose to omit) the creation of an independent panel of experts to “systematically evaluate the quality of the intelligence gained as related to the specific techniques used, or not used, in particular cases. This would clarify the value of the information and the utility of various approaches.” This recommendation was one of ten recommendations in the 2004 IG report; unfortunately, the Justice Deparment (presumably due to the importuning of the CIA) chose to redact all ten IG recommendations from the declassified report.

There is ample testimony to challenge the view that torture and abuse worked. There were FBI agents at the site where KSM was held who testified that torture and abuse didn’t lead to eliciting valuable intelligence. And a CIA operative has noted that KSM was willing to talk before being tortured, noting that “tea and crumpets” were all that was needed. The former head of U.S. Army intelligence, Gen. John Kimmons, remarked in 2006 that “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that.

I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that.” And more recently, several veteran FBI and military interrogators called for an investigation of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT),” because of their concerns about the legality, morality, and effectiveness of EITs.

It is important to remember that the 2004 IG report emphatically stated that the information elicited by torture and abuse “did not uncover any evidence that [any] plots were imminent.” Other CIA memoranda stated that information gained from detainees led to “arrests [that] disrupted attack plans in progress,” but did not attribute this information to the use of torture and abuse.

The IG study could not even determine if the 83 waterboardings given to Abu Zubaydah were the reason for his increased willingness to talk. The study noted, moreover, that torture was contrary to the Eighth Amendment against “cruel and unusual punishments;” the 1984 UN Torture Convention, which the United States took the lead in drafting and ratifying; and domestic law.

Finally, it is more important to remember that torture and abuse are evil. Illegal, immoral, counter-productive, but most importantly evil. George Bush told a press conference in 2005 that “this country does not believe in torture,” but the fact is we conducted torture on those who were guilty and those who were innocent.

And Dick Cheney, who has fanatically been waging his own personal jihad in defense of torture and abuse, told Fox News in an interview that will air tomorrow that CIA interrogators were justified in exceeding even the broad authorizations provided by the Justice Department, suggesting that the ends justify the means. Perhaps the Washington Post could give front-page coverage to the 18-page memorandum that the CIA gave to the DoJ’s Office of Legal Counsel in 2004, which provides extraordinary details of the interrogations in plain, but sordid and sadistic, language.

Two years ago, then CIA director Michael Hayden released a collection of long-secret documents compiled in 1974 that detailed domestic spying, assassination plots, and other CIA misdeeds in the 1960s and early 1970s. In releasing the documents, known as the “family jewels,” Hayden told a group of historians who had been pressing for greater disclosure from the Agency, that the documents provided a “glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency.” He also stated that, when the government withholds information, myth and misinformation “fill the vacuum like a gas.”

In order to prevent the Washington Post and others from adding to the myths and misinformation of torture and abuse, it is time to appoint a blue ribbon commission to study all aspects of the CIA’s detentions and interrogations policies.

Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, is The Public Record’s National Security and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

The Washington Post’s David Ignatius simply cannot get off the wheel he spins for the Central Intelligence Agency. Only two days after the release of the 2004 CIA study of the detention and interrogation program, which provides sordid and sadistic details of an illegal and immoral program, Ignatius still opposes any criminal review of the conduct of CIA officers and echoes the CIA line that it is “glad to be out” of the interrogation business. He even cites deputy director of the CIA, Stephen Kappes, one of the key ideological drivers for the policy of detention and interrogation, as someone who “doesn’t want to have anything to do with interrogation.”

Ignatius strongly believes that it is time for the CIA to “get on with it,” which was the signature line of former CIA director Richard Helms, who Ignatius considers the “savviest spymaster this country has produced.” Let’s forget that Helms lied to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1973 on the overthrow of the elected government in Chile and that a grand jury was called to see if he should be indicted for perjury. Let’s forget that the Justice Department brought a lesser charge against Helms, who pleaded nolo contendere, and was fined $2,000 and given a two-year suspended prison sentence. And let’s forget that Helms was the major supporter of James Jesus Angleton, the crazed head of CIA counterintelligence for 20 years, who believed that the KGB had successfully penetrated the Agency. We called Angleton “The Ghost” when I was at the CIA because no one had ever seen the man. And it was “The Ghost” who befriended Kim Philby, the Soviet spy from British intelligence, introduced him to high-level CIA officials, and defended him to the end. So much for counterintelligence.

In his efforts to prevent any investigation of the CIA’s interrogation program, Ignatius has also forgotten the lessons of the Nuremberg Trials in 1945-1946. The International Tribunal taught us that crimes committed by individuals for state purposes were the responsibility of those individuals and punishable by state law. And, most importantly, following orders was not a defense. But Ignatius believes that all of the relevant evidence on torture and abuse was seen by “career prosecutors, who decided against bringing cases.” So, let’s forget that the career prosecutors were employed by the politicized Justice Department of the Bush administration and that they reported to a politically-appointed assistant attorney general.

Ignatius believes that investigation and accountability will hurt the Agency. It will actually restore the credibility of the Agency and lead to greater cooperation from important foreign intelligence services, which is essential to combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. It was CIA crimes such as secret prisons and extraordinary renditions that hurt the Agency, and led to reticence about sharing intelligence. For example, there is no intelligence service within the European Union that would assist in a rendition by the CIA; no EU country that would permit the CIA to transport a prisoner by aircraft; no EU country that would agree to a secret prison or “black site” within its borders.

Ignatius also reveals that he knows nothing about loyal dissent. He argues that “questioning presidential orders isn’t really the job” of the CIA leadership, “especially when those orders are backed by Justice Department legal opinions.” This country has fought two unnecessary wars in the past 45 years with the deaths of more than 60,000 American men and women simply because high-level officials failed to expose the deceptions and manipulations of the Johnson and Bush administrations. In supporting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Ignatius and the Washington Post appear enamored with U.S. military power, with the Post providing few opportunities for contrarian voices to be heard. The mainstream media, particularly the Post, has been far too complacent in holding the Bush and Obama administration’s feet to the fire in the case of these wars.

Finally, Ignatius claims that the CIA resorted to independent contractors for help in “waterboarding” and assassination programs because of a lack of expertise. In fact, the CIA turned to outside help in these egregious areas because it was trying to avoid accountability and there was internal resistance to both programs. There were many officers in the National Clandestine Service opposed to the renditions and detentions program; the Office of Medical Service had serious problems with the waterboarding program, which is outlined in the 2004 Inspector General Program. Presumably, there were some greybeards around who mentioned that resorting to Blackwater to run an assassination program resembled the CIA’s contacts with the Mafia in the early 1960s to kill Castro. The CIA assassination program led to the Church Commission hearings in the 1970s, which placed restrictions on covert action programs and created a congressional oversight process that has fallen into disarray.

It is unbelievable that Ignatius could read the chilling and appalling 2004 IG report and not temper some of his views. His continued support of the CIA points to fanaticism and reminds me of Stalin’s reference to Western journalists who defended Soviet policy—he called them “useful idiots.”

Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, is The Public Record’s National Security and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA http ://www.amazon.com/Failure-Intelligence-Decline-Fall-CIA/dp/0742551105.

The Washington Post continues to campaign against any accountability for the detentions policies of the Central Intelligence Agency, using its own editorials and oped writers as well as outsiders who support the efforts of the newspaper.

