DOD’s Latest Black Site

Fresh off of the ICRC’s confirmation that DOD has a black site in Bagram, Marc Ambinder has a long piece on it, describing it as run by part of the DIA, the Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center, and downplaying, somewhat, what its use of Appendix M might mean. For example, he describes the Appendix to cover just short bouts of sleep deprivation and some sensory deprivation.

However, under secret authorization, the DIA interrogators use methods detailed in an appendix to the Field Manual, Appendix M, which spells out “restricted” interrogation techniques.

Under certain circumstances, interrogators can deprive prisoners of sleep (four hours at a time, for up to 30 days), to confuse their senses, and to keep them separate from the rest of the prison population. The Red Cross is now notified if the captives are kept at the facility for longer than two weeks.

When interrogators are using Appendix M measures, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Gen.James Clapper (Ret.) is the man on the hook.

I think Ambinder has just not clearly stated the sleep deprivation restrictions (which require 4 hours of sleep in a 24-hour period, but which would therefore allow for 40 hour periods of consecutive sleep deprivation). And the limits in Appendix M make it clear that environmental manipulation (with noise, heat, cold, or even water) is still permitted, just not excessive amounts of it.

Care should be taken to protect the detainee from exposure (in accordance with all appropriate standards addressing excessive or inadequate environmental conditions) to—

− Excessive noise.

− Excessive dampness.

− Excessive or inadequate heat, light, or ventilation.

− Inadequate bedding and blankets.

− Interrogation activity leadership will periodically monitor the application of this technique.

Use of separation must not preclude the detainee getting four hours of continuous sleep every 24 hours.

Oversight should account for moving a detainee from one environment to another (thus a different location) or arrangements to modify the environment within the same location in accordance with the approved interrogation plan.

Which would be utterly consistent with BBC’s report that detainees there were subject to cold cells, constant light, and sleep deprivation.

There are a lot of interesting details in Marc’s piece. But perhaps the most amusing is the Orwellian non-denial denial from DOD’s spokesperson, Brian Whitman:

“DoD does operate some temporary screening detention facilities which are classified to preserve operational security; however, both the [Red Cross] and the host nation have knowledge of these facilities,” said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesperson. “Screening facilities help military officials determine if an individual should be detained further and assists military forces with timely information vital to ongoing operations.”

[snip]

“In all our facilities the standard is humane treatment and all DoD detention facilities are required to be compliant with Common Article III, The Detainee Treatment Act, the Executive Order signed by the President last year, and the DoD Detainee Directive and the Army Field Manual,” Whitman said.

Yes, Whitman affirms, there are “temporary screening facilities.” Red Cross and Afghanistan knows about them (of course, Ambinder’s story is partly a response to a story reporting the Red Cross confirmation that this prison exists). Screening facilities both help the military determine whether someone should be detained further (which suggests a temporary arrangement) and assists with timely information vital to ongoing operations (which suggests a more extensive arrangement). The facilities comply, Whitman claims, with Common Article III, DTA, Obama’s Executive Order, and the Army Field Manual. Which is, of course, a testament to how prisoner abuse remains nestled in Appendix M. We know the original approval for this (DOJ claims this memo is no longer valid) approved the Appendix separate from and long before the techniques as they currently exist were finalized (so it’s not clear whether anyone has actually confirmed these techniques comply with Common Article III). And Obama’s entire Executive Order was based on the Army Field Manual, which includes Appendix M, which includes vague outlines of these techniques as permissible. It’s all very neat really.

One more unrelated detail (though you should read Ambinder’s entire post). As the name “Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center” suggests, the same organization doing these interrogations is the same that took over the Counterintelligence Field Activity duties of domestic spying.

Not that that should concern us at all.




Eric Holder Visits HJC

You can watch along at CSPAN3 or the Committee Stream. Republican talking point of the day seems to be that Obama’s Counterterrorism approach is to have incompetent terrorists.

Nadler wastes no time to pitch his State Secrets bill. Go Nadler! “Those rules [Obama’s state secrets compromise] still reserve unaccountable review to the executive.”

Lungren has concerns about changing Miranda, since it was required by the Constitution, but implies he wants people to be enemy combatants instead (though that’s a guess) which somehow wouldn’t be unconstitutional.

Conyers tweaks Darrell Issa that Jared Polis, who was just added to the committee (along with Ted Deutsch, Wexler’s replacement), has more patents than Issa does.

Issa calls for Special Prosecutor, I think to investigate Sestak’s claim that the White House tried to buy him off of running against Specter.

