Tim Sumner

interrogation videotapes, Lawfare, Political wind, War on Terror, waterboarding

Congress was briefed in 2002 about detainee interrogations

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One year later, just as the repairs to the once burning Pentagon were completed, the CIA briefed Members of Congress about detainee interrogations and detention sites.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

Last night, talk radio host Mark Levin pointed out the hypocrites and wants to know who knew what when:

And thanks to Sweetness & Light, we heard about perhaps the biggest hypocrite of them all in this interrogation tapes “scandal.”

“But I’d have to see what we’re talking about here, because this is — all I know is what I’ve read in the New York Times.”

Speaker Pelosi ought to tune in on her radio, at 6 PM Eastern, Monday through Friday, so she can learn more to claim ignorance about afterwards.

interrogation videotapes, Political wind, War on Terror, waterboarding

CIA chief to testify about interrogation tapes

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CIA Director Michael Hayden will testify before Congress today yet, according to the AP (via the Washington Times), we’ll have to settle for now for the spin:

Congress summoned CIA Director Michael V. Hayden to Capitol Hill to explain his agency’s destruction of interrogation videotapes, as multiple investigations began into who knew about and approved the decision.

Mr. Hayden is to testify in a closed session today before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and tomorrowbefore the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Among the questions he will face is whether Congress was notified about the tapes’ destruction. The chairman of the House panel, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Texas Democrat, said Mr. Hayden’s assertion last week that lawmakers were informed “does not appear to be true.”

Mr. Hayden told CIA employees on Thursday that the CIA had taped the interrogations of two terrorism suspects in 2002. He said Congress was notified in 2003 both of the tapes’ existence and the CIA’s intent to destroy them.