Today, one day after the release of the 2004 CIA inspector general report that documented the use of torture and abuse, a Post editorial actually claimed that “it’s impossible to say, on the basis of information made public so far, whether prosecution is warranted” and that, since the Bush Justice Department already declined prosecution, it would be “unsettling” to pursue even those CIA operatives who used “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented” techniques.

The Post is willing to exonerate these operatives because they were “clamoring” constantly for guidance about what it should and should not do; in fact, CIA director George Tenet and Deputy Director John McLaughlin were more interested in protection than guidance.

On Monday, the paper went judge-shopping in the courthouse and published an oped by Jeffrey H. Smith, who is a well-known lawyer with Arnold & Porter, one of Washington’s most prestigious law firms, and the CIA general counsel from 1995-1996. Smith created the most fatuous argument of all for not prosecuting the interrogators and apparently has no understanding of the Nuremberg Laws, which declared that following orders was no defense and that crimes committed by individuals for state purposes were the responsibility of individuals and were punishable under law.

Smith concedes that “we lost our bearings” after the 9/11 attacks and “squandered our credibility,” but fails to acknowledge the sordid and sadistic activities that the nation sponsored and the CIA implemented. His six reasons range from the disingenuous to the downright unconscionable.

Reason #1: The CIA techniques were authorized by the president, approved by the Justice Department, and briefed to the proper congressional committees. Since the techniques were “legal,” it will be “very difficult” to pursue prosecutions. The fact is we simply don’t know if all techniques were actually authorized, which is a major reason for an investigation, and the Justice Department is emphasizing those techniques that went beyond authorization. The level of difficulty of the prosecution is not a reason to stand down in this case, particularly since U.S. laws and Constitutional amendments were broken. The fact that high-level CIA officials destroyed the torture tapes suggests that there were actions that went beyond the Bush administration’s mandate and that sordid and sadistic acts were committed.

Reason #2: Since the CIA provided its 2004 report to the Justice Department and the department refused to prosecute any CIA officers, it would be “dangerous to settle policy difference at the expense of career officers. This, of course, is arrant nonsense! Bush’s Justice Department was a politicized government agency that has come under intense scrutiny because of its handling of the firing of U.S. attorneys as well as issues related to interrogation policy. The decisions on the 2004 report were made by prosecutors and lawyers who reported to a politically-appointed assistant in the Attorney General’s office. John Ashcroft was the attorney general and he lied to congressional committees.

Reason #3: After the Justice Department declined to prosecute, the CIA took administrative action, including disciplinary action against those officers whose conduct it deemed warranted such responses. This is a misinformed statement or an outright lie! No high-level Agency official has suffered as a result of the conduct of torture and abuse, which conforms to previous CIA misdeeds. High-level officials who politicized intelligence for Deputy Director Robert Gates in the 1980s did not suffer; officials who crafted Secretary of State Colin Powell’s phony speech to the UN prior to the Iraq War did not suffer; analysts who lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction did not suffer. In fact, the record clearly states that guilty parties in all of these affairs saw their careers prosper.

Reason #4: “Prosecuting CIA officers risks chilling current intelligence operations. Such prosecutions are likely to create cynicism in the clandestine service, which is deeply corrosive to any professional service.” This is Smith’s most fatuous argument and the one that CIA director Leon Panetta is peddling to the congress and the American people. The fact is that the failure to hold wrongdoers accountable is corrosive to morale and that CIA directors Tenet and Goss had to resort to independent contractors because so many professional Agency officers refused to take part in illegal activities. IG John Helgerson commissioned the 2004 study because so many Agency officers “expressed to me personally their feelings that what the Agency was doing was fundamentally inconsistent with long-established US Government policy and with American values, and was based on strained legal reasoning.”

Reason #5: Prosecutions could deter cooperation with other nations. Smith could not be more wrong! It was the CIA’s policies of secret prisons, erroneous renditions, and torture and abuse that corroded the liaison efforts of the Western intelligence network, which is the key to a successful campaign against international terrorism. European agencies became reticent to share intelligence with the United States because they were opposed to CIA’s abusive practices. The evidence is ample here and presumably even Smith must know this.

Reason #6: President Obama does not want to be distracted by looking backward and coping with congressional investigations and grand jury subpoenas. We as a nation must know the full extent of the Bush administration’s misuse of government agencies and government personnel. We need to know what happened in order to make sure that this kind of activity can never happen again.

Smith’s exculpatory brief on the behalf of his putative clients, the Washington Post and the CIA, is particularly disgraceful in view of the unconscionable activities that have taken place over the past decade. In order to restore the credibility of our intelligence services, permit foreign intelligence agencies to cooperate with us, and reverse the damage that has been done to U.S. foreign and national security, we must know the full extent of the role of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University, is The Public Record’s National Security and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA .

Camp David. I’m not kidding. The chapel at Camp David. Now he has an excuse to leave DC every weekend, if he wants. So he can go to church. Now, this may come as a shock to some of you, but Washington, DC, actually HAS some churches there. Heck, they even have a big, ol’ cathedral – perhaps you’ve heard of it, the NATIONAL Cathedral? Ahem.

But you know that’s not it. To paraphrase Michael Jackson, “sometimes (he) feels like somebody’s watching (him)…”:

Now, in an unexpected move, Obama has told White House aides that instead of joining a congregation in Washington, D.C., he will follow in George W. Bush’s footsteps and make his primary place of worship Evergreen Chapel, the nondenominational church at Camp David.

A number of factors drove the decision — financial, political, personal — but chief among them was the desire to worship without being on display. Obama was reportedly taken aback by the circus stirred up by his visit to 19th Street Baptist in January. Lines started forming three hours before the morning service, and many longtime members were literally left out in the cold as the church filled with outsiders eager to see the new President. Even at St. John’s, which is so accustomed to presidential visitors that it is known as the “Church of the Presidents,” worshippers couldn’t help themselves from snapping photos of Obama on their camera phones as they walked down the aisle past him to take communion.

And how about that – right there in Time magazine – making the comparison between Bush and Obama! Teehee!

Seriously?? He was taken aback? David Axelrove has done NOTHING but MAKE a circus around Obama. Has he already forgotten his Greek columns in Denver? His plying people with food and drink to come to rallies (which the media conveniently failed to mention – except in Germany), so he could have HUGE gatherings to fawn all over him? C’mon, give me a break. I have never seen a man who wanted sycophants around him at every second – unless they are uncomfortably close. And then we see him getting irritable (”I just want to eat my waffles, okay??” Or whatever it was he said exactly…).

Now, I’ll grant you that it is inappropriate for people to be snapping photos of the Obamas while in church. A sense of decorum and decency would be nice, but sadly, we seem to be far from those days. Still, I have no doubt other presidents have had to endure people staring at them or what have you:

The challenge of not only being part of a church community but also praying in peace has long been a problem for Presidents, according to historian Carl Sferrazza Anthony. “McKinley hated having people staring at him while he read Psalms, sang hymns, put money in the collection plate or took communion,” he writes in America’s First Families. “By the 1920s, getting a presidential family in and out of church was a production. Secret Service agents had to cordon off a clear path from the curb to the church entrance before the Coolidges arrived … [and] they were swiftly escorted to their third-row pew.”