Anthony Weiner seems to support 9/11 trials in NYC–says it has the best prosecutors. He then complains about White House funding decisions. Says the COPS program (which provides funding for police) “is not just for towns that only have minor-league baseball teams.”

Maxine Waters complaining about review process for Comcast/NBC merger.

It’s pretty funny that there was almost never any discussion of counterterrorism oversight on HJC under Bush Admin, given how many fearmongers on the panel.

And, after everyone gets to make a statement, we get Holder’s opening statement.

WOOT! We’re back.

Bobby Scott asks about statute of limitations. Where death results, Holder says there is none.

Lamar Smith trying very very hard to get Holder to say radical Islam.

Holder: AZ law raises concerns about civil rights and preemption.

Maxine Waters asks about domestic terrorism. Holder actually says domestic terrorism before he says Islamic extremism in this hearing, much to GOP chagrin. Waters follows up on domestic terrorism.

Issa: Concerned that former Admiral in Navy and US Congressman. Will you appoint a special prosecutor to investigate. What could be more serious than that this White House has offered member of Congress high appointment for getting out of race.




Betty Sutton on the Coerced Transocean Statements


As you may have read, Transocean (the company that owns the Deepwater Horizon rig) made everyone rescued from the rig sign statements laying out whether they were involved in the incident, and whether they had gotten hurt.

Lawyers for the oil rig’s owner, Transocean, requested that workers who had survived the blast sign the form in the wake of the April 20 blowout on the Deepwater Horizon. This was hours before the workers had been allowed to see their families.

Now some of those survivors say they were coerced and that the forms are being used against them as they file lawsuits seeking compensation for psychiatric problems and other injuries from the blast.

A couple of members of Congress asked Transocean’s CEO about it yesterday, most pointedly Betty Sutton in this exchange.

Now, frankly, I think there may be some truth to Transocean’s claim that they were trying to collect information with the form. This is a documentation-driven industry, and for a rig owner like Transocean, getting a sense of who was on the rig, what contractor they worked for, and what they were doing would be a concern. That said, given the lock-down they kept workers in until they signed these documents, I’d guess they were more interested in surveying precisely what information was out there so they could keep that information locked down as anything else. And the lockdown was certainly heartless and heavy-handed.

Besides, Transocean CEO Steve Newman had to have known yesterday that his company would move, today, to limit its liability in the disaster (albeit on different grounds).

Transocean Ltd., the owner and operator of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig that burned and sank last month unleashing a massive oil leak into the Gulf of Mexico, will file in federal court Thursday a petition to limit its liability to just under $27 million, according to a person familiar with the company’s plans and a copy of the filing reviewed by Dow Jones Newswires.

The world’s biggest offshore driller is filing the request in the U.S. District Court in Houston under a century-and-a-half-old law originally aimed at helping U.S. ship owners compete with foreign-flagged vessels. While the company may not succeed in limiting its financial liability, the filing could give Transocean an edge in what could be a lengthy, multipronged legal battle against claims for damages from the accident that killed 11 workers.

[snip]

Under the Limitation of Liability Act of 1851, a vessel owner is liable only for the post-accident value of the vessel and cargo, so long as the owner can show he or she had no knowledge of negligence in the accident, maritime lawyers say. The law was created in the days before modern insurance and communications technology, to help U.S. shipping businesses compete against foreign ship owners who were protected against claims. Drilling rigs count as vessels under U.S. maritime law, and since “the remains of the…Deepwater Horizon now lay sunken” about a mile deep in the federal waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the value of the rig and its cargo comes to no more than $26,764,083, Transocean claims in the filing. Before the accident, the rig was worth around $650 million.

All of which makes me happy that Sutton gave Newman such a good ass-kicking at the hearing.




Banned Gitmo Reporters Appeal

McClatchy provides details of the appeal the outlets for four reporters banned from Gitmo for publishing the name of Joshua Claus have made to the Pentagon.

Arguing that a Pentagon order banning four journalists from covering military commissions at Guantánamo Bay was illegal and unconstitutional, The Miami Herald and two Canadian news outlets appealed on Wednesday.

[snip]

In a letter to Bryan Whitman, deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, [David A.] Schulz [who represents the Canadian papers involved] said the law that created the military commissions leaves such decisions up to a judge.

Further, the reporters did not obtain the name of the witness at the hearing, and it serves no military purpose to ban someone from publishing information that’s already public, Schulz argued.

“Our position remains unchanged: We did not violate any of the court rules for being at Guantánamo,” said Miami Herald Managing Editor Aminda Marques Gonzalez. “I feel confident that once they review the facts that they are going to come to the same conclusion and reverse the order.”

