War on Terror

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.

al Qaeda, Terrorist Surveillance Program, War on Terror

Help Me Spy on Al Qaeda: Mike McConnell

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The quote of the day is within an op-ed about the terrorist surveillance program by Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, in the New York Times:

Any new law should begin by being true to the principles that make the Protect America Act successful. First, the intelligence community needs a law that does not require a court order for surveillance directed at a foreign intelligence target reasonably believed to be outside the United States, regardless of where the communications are found. The intelligence community should spend its time protecting our nation, not providing privacy protections to foreign terrorists and other diffuse international threats.