The Clintons attended Foundry United Methodist Church on 16th Street, and were particularly active during the years before Chelsea left for college. But White House aides say that security measures required by the Secret Service have become stricter since 9/11 and would cause significant delays for parishioners — and at significant cost to taxpayers — on Sunday mornings. Given Obama’s popularity within the African-American community, the President also worried that if he chose a local black congregation, church members would find themselves competing with sightseers for space in the pews.

Oh, isn’t that SO thoughty of the president?!? He’s always worried about the little people as he has demonstrated time and time again… Hahahahaha!! I could barely even write that out…Anyway, the Obamas won’t have to deal with the hoi poloi at Camp David:

The First Family won’t have that problem at Camp David, where the 150-seat Evergreen Chapel attracts a congregation of between 50 and 70 people most Sundays. The rustic stone-and-glass octagonal structure was built nearly two decades ago through private funds; President George H.W. Bush dedicated it in 1991. At the ceremony, Christian singer Sandi Patti sang and the late Cardinal James Hickey of Washington delivered a sermon calling the chapel a “witness to our common belief that we need to seek divine guidance in the conduct of our national affairs.”

Each week, regardless of whether the President is on-site, Evergreen Chapel holds nondenominational Christian services open to the nearly 400 military personnel and staff at Camp David, as well as their families. A music director from nearby Hood College coordinates adult and children’s choirs (Clinton sang occasionally with the choir when he visited). In December, the kids in the congregation put on a Christmas pageant and the chapel holds a candlelight service on Christmas Eve. The Bush family enjoyed Christmas at Evergreen Chapel so much that they celebrated the holiday there for all eight years of Bush’s Administration.

Well, you know, poor old Obama has lost his pastor, The Reverend Jeremiah Wright, over those little kerflufles at his church. You know the ones – when Wright was preaching his vitriolic, hate mongering sermons? Thus leaving Obama wandering in the desert without his former minister. But he is making do:

(snip)But Barack Obama found himself spiritually isolated upon entering the Oval Office. He famously broke ties last year with Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor, and resigned his membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. So, just as he followed Bush’s lead in choosing Evergreen as a church home, the President is taking a page from Clinton’s playbook on this front: Obama has a small group of pastors he contacts for prayer and spiritual support (including two men who played the same role at times for Bush).

Those two, Kirbyjon Caldwell and T.D. Jakes, are both African-American ministers from Texas. Caldwell offered a prayer at Bush’s first inauguration and in 2008 he officiated at Jenna Bush’s wedding. By that point, he was an Obama supporter, even launching the website JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe.com last summer when the Focus on the Family leader accused Obama of “deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview.” Obama chose Jakes to preach the sermon at a private prayer service the morning of his inauguration and reached out to him to pray by phone on other occasions.

While the other three leaders Obama turns to are all members of his Faith Advisory Council, when he contacts them it is to talk not on a policy level but a personal one. Otis Moss Jr. is a retired Baptist pastor who once served with Martin Luther King Sr. at Ebeneezer Church. His son is the new pastor — following Jeremiah Wright — at Trinity in Chicago, but Moss is the model of a proper old-school preacher and is the father figure of Obama’s group. His fellow council member, Joel Hunter, is a white evangelical and pastor of a Florida megachurch. And Vashti McKenzie is the first female elected as a bishop in the African Methodist Episcopal Church.

McKenzie isn’t surprised that Obama has reached out for prayer and guidance. “This President has not shown himself to be a person in isolation — going out on dates, spending time in the community,” she says. “You wouldn’t expect him to isolate himself spiritually. This is a man with a faith center, we’ve heard him give his testimony.” Her advice for how to build a life of faith within the White House? “Everybody needs to just back off and settle down. Let him choose where he’s comfortable, choose where he and his family are going to be spiritually fed, and then let it be his choice.” Amen. (With reporting by Elizabeth Dias)

Hold the phone – didn’t Wright say recently that Obama was like a son to him? Oh, I am pretty sure he did, as American Girl in Italy reported recently in “Reverend Wright Complicit In Murder At Holocaust Museum?“:

“Of course I voted for him; he’s my son. I’m proud of him,” Wright said. “I’ve got five biological kids. They all make mistakes and bad choices. I haven’t stopped loving any of them.

“He made mistakes. He made bad choices. I’ve got kids who listen to their friends. He listened to those around him. I did not disown him.”

Uh huh. I’ll say. But wouldn’t you LOVE to know what Reverend Wright means by that?? Anyhoo, I digress…

As for McKenzie’s claims, you have got to be kidding me. Because Obama takes his wife out on a date to New York on OUR dime, I might add, McKenzie extrapolates Obama likes to be among the people? Hogwash. He likes to be on stage, he likes the sycophants, but I (and others) have reported the numerous times Obama has gotten testy with people. Heck, I’ve never seen Hillary get testy even when men were screaming sat her, “Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt!” But Obama? Please. There was a post I saw the other day about Obama’s glares at world leaders who weren’t following the script, something his own aides pointed out. Here’s a little video of the Primaries to remind you:

Bit I digress again. The point is I think the Right Rev. McKenzie gives Obama way too much credit for wanting to be “sociable” and out with the people. Her statement is contradictory to the whole point of the article – Obama does NOT want to be around a lot of people, hence his desire to go to Camp David for church. And to get out of Washington AWAY from all of those people.

And isn’t it ironic that he has taken yet another page from the Bush playbook? Though this one won’t be destroying a bunch of lives like, say, “prolonged detention.” Perhaps Obama can pray about that while he is at Camp David…

…It isn’t so much that Dick and Rummy are back. It’s that they never left.

They had no intention of turning America’s national security over to the Boy Wonder. The two best infighters in Washington history weren’t yielding turf to a bunch of peach-fuzz pinkos who side with terrorists.

Let W. work out at the S.M.U. gym in Dallas, waiting for history to redeem him; Dick and Rummy are leaning forward into history, as they always do. Cheney is tawny with TV makeup; there’s no point taking it off. The gigs are nonstop, and he has a big Obama-bashing speech Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute.

…“That was funny when you were on Fox and Neil Cavuto called you Obama’s ‘ball and Cheney,’ ” Rummy grins, taking a gulp of his brunello.

“The punks thought they could roll over us,” Vice mutters. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

… “I can’t believe how easy it was to bring Obama into line,” Rummy says, gnawing on Gorgonzola. “We wouldn’t have needed waterboarding if everybody cracked like a peanut. It was even easier than getting the bit into Junior’s mouth. Way simpler than if we’d had to contend with McCain. In the end, the right guy won.”

…“You’re running national security now and everyone knows it,” Rummy says. “You got Obama to do an about-face on the torture photos. He’s using our old line about how it would endanger the troops. He’s keeping our military tribunals. His Justice Department invoked our state secrets privilege to try to get that lawsuit on torture and rendition dismissed. He’s trying to stop any sort of truth commission, thank goodness. He’s got his own surge going in Afghanistan. He’s withdrawing from Iraq more slowly. He’s extended our secret incursions over the Afghan border into Pakistan.”

“Transparency bites,” [Cheney] snarls.

…”Well,” Dick says. “He’s got to keep Gitmo open. It’s rich that his own party won’t give him the money to close it. The NIMBY factor works every time — no terrorists in my backyard. He’s got to stop this pansy diplomacy with Muslim nations. He’s got to let Bibi take out those Iranian centrifuges. He’s got to stop his Kodak moments and Commie book club with Hugo Chávez. He’s got to release those C.I.A. memos proving that we were right to rip up the Constitution. And, of course, he’s got to pardon Scooter.”

“Can we get him to do all that, Dick?”

Dick twinkles. “Yes, we can.”

But here’s my point, Maureen. While you’re making a funny about Obama looking like GWB’s third term, which most everybody here predicted he would, do you really think Cheney would be able to do this to Hillary Clinton or John McCain if either of them were occupying the Oval Office right now? Are you intimating that our current President doesn’t have enough of a spine? What’s wrong, Maureen, are you running out of people to snark so now you have to take on “Obambi”?

MoDo, still happy you backed the “Boy Wonder,” as you call him, with such a vengeance?

Inquiring minds want to know.

This is Part 2 of the article “Black Box Backlash,” the conclusion of Part 1 on Bev Harris, Black Box Voting, and the issue of leaving our democracy to electronic voting machines. This will be the topic of our Live Chat on Weds., May 13th, at 9:00 PM.

Back to the article:

COMPUTER SCIENTISTS were already hotly debating the issue. Stanford University’s David Dill became interested in computer voting when the state of Georgia had technical problems with its new voting machines in 2002. When Dill discovered his own county, Santa Clara in California, was about to start using electronic voting machines without paper output, he swung into action. Dill started an online petition calling for a paper trail that attracted some of the nation’s premier computer scientists. He put up a Web site that eventually became www.verifiedvoting.org and began speaking out about the issue around the country.

Harris’ instincts about posting the source code proved to be dead-on. Four computer scientists from Maryland’s prestigious Johns Hopkins University examined the code and released a scathing review of it. “Our analysis shows that this voting system is far below even the most minimal security standards applicable in other contexts,” their report stated.

While the Hopkins review did not cause political pandemonium, it did validate Harris’ gut feelings about electronic voting—our votes were not secure because the software recording them was vulnerable to hacking. The report also attracted major media attention across the country.

Diebold spokesperson David Bear says, “Electronic voting is safe, secure, and accurate.” Bear says the code that Harris found on the Internet was partial and outdated. In addition, Bear points out, the software is not used in a vacuum. Election officials use a variety of checks and balances with any system that they employ to ensure its security.

After the Hopkins report, the state of Maryland had a couple of consultants review the touch-screen machines and the way they will be deployed in elections. The consultants made some recommendations to increase security, but Maryland is proceeding with the elections using the Diebold equipment.

Far be it from me to not believe a Diebold spokesperson, but, I don’t believe him. His contention that the machines are safe and secure flies in the face of a number of reports, including being able to access them with a mini-bar key! So, yeah, I’m not buying what he was selling. Makes me wonder why Maryland did, all evidence to the contrary. But, I’m not the only one who is just a tad suspicious:

AUDIT TRAIL TO CALIFORNIA

Harris, however, was not done with Diebold. Last Sept. 5, someone leaked 15,000 internal Diebold memos to Harris. She says she published 24 of them on her own PR Web site and was promptly hit with a cease-and-desist letter from Diebold. Soon, all 15,000 of the memos were circulating on the Internet. Independent media sites around the world and students at more than 30 universities posted them. Diebold tried to stop the postings by claiming copyright on the memos and found itself entangled in a free-speech battle. Eventually, U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, posted them on his congressional Web site. Diebold recognized that Kucinich held a trump card and withdrew its objections to the postings.

Sadly, the memos themselves have not been the subject of any thorough analysis. They are mostly e-mails from Diebold employees and are full of phrases that sound bad but are hard to understand without technical expertise and context.

Diebold’s Bear says, “Those were internal discussions between individuals, not the sentiments of the company.”

HARRIS THINKS the memos contain important revelations. Perhaps the most important, she argues, is that there is widespread use of uncertified software for voting machines of all kinds. Whether we vote on the new touch-screen system or the optical-scan paper ballots in use in King County and elsewhere, computer software counts our ballots. Harris believes a strict certification process where federal and state officials carefully test the election software is central to voting security. Without proper certification, she worries that improper code that would allow for the manipulation of election results might be introduced into the system.

By last Nov. 21, Kevin Shelley, California’s secretary of state, had heard enough. He issued an order that all touch- screen voting machines include “an accessible voter verified paper audit trail.” (Washington’s Reed and Nevada’s secretary of state, Dean Heller, came out in favor of audit trails in December.) The next month, Shelley commissioned an audit into whether uncertified Diebold software was being used in California’s elections. Of the 17 California counties that used Diebold election machines in the last election, Shelley’s auditors found, none was using software that had been properly certified by the state. Diebold insists that the changes made to the software are cosmetic. Shelley says the company might lose the right to sell its touch-screen machines in California.

All in all, 2003 was quite a year for Bev Harris. But she insists she is just getting started.

Bear in mind, this was 6 years ago. So much information came to light, yet, Diebold was still selling machines across the country. Harris wasn’t done yet:

BACK IN THE REAL WORLD

In 2004, Harris and her allies have been working on four new fronts: lobbying, public speaking, litigation, and seeking public office.

At the start of this year’s Washington Legislature, there were two bills about issues related to electronic voting. Harris and her ally, Linda Franz, another voting activist, introduced one with the help of legislators in both the House and the Senate. It died a relatively quick death, however.

The other bill, introduced by Secretary of State Reed, represented a big change in his position. Up until December, Reed and his office had strongly resisted any effort to require touch-screen voting machines to have a voter-verified audit trail. Reed says that as he toured the state talking with ordinary voters, he realized there was a lot of anxiety about the new electronic voting. He has seen this phenomenon before, he says, when other new voting technology—like the optical scan paper ballot—was introduced. “It was one thing to hear from a few people on the Internet,” he says, “but we found ordinary citizens didn’t trust these machines.”

Harris and her allies, however, are furious opponents of Reed’s bill. They say it leaves the door open for insecure Internet voting, takes too long to require a paper trail with touch-screen voting machines, and has an insufficient audit requirement and a host of other ills. “You have a secretary of state that crafts legislation that sounds good but doesn’t deliver,” says Franz.

REED IS RELUCTANT to engage in a debate with Harris and her allies. He says he hasn’t seen their bill and downplays the differences between himself and them. He offers only the mildest criticism and says on the whole their activism has been helpful. He does object to the way they have verbally roughed up elections officials like Snohomish County Auditor Bob Terwilliger. “Bob has been on radio shows with Bev Harris. I fortunately haven’t had that experience,” he says, laughing.

As of Tuesday, March 9, the fate of Reed’s legislation was still up in the air.

Wow – this guy can be Secretary of State, but he’s afraid to take on this grandmother? Talk about your lack of intestinal fortitude…I know, I know, that seems to go hand-in-hand with being a politician, but still – c’mon already! Not only that, but saying one thing one day, and another the next seems to be a chronic disease for too many politicians:

Longtime voting-rights activist Janet Anderson questions the wisdom of head-on, fierce opposition to Reed and his bill by Harris and her allies. “The secretary of state changed his position 180 degrees. Instead of being supportive, they are making it clear they don’t trust him.”

In fact, Harris’ right-hand man is running against Reed. Andy Stephenson met Harris through Democratic Underground, a left-wing Web site (www.democraticunderground.com), and they immediately became close cohorts. Stephenson, 42, looks like a shorter, stockier version of talk-show host Conan O’Brien, and until recently he owned the Subway shop on 15th Avenue on Seattle’s Capitol Hill. As a former telephone salesperson, he has skills that Harris lacks: He’s great on the phone or talking one-on-one with people.

Stephenson is running a fiery campaign against Reed. “The secretary of state is accountable to no one,” he charges. His campaign for elected office suffers from a flaw common among impassioned rookies, however: He believes his issue will be enough against seasoned politicians like Reed and Democratic Party favorite state Rep. Laura Ruderman, D-Kirkland, who have name identification with voters and will raise much more money and receive much more institutional support than Stephenson will.

HARRIS HASN’T endorsed Stephenson because she doesn’t endorse candidates. But it’s clear Harris likes him and his tactics, which include filing a lawsuit against Reed for allowing the use of uncertified software in King County. The secretary of state’s office denies the charge. Meanwhile, Harris is a plaintiff in a California lawsuit that seeks to end use of Diebold equipment in that state. She and Stephenson promise more lawsuits in other states, including Washington.

The partisan, rancorous nature of Stephenson’s campaign concerns veteran activist Anderson. “I don’t like it when people start speaking in partisan terms, because we all want honest, safe, secure elections. To turn it into partisan name-calling turns off half the people.”

At a recent forum, Stephenson, who is charming tête-à-tête, looked extremely uncomfortable while making an awkward stump speech. As if to emphasize the protest nature of his candidacy, he endorsed dark-horse presidential candidate Kucinich.

Well, we know that outcome – Reed is still Secretary of State in California.

Back to Bev Harris:

RHETORICAL ROAR

Harris, on the other hand, is a marvelous speaker. As a PR professional, she knows how to present her material in a personable, funny way. She hopes to use public speaking tours as another weapon in her arsenal and took her act on the road to California this month.

The tone of Harris’ rhetoric disturbs Anderson. “Bev Harris is a little more conspiracy-oriented than I tend to be. I don’t believe this is a huge Republican plot to steal elections,” she says. “Maybe the whole matter would have been taken more seriously earlier had not the highly partisan charges been made so shrilly.”

That kind of criticism angers Harris. But there’s no doubt some of her claims have lacked substantiation. Near the end of Black Box Voting, she writes: “There are some who are using election-manipulation techniques to transfer a block of power to their friends. This is a business plan, a form of organized crime. . . . ” Yet Harris rejects any claim she is a conspiracy theorist. “I understand the needs of the press in terms of documentation and not overstating your case,” she says, and she has worked to scale back the hype in her writing.

Yet at a recent forum at the University of Washington, the more outrageous Harris’ rhetoric got, the more the audience loved it. One key to Harris’ success has been her in-your-face style. That characteristic, which brought early success, might not resonate with everyone. She isn’t confident of victory in any case. “Actually, it is going to be a long shot that we will win this battle on voting machines,” Harris says. “We have proven our case, but they are still just barreling ahead.” (ghowland@seattleweekly.com)

Just because someone may be a conspiracy theorist doesn’t mean they are WRONG. There has been AMPLE evidence to support Harris’ contentions about Diebold (and other) electronic voting machines, including by our CIA, for pete’s sake! I mean, really – what’s the point of having highly trained professionals give us their opinion if we are simply going to ignore what they have to say? THAT makes no sense, in my opinion. What Ms. Harris has been saying for years now, does. Especially since she has been backed up by a number of universities and specialists in this area.

The question is: why are we still using these machines?

Please join us for our second Live Chat and viewing of Parts 4 – 6 of the HBO documentary, “Hacking Democracy” Weds. night, May 13, at 9:00pm (EST) to discuss this, and other questions.

In Europe, he chastised America for what he called our “arrogance.” In the Caribbean, he gave the dictator of Venezuela a warm smile and a handshake, and called him “amigo.” Before the Saudi king, he bowed low and long.

And just the other day, in a cynical nod to Turkish generals, the American president who campaigned for human rights quietly avoided the word “genocide” in a resolution marking the anniversary of the 1915 Ottoman Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenian Orthodox Christians.

A few years after that slaughter, as he prepared to engage in his own genocide of the Jews, Adolf Hitler was credited with saying: “Who remembers the Armenians?” The United States may remember, but our president can’t call it genocide.

Ah, yes, his trip to Turkey. Our guide in Turkey mentioned Obama’s two days spent there in Istanbul. He lifted up his hands, and his eyes to the heavens, and said, “yes, people here think he is the new savior.” There was a tinge of irony in his voice, thankfully. I was glad he appeared not to have been sucked in by Obama’s rhetoric. And all I could think was, “He has benefited from a GREAT marketing campaign, that man.” I might add, there were VERY few responses to the guide’s having said this, but in particular, there were no enthusiastic affirmations. Perhaps after Obama’s unwillingness to call genocide what is is, there may be fewer Turks who see him as The Messiah.

Kass continues:

Still, President Barack Obama offers himself up to an adoring world — and the enraptured, Hopium-smoking American media that helped elect him — as a leader more flexible than his hopelessly rigid predecessor, George W. Bush.

And he’s proved it, charming nations and their leaders, remaining in campaign mode, where he’s most comfortable.

While in Egypt, at the Citadel and its two mosques, we were all on the bus getting ready to leave. One of the constant souvenir hawks kept talking to people on the bus, and said, “I love Barack Obama! He will change the world! I hate George Bush and Tony Blair!” Well, I couldn’t disagree with his last assessment, but one of the other women on the bus, when he said Obama would “change the world, ” muttered, “We’ll see.” Again, not an enthusiastic response from the people on the bus (different group, for the most part, too, by the way). But it is clear that the MSM, Plouffe, and Axelrod meme that Obama really is a change agent, in contradiction to his entire political history thus far, and his underhanded way of even getting into politics in the first place (getting everyone thrown off the ballot), has taken root abroad. People believe what they want to believe, facts notwithstanding. It’s one thing for people in other countries to buy this stuff – they can’t vote here. Quite another that people here bought it. But I digress.

Back to the USA and John Kass:

But last week, he bowed to his base in the hard political left by reversing himself, opening the door for the prosecution of Bush Justice Department officials who helped develop harsh interrogation policies for suspected terrorists.

Some call it torture and legitimately oppose it. Others say harsh interrogation — such as waterboarding — was necessary after the Sept. 11 attacks.

But what Obama accomplished by opening the possibility of political witch hunts was to offer up one of his own eyes to his political supporters. He needs both eyes to see a dangerous world.

The week began when Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, appeared on ABC’s “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos to reiterate Obama’s pledge not to prosecute.

“He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided,” said Emanuel, no fool. “They shouldn’t be prosecuted. … It’s time for reflection. It’s not a time to use our energy in looking back in any sense of anger and retribution.”

Two days later, Obama abruptly changed course to please his anti-war base that demands a few severed political heads.

“With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say, that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general,” he said. “I think there are a host of very complicated issues involved there.”

His critics used phrases such as “chilling effect” on intelligence gathering, but I call it the pucker factor. In all bureaucracies, it rolls down hill.

Of course, Obama caved. Anyone who thought he would do otherwise was sadly mistaken.

As for his releasing of the Torture memos, a number of my fellow writers at No Quarter have taken this on, including none other than Larry Johnson, American Girl In Italy, and SusanUnPC, to name a few. No need for me to get into that with such stellar writers already dealing with it, except to say – once again, Obama did not consider the implications and/or ramifications of doing so, including, as SusanUnPC pointed out, the impact on some of his more sychophantic supporters like Nancy Pelosi. (If you haven’t had a chance to read those, and others, I highly recommend that you do.)

Kass continues on the torture theme:

Reporters are kind of like intelligence gatherers. We don’t waterboard politicians, but we’re under pressure to get good information. So, let me tell you a story.

In 1985, I was a kid in the news business, and our gossip columnist, Mike Sneed — now at the Sun-Times — got the story of the year: “Reform” Mayor Harold Washington had been secretly taped pressuring a fellow to get out of the 3rd Ward aldermanic race. It sounded like raw politics. It didn’t sound anything like reform. And Washington was enraged.

Jim Squires, then our editor, decided to publish transcripts but tell readers the tapes were leaked by Washington’s white ethnic political opponents who wanted to embarrass him. Fair enough.

Then he ordered me and another young reporter to find Sneed’s source and walk back the cat. I didn’t want to do it, but he was the boss and Sneed understood, and after a few days, he dropped his harebrained scheme.

Yet for a long time afterward, sources worried they might be outed. Reporters were concerned their bosses might investigate their sources. And in the gathering of political intelligence, when sources start puckering up, they’re not going to kiss you. You get scooped.

And some editors shriek, “How did you get scooped?!” even when they knew that the boss made a decision that sent spasms through everything. More spasms ensue. The pucker factor multiplies exponentially.

Now THAT is a quote for the ages, isn’t it? “The pucker factor multiplies exponentially.”

Kass makes his point:

Obama isn’t an editor. He’s the president of a nation targeted by terrorists and constantly probed for weakness, even by our allies.

His intelligence gatherers — and others who give them the tools and the go-ahead — can’t spend their time wondering if he has their backs.

His statements surely sent spasms through bureaucracies that are vital to his own success and America’s safety. All because he wanted to campaign, rather than lead.

Our president has a fine ear for language and nuance. Yet sometimes he shapes his principles to fit the moment, something anyone who watches Chicago politics understood years ago(Emphasis mine.). The Democratic machine candidates he eagerly endorsed for re-election — from Boss Daley II to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger to disgraced former Gov. Rod Blagojevich — are testament to Obama’s flexibility.

But he must stop campaigning someday, and start thinking like a chief executive. And he’ll need both eyes to see where he’s got to go. (
jskass@tribune.com)

I could not have said it better myself. Except to say that it isn’t just the intelligence gatherers who have to wonder if he has their backs, but ALL Americans. When the President of the United States goes abroad and insults the very people he was elected to serve, it does raise the question if he indeed does. Personally, I never suffered the illusion that he gave a damn about the American people – he seems to care about one person and person only: himself. Still, his position alone as POTUS would certainly IMPLY he has a duty to not trash us in other countries while apparently campaigning for Master of the Universe. Just sayin’.

And, while I know others are writing about this, a president who cares, really cares about the people whom he was elected to serve does NOT, DOES NOT, have a PHOTO OP of a 747 being chased by an F-16 Fighter Jet flying over lower Manhattan and New Jersey. The bubble surrounding this man and his inner circle is mighty thick, and mighty clueless. (If you have not yet heard about this incredibly insensitive, assholic move by the White House, click HERE and HERE for just two articles on this.)

If Obama is truly capable of leading, rather than just campaigning, and having his ego stroked, it is time, PAST time, for him to hop to it. And enough with the press conferences already, too. And the vacations (I’ve lost count, but it has been at least three in the first One Hundred Days. Feel free to enumerate them if you know of more!). And playing games while real issues are arising (golf, basketball, whatever). That is all to say, President Obama, get to work already.

To: The President of the United States
Fm: Melvin A. Goodman
Date: April 25, 2009
Subj: Recommendations for Dealing with the CIA on Issues of Torture and Abuse

President Obama is displaying ambivalence in handling the issue of torture and abuse. He clearly wants to do the right thing and, as a result, has put a stop to torture and closed down the CIA’s secret prisons where the worst abuses occurred. As a political leader with an extensive policy agenda, however, he wants to limit the investigation of the crimes that were committed in order to avoid a fractious political fight that could compromise his agenda.

The fact is that U.S. and international laws were broken and immoral actions were conducted. Moral and legal issues, unlike political ones, should not be compromised. Pursuing the proper moral course, as opposed to the political course, is central to the identity of President Obama as a leader and to the United States as a nation.

As a result, he must deal decisively with the Bush administration’s use of torture, secret prisons, and extraordinary renditions. The citizens of the United States, indeed the entire international community, know that war crimes were committed and that domestic and international laws were broken. Acts of sadism were committed—not only against those responsible for terrorist activities, but also against innocent victims. We need to establish that these activities were wrong and will never be repeated.

Only a serious high-level investigation can achieve these objectives. The investigation must focus on the senior officials of the Bush administration who were responsible for this descent into depravity, but there are individuals serving in high-level positions at the CIA, including the deputy director and the acting general counsel, who must be replaced if there is to be a convincing repudiation of the abuses of the past eight years. CIA officials sought protection from the Justice Department because they knew their actions violated international law (the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture); US law (which treats any breach of Geneva as a crime); and the 8th amendment to the Constitution.

President Obama has given senior CIA officials too much say with respect to releasing documents and limiting both congressional inquiry and the appointment of a special prosecutor. Senior CIA officials, past and present, are making a case that is patently false. They have told the president that an investigation will harm the CIA and that operations officers will be less willing to take risks in the future if some of them are held accountable now.

President Obama must understand that very few CIA officers were involved in these crimes; that the overwhelming majority of National Clandestine Service officers are professionals who understand the need to combat terrorism and are committed to supporting their president and defending their nation’s security. The overwhelming majority of NCS officers were not involved in the illegal activities and did not support them.

The current CIA leadership has argued falsely that foreign intelligence services will be less willing to share secrets with the United States if we pursue an investigation of these criminal activities. In fact, it was the Bush administration’s resort to torture, abuse, and secret prisons that led many nations to withhold information from the United States. CIA leaders believe that past investigations of CIA scandals, such as attempts to conduct political assassinations, had a chilling effect on CIA morale.

This is also untrue! CIA director William Colby’s cooperation in the 1970s with a Senate investigation of CIA assassination plots brought an end to these counterproductive actions, and CIA director John Deutch’s limits in the 1990s on the recruitment of Central American agents linked to death squads in their countries led to more effective recruitment.

Unfortunately, President Obama has made the journey toward an investigation more difficult by appointing former CIA veteran John Brennan as an intelligence adviser. Brennan was a major player in the era of cover-up at the CIA, serving as an executive assistant to CIA director George Tenet when the practices of detention and torture were introduced. He was a cheerleader in selling renditions and secret prisons to the media, and he lobbied against release of any torture memoranda. He has a personal interest in perpetuating the cover up of CIA’s rendition and detention practices.

Leon Panetta’s appointment as Director of Central Intelligence has proved a major disappointment. He has accepted the position being advanced by those Agency officers seeking to cover up the abuses of the past eight years. He has retained Steven Kappes as CIA deputy director, although Kappes was one of the ideological drivers for these practices. He has retained John Rizzo as acting general counsel, although Rizzo was a key figure in the Agency’s lobbying for Justice Department protection for its policies for nearly a decade; the Senate intelligence committee refused to confirm Rizzo as general counsel for that reason.

Panetta also has not named a new Inspector General for the CIA, raising the question of whether he shares the preference of former DCI Hayden and Deputy DCI Kappes for a weakened Office of Inspector General. Presumably, Hayden and Kappes prefer a weak OIG because that office is the only institution to have conducted a critical investigation of the Agency’s torture practices (2004); they surely seek to prevent any further such investigations by the IG. President Obama and Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) should be deeply concerned that there is not a statutory and independent individual serving as Inspector General of the CIA at this delicate juncture.

What Needs to Be Done?

The Obama administration must stop coddling those CIA leaders who continue to try to cover up Agency actions against the best interests of the Agency itself. It is time to uncover, understand, and reject the painful truths about CIA’s use of torture and abuse.

The release of the memoranda by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has begun the process of open disclosure, but President Obama must continue that process. He cannot expect the Senate and House intelligence committees to do a rigorous investigation because too many congressional leaders, including Jay Rockefeller, Nancy Pelosi, Peter Hoekstra, and Richard Shelby, knew about the practices of torture and abuse and did nothing to challenge, let alone prevent, them.

He must appoint a special prosecutor, perhaps John Dunlop, who has been investigating for months the CIA’s destruction of the torture tapes, which now appears to have a blatant act of obstructed justice. President Obama has ruled out the type of commission that investigated 9/11, but Pandora’s box has been opened and he will have to create or turn to some institution to confront the truths that have been unleashed. There is no perfect institution, but he must choose one—congressional, blue-ribbon, special investigator, Inspector General. Otherwise the president will continue to be hung up by an inability to confront the very real moral challenges posed by this country’s use of torture and abuse.

It is time to recognize that the policy of torture and abuse was only one of many steps taken by President Bush and Vice President Cheney to expand and abuse presidential powers. The Bush administration was responsible for warrantless eavesdropping in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978; the Terrorist Surveillance Program in violation of the National Security Act of 1947; more presidential signing statements than all previous presidents signed in order to undermine the will of the people; and the outing of CIA clandestine operative Valerie Plame in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. The Obama administration may not have the time and energy to address all of these abuses, but the program of torture and abuse was by far the worst of these; it must be repudiated.

My next article will address the role of the Washington Post in helping the CIA spread these false views that are held by a small group within the National Clandestine Service and their spokesmen at the senior levels of the Agency.

Melvin A. Goodman, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent more than 42 years in the U.S. Army, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Department of Defense. His most recent book is “Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.”

Originally published at PubRecord.org.

HOT UPDATE: John Boehner is taking it right to Nancy, proving that “what goes around comes around,” and that Obama just did NOT think through the torture memo “blowback.”

Politico’s Glenn Thrush reports that Rep. Boehner is “asking the Obama administration to release CIA notes taken during a 2002 briefing session with Pelosi and other Congressional leaders.”

Even “Dear Abby” could have given PBO the advice he needed: “THINK!. And make a careful list of the pros and cons, including the possibility you’ll throw your own party leaders under the bus (!). Your MoveOn and Kossack rabblerousers are NOT deep thinkers! Seek the counsel of savvy, experienced men and women.”

Obama’s increasingly heavy reliance on D.C. novice David Axelrod is folly. All Axe envisioned was Republican blood in the water. But Axelrod has NO background — none, zippo! — in Capitol Hill politics warfare. Rahm? Does he think with his gonads or his brain? Methinks that, like Obama, he’s more politician than legislator, and he probably didn’t recall that both Democrats and Republicans attended those intel meetings in 2002. But now it’s too late, the water is bloodied by Democrats and Republicans alike, and here we go:

Boehner is backing efforts by Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking member on the House intelligence committee, to release agency’s records of meetings with Congressional members from both parties.

The GOP is hoping to spotlight the fact that Pelosi and other Democrats raised few objections when told about details of the Bush administration “enhanced interrogations” of terror suspects.

“Congress and the American people deserve a full and complete set of facts about what information was yielded by CIA’s interrogation program, and they deserve to know which of their representatives in Congress were briefed about these techniques and the extent of those briefings,” says Boehner, backing Hoekstra’s letter to DNI Dennis Blair.

He adds: “To date, the administration has fallen short in providing this information.

Mr. Hoekstra’s request to Director Blair is straightforward, and the information he is seeking is essential. The American people have been provided an incomplete picture of exactly what intelligence was made available by the interrogation program. It is now the Administration’s responsibility to ensure they are given the full picture — including which members of Congress were briefed on the methods and how extensive those briefings were.”

EARLIER POST:

When one attempts to obsure, deflect, and outright prevaricate as much as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one can expect critics galore. And that’s just what’s happened. Politico’s Glenn Thrush has been hammering Nancy hard. This article was published less than an hour ago:

“Pelosi playing defense on torture“:

Nancy Pelosi didn’t cry foul when the Bush administration briefed her on “enhanced interrogation” of terror suspects in 2002, but her team was locked and loaded to counter hypocrisy charges when the “torture” memos were released last week.

Many Republicans obliged, led by former CIA chief Porter Goss, who is accusing Democrats like Pelosi of “amnesia” for demanding investigations in 2009 after failing to raise objections seven years ago when she first learned of the legal basis for the program.

Had President Obama and team THOUGHT through the blowback from their we’ll-have-it-both-ways approach to the torture memos, they’d have immediately realized the can of worms they were opening for members of their own party. Furthermore, Obama’s failure to look at the entire chessboard is endangering his other programs:

Pelosi finds herself on the defensive at a time when she needs to be on the offensive, pushing through a record-breaking budget, health care reform, a controversial cap-and-trade proposal and a supplemental funding bill for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Someone on Pelosi’s staff spoke anonymously to Thrush:

“As soon as the president made the decision to release [the memos], I was telling people that the Republicans were going to come after us, saying she knew about it and did nothing,” said an adviser to Pelosi (D-Calif.), speaking on condition of anonymity. “And I’m sure we’re going to get hammered again when they release all those new torture photos,” the person said.

Republicans are grateful for the gift:

But Pelosi’s allies were less prepared to confront the fallout from her convoluted answers during three sessions with reporters last week — answers that raised new questions and handed Republicans a fresh line of attack on a speaker at the height of her power.

“I’m puzzled, I don’t understand what she’s trying to say,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), former chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and currently the committee’s ranking minority member.

“I don’t have any sympathy for her — she’s the speaker of the House; there should be some accountability. She shouldn’t be given a pass,” added Hoekstra.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) promised to keep up the heat, telling reporters last week, “She and other leaders were fully briefed on all of these interrogation techniques. There’s nothing here that should surprise her.”

This next quote left me both flabbergasted and infuriated — because the Dems’ main concern seems to be how they appear in the media, not whether what Pelosi did and said are right or wrong:

“The Republicans may have won a news cycle, but we’re doing what we want to do,” said Pelosi spokesman Brendan Daly, pointing to Pelosi’s legislative successes during President Barack Obama’s first 100 days in office.

Check Memeorandum.com for blog posts related to Thrush’s article.

For more on Nancy Pelosi’s modus operandi, see “On Pelosi’s Duplicity and Apparent Sandbagging of Elizabeth Warren.”

This attack piece proves how Pelosi and other Democratic leaders let Bush have his way with TARP and ceded ENORMOUS control to the Treasury Department. Now that Elizabeth Warren is analyzing and describing the real problems with TARP, Pelosi is maneuvering to cut her off at the knees. It’s quite a read.

Although Keith Olbermann has become something of an insufferable boor, he is finally on to something that I would pay money to watch but under specific conditions. First, check out Keith’s challenge:

But here’s where I differ with Olbermann’s challenge. Sean Hannity should not have a choice of when or where.

If Sean has a choice or voice it cannot be torture. If he gets to choose how long to last it is really nothing more than a form of sadomasochism. Once he speaks the safe word the madan stops whipping his ass with her black leather whip.

Let’s review the definition of torture from the international treaty:

the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions. . .

It is more than the mere act of “inflicting” pain or suffering. People like me who received training in interrogation resistance program at a U.S. Government military or intelligence facility have experienced some of the methods of torture firsthand. We have been waterboarded, forced into stress positions, crammed into claustrophobic inducing cabinets and deprived of sleep. However, just because you have gone thru a SERE (i.e., Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) program does not therefore qualify you as an expert to decide that waterboarding is not torture.

Why? Because the people who participate in these programs do so willingly and their release from captivity is not dependent on divulging specific information the interrogators/torturers want. You have a choice. You can even choose to drop out. The training is for a fixed period. Why? Because the physicians who oversee the training know that sustained exposure can inflict physical and psychological damage that can render a soldier or spy unable to do their job.

None of the suspected terrorists snatched up by U.S. authorities and subsequently strapped down and waterboarded had a choice. They were under the full and complete control of their captors. When you are under the physical control of someone else who can do what they want when they want to you then you have the sufficient and necessary condition for what transforms an exercise involving sleep deprivation from a training event into torture.

And let’s put to bed once and for all the lie that the only way to protect America from the threat of terrorism is to rely on torture. Did you read the extraordinary op-ed by former FBI Agent Ali Soufan? Agent Soufan actually did interrogate several of the radical Islamists. We must hear him and pay attention to what he knows from experience. This appeared in the Thursday edition of the New York Times:

FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use.

It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives.

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. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process. . . .

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him. . . .

The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.

Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).

My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)

As we move forward, it’s important to not allow the torture issue to harm the reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is essential to our national security. We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward — a real danger right now.

I suppose the crazies like Cheney, Limbaugh and Hannity will continue to delude themselves into believing that torture is okay and that it is the only solution. Far be it from them to actually have any first hand experience or trust the words of people who have actually been on the frontlines.

But isn’t that typical of Cheney? The coward avoiding serving in Vietnam. He preferred that others go in his stead. But as an arm chair warrior he is one ferocious motherfucker.

I would really like to see folks like Cheney or Hannity picked up against their will and taken to an undisclosed location. Once there they would be waterboarded, sleep-deprived, smacked around, shoved into cramped spaces and forced to cohabitate with an insect of my choice. But they won’t get to choose when to call it a halt. I will decide that. It will all be my decision.

At that point do you think they might reconsider their views on what constitutes torture?

President Obama has rashly opened a huge can of worms, and his motive is disgustingly impure — it was an ill-considered attempt to placate his hard-core left supporters in MoveOn and big money bags George Soros. As Porter Goss writes in “Security Before Politics,” published in today’s Washington Post:

Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage.

Yes, the Obama team had a few meetings about releasing the documents, but apparently not enough meetings, and no one sufficiently looked at the big picture. Now this story has gotten completely away from them, as if the gate’s been opened, releasing a huge herd of wild horses.

Part of being an effective leader is having the wisdom and experience to foresee the “blowback” from one’s options before jumping at a “solution.” I just watched a great episode of “West Wing” in which President Bartlet uses chess games to teach his younger staff about how to make smart moves while foreseeing what is bound to happen. Over and over again, President Bartlet says, “Look at the entire board. Look at the entire board. Look at the entire board.” While these chess games are going on simultaneously in different rooms, Bartlet is also “playing” both China and Taiwan but not revealing to either his ultimate goal. In so doing, by making just the right moves at the right time and never tipping off either country, Bartlet gets the Taiwanese a free election and calms the nerves of the Chinese. And his young staff get an invaluable lesson.

President Obama, by NOT looking at the entire board, has imperiled Speaker Pelosi and every other Democrat who was in on those 30 secret meetings. Goss writes:

A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation’s intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA’s “High Value Terrorist Program,” including the development of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

– The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

– We understood what the CIA was doing.

– We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

– We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

– On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed “memorandums for the record” suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately — to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president’s national security adviser — and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

Besides the outright lies of Speaker Pelosi et al., Goss gets into the likely outcome of the carelessly opened “can of worms” as well as the culprit who, sigh, does not have the experience or inclination to be a REAL LEADER, which requires careful forethought and looking FIRST at the “entire board”:

Circuses are not new in Washington, and I can see preparations being made for tents from the Capitol straight down Pennsylvania Avenue. The CIA has been pulled into the center ring before. The result this time will be the same: a hollowed-out service of diminished capabilities. After Sept. 11, the general outcry was, “Why don’t we have better overseas capabilities?” I fear that in the years to come this refrain will be heard again: once a threat — or God forbid, another successful attack — captures our attention and sends the pendulum swinging back. There is only one person who can shut down this dangerous show: President Obama.

Unfortunately, much of the damage to our capabilities has already been done. It is certainly not trust that is fostered when intelligence officers are told one day “I have your back” only to learn a day later that a knife is being held to it. After the events of this week, morale at the CIA has been shaken to its foundation.

We must not forget: Our intelligence allies overseas view our inability to maintain secrecy as a reason to question our worthiness as a partner. These allies have been vital in almost every capture of a terrorist.

The suggestion that we are safer now because information about interrogation techniques is in the public domain conjures up images of unicorns and fairy dust. We have given our enemy invaluable information about the rules by which we operate. … (Read all.)

Here’s Rep. Pete Hoekstra giving Sean Hannity the skinny on how much select members of Congress were told, in THIRTY briefings. (See article.) As Rep. Hoekstra notes, “[T]hey knew and they knew in detail exactly what was going on.”

Columnist Carolyn Lochhead lays out Nancy Pelosi’s trouble with veracity, and John Boehner’s delight in Nancy’s uncomfortable squirming, in the San Francisco Chronicle:

[...]

[A] full-blown battle has opened between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and her GOP counterpart, Ohio’s John Boehner about how much top Congressional leaders knew about water boarding in 2002. It is being fueled in part by a timeline released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by another California Democrat, Dianne Feinstein.

Boehner released news reports from 2007 that seemed to contradict Pelosi, and Pelosi’s office fired back with their own. Boehner said Congressional leaders “received an awful lot of information” about interrogations, and that “not a word was raised at the time, not one word. And I think you’re going to hear more and more about the bigger picture here, that … the war on terror after 9/11 was done in a bipartisan basis on lots of fronts.”

Pelosi spent much of her press conference today addressing questions about what she knew.

The timeline showed that in the fall of 2002 Pelosi and other key members of the House Intelligence Committee were briefed on waterboarding and other interrogation methods Democrats now describe as torture.

We at No Quarter take personal delight in the pickle in which Nancy finds herself. It was she who abetted the plan to make sure that Barack got nominated and that Hillary didn’t. The popular theory is that Nancy wanted someone she could control so she could run the show in Congress.

Well, it turns out that Barack isn’t the only leader who needed to learn how to look at the entire board.

Check out more articles on Nancy Pelosi’s big problem via Google News. See also: Memeorandum.com’s collection of relevant stories and blog posts.