Top legislators knew of interrogations CIA held dozens of briefings on techniques By Kara Rowland (Contact) | Thursday, April 23, 2009 The CIA briefed top Democrats and Republicans on the congressional intelligence committees more than 30 times about enhanced interrogation techniques, according to intelligence sources who said the lawmakers tacitly approved the techniques that some Democrats in Congress now say should land Bush administration officials in jail. Between 2002 and 2006, the top Republicans and Democrats on the House and Senate intelligence committees "each got complete, benchmark briefings on the program," said one of the intelligence sources who is familiar with the briefings. "If Congress wanted to kill this program, all it had to do was withhold funding," said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the closed-door briefings. Those who were briefed included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and Rep. Jane Harman of California, all Democrats, and Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama and Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, all Republicans. The Democratic and Republican staff directors for both committees also were briefed, according to the intelligence source and to a declassified memo released Wednesday that detailed some of the Senate committee briefings. President Obama last week released a series of memos that were the basis for the CIA's program and that laid out specific tactics, such as sleep deprivation and waterboarding, and their release has pushed the issue of blame to the forefront of the political discussion. Some Democrats and liberal pressure groups have called for Bush administration officials who wrote the rules allowing enhanced techniques to be prosecuted, saying the tactics amounted to torture. Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi have both left the door open for such prosecutions. Seeking the facts about congressional approval, Mr. Hoekstra, the ranking member of the House committee, sent a letter Monday asking National Intelligence Director Dennis C. Blair, a retired admiral, to provide an unclassified list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who were briefed on the techniques. "I believe their response was probably, 'Well, that's OK,' or otherwise they wouldn't have signed off on it," Mr. Hoekstra said when asked about other members who received briefings. Members of Congress who were briefed have offered different recollections for what they were briefed on and what their responsibilities were for addressing the information. ..... From Washington Times.
The point of this is that some of the same liberal democrats who are now howling for show trials of Bush officials over these interrogations were briefed on them and either approved or voiced no disapproval. Of course, then they were worried about another 9/11, and now they see an opportunity to make political points. Democrats have a nasty history of trying to turn policy disputes into criminal prosecutions. I suppose it's all part of their plan to turn the US into a banana republic. They're certainly off to a good start.
And leave it to you to have no problem with an act of treason when CIA agent Valery Plame's identity was revealed and outed by the Bush Administration. You are an asswipe. Nothing more than an asswipe.
Landis? Whats wrong with you? Two mistakes in two days. CBS) In an exclusive interview with CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, Richard Armitage, once the No. 2 diplomat at the State Department, couldn't be any blunter. "Oh I feel terrible. Every day, I think I let down the president. I let down the Secretary of State. I let down my department, my family and I also let down Mr. and Mrs. Wilson," he says. When asked if he feels he owes the Wilsons an apology, he says, "I think I've just done it." In July 2003, Armitage told columnist Robert Novak that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and Novak mentioned it in a column. It's a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA officer. But Armitage didn't yet realize what he had done. So, what exactly did he tell Novak? "At the end of a wide-ranging interview he asked me, 'Why did the CIA send Ambassador (Wilson) to Africa?' I said I didn't know, but that she worked out at the agency," Armitage says. Armitage says he told Novak because it was "just an offhand question." "I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had," he says. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/07/eveningnews/main1981433.shtml
Nothing other than he's a typical moonbat who has sipped too much of the Kool-Aid and hates his own countrymen more than those who would gladly separate his head from his neck.
You are sadly mistaken if you think that Richard Armitrage was the only one involved in revealing the identity of CIA agent, Valery Plame. How naive of you.
What is it about "torture" and War Crimes that you don't seem to be able to understand? And why is it that you are so naive to think that something like "waterboarding" is actually effective in obtaining accurate information? In fact, a 1963 CIA interrogation manual warned that those resisting questioning "are likely to become intractable if made to endure pain" or generate "false, concocted as a means of escaping from distress." But hey, leave it to a PIN-HEAD such as yourself to think the brutality of the Bush Administration is what the Founders fought and died for - - - I'm sorry, but you're far too ignorant to be taken seriously.