Reply #47: Please go read Emptywheel on this ..she has the best reporting going on!! links here: [View All]

[flyarm]

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com /

snip:

CIA Lying to ABC about Torture. Again. ABC Reporting It Uncritically. Again.
By: emptywheel Thursday May 7, 2009 8:21 pm

As bmaz has reported, the CIA has sent a list of torture briefings to Crazy Pete Hoekstra on when and whom in Congress got briefed that the CIA was in the torture business. And ABC news, just off having to admit the CIA lied to them about torture in the past, has taken what the CIA gave them and treated it totally uncritically. Again.

Based on the list (which I've also obtained), they're out with a post claiming they've caught Pelosi in a contradiction.

The report, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Capitol Hill officials Wednesday, appears to contradict Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics.

Setting aside the fact that the list doesn't mention waterboarding specifically in its description of that briefing (it does in quite a few others), there are huge problems with using the list as a basis to claim anything.

First, there's this paragraph the CIA included in the letter they sent with the briefing list to Crazy Pete (which ABC didn't think important enough to include when they first posted this story):

snip;

CIA: "Here's a list, but we won't vouch for its accuracy."

ABC: "We've proven that Nancy was wrong!!"

ABC, after having been burned in the past, took documents that the CIA itself said might not be accurate, and treated them as accurate.

But it gets worse. ABC printed the following description, as if it were an accurate representation of the next set of torture briefings, which took place in February 2003.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

perhaps the best reporting being done on the torture info!!!

Pelosi’s Advisory On Abu Zubaydah And Torture

By: bmaz Thursday May 7, 2009 7:03 pm



As Marcy noted back on April 29th, the issue of Nancy Pelosi's briefing back in 2002 on the Bush/Cheney torture program, whether or not it was being applied to Abu Zubaydah and, if so, to what extent, has really turned into a he said-she said game. (See also here regarding the Porter Goss offensive against Pelosi and Harman).


http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/07/pelosis-ad...

snip;
Pelosi has already, of course, issued a denial through a spokesman. More he said-she said. Quite frankly, without more, today's play should be taken with a grain of salt. Multiple major news organizations have this hot off the press info right after Congress receives it and right wing hit rag Human Events (Jed Babbin) is pitching it as a slam on Pelosi. How very convenient. As further evidence of the need for grains of salt listen to Leon Panetta in his own cover letter transmitted with "the report":

“This letter presents the most thorough information we have on dates, locations, and names of all Members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA on enhanced interrogation techniques. This information, however, is drawn from the past files of the CIA and represents completed at the time and notes that summarized the best recollections of those individuals. In the end, you and the Committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened. We can make the MFRs available at CIA for staff review.” (Emphasis added)

As should be crystal clear by now, "those individuals" that worked on the "past files of the CIA" "at the time" were not necessarily the most even handed and/or disinterested arbiters of the truth. The CIA has a big bone in this fight, and it rests completely in implicating Pelosi, Harman and other members of Congress in their bad acts.


edit to add***ohhhhh and do read all the comments at Emptywheel..posters pick up many discrepencies in the CIA notes!