Though I do hope the Canadians are pressuring the Administration about expelling the most knowledgeable Canadian journalists on the Omar Khadr case.



The House Always Wins

Why hasn’t there been more discussion about this article?

It is the Wall Street equivalent of a perfect game of baseball — 27 up, 27 down, the final score measured in millions of dollars a day.

Despite the running unease in world markets, four giants of American finance managed to make money from trading every single day during the first three months of the year.

Their remarkable 61-day streak is one for the record books. Perfect trading quarters on Wall Street are about as rare as perfect games in Major League Baseball. On Sunday, Dallas Braden of the Oakland Athletics pitched what was only the 19th perfect game in baseball history.

But Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase & Company produced the equivalent of four perfect games during the first quarter. Each one finished the period without losing money for even one day.

I realize we’re used to the Masters of the Universe “beating” “the odds” on “the market.”

But don’t we expect that they’ll maintain the illusion that the game isn’t rigged? In other casinos, after all, someone has to make it big on the slot machines every once in a while to get others to keep coming back.




That Iraq Withdrawal We Elected in 2008?

Not gonna happen.

I have sent the enclosed notice to the Federal Register for publication, continuing the national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq. This notice states that the national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, as modified in scope and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13438 of July 17, 2007, is to continue in effect beyond May 22, 2010.

Obstacles to the orderly reconstruction of Iraq, the restoration and maintenance of peace and security in the country, and the development of political, administrative, and economic institutions in Iraq continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. Accordingly, I have determined that it is necessary to continue the national emergency with respect to this threat and maintain in force the measures taken to deal with that national emergency.

Love, Barack Obama.

So even as Obama asks for more money for Afghanistan, he’s officially telling Congress the  national emergency with respect to the stabilization of Iraq Iraq War isn’t going to end anytime soon, either.

The Guardian reports the same, though from the perspective of Odierno, not Obama, missing deadlines.

Update: I was too snide when I wrote this. The fatigue of watching the President’s deficit committee argue that we need to cut Social Security just as we’re about to get a $30 billion supplemental (remember, we weren’t supposed to get anymore of those?) to fight a war in Afghanistan many think we can’t win really got to me.

At one level, this appears to be fairly nondescript: it simply says that certain financial arrangements in place today will extend out past ten days from now. So it’s not an indefinite extension, it’s a bureaucratic detail.

But this language does worry me:

The Iraqi government continues to take steps to resolve debts and settle claims arising from the actions of the previous regime. Before the end of the year, my Administration will review the Iraqi government’s progress on resolving these outstanding debts and claims, as well as other relevant circumstances, in order to determine whether the prohibitions contained in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, as amended by Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004, on any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process with respect to the Development Fund for Iraq, the accounts, assets, and property held by the Central Bank of Iraq, and Iraqi petroleum-related products, should continue in effect beyond December 31, 2010, which are in addition to the sovereign immunity ordinarily provided to Iraq as a sovereign nation under otherwise applicable law. [my emphasis]

That is, it’s not just a bureaucratic extension of financial protections for Iraq past the next ten days. It’s a formal notice that Iraq will have its financial training wheels on until December, maybe, or maybe longer. It seems like it’s for the interest of Iraq, but I worry that it’s for the interest of ongoing US control over Iraq’s finances.




Lois Capps: Booms Will Only Collect 15% of Spilled Oil

The eye-popping part of this exchange is the news that all the efforts to protect the Gulf Coast are only going to collect a fraction of it from reaching the shore.

But the whole comment is worthwhile, because Capps expresses so well the outrage we should all be expressing about the inefficacy of oil spill recovery.




Jon Kiriakou: Libby Knew Plame Was Covert

Jason Leopold has a long article and videotape of an interview with Jon Kiriakou that you should check out in full. I’ll discuss their conversation about Abu Zubaydah’s torture (and, more interestingly, Kiriakou’s knowledge about who Abu Zubaydah is) later. But I wanted to look more closely at Kiriakou’s description of a June 10, 2003 meeting at which (Kiriakou says) Scooter Libby made it clear that he knew of Plame’s identity.

Kiriakou said he was the “note taker” at this meeting, which took place on June 10, 2003, when I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, “entered the room furious, putting on a big show, arms flailing around, swearing and demanding to know why nobody at the CIA told him that Valerie Plame was married to Joe Wilson.”

Kiriakou said it was clear to him that when Libby “entered the room” on June 10, 2003, he had already known that Plame was an undercover operative.

Now, it always pays to approach Kiriakou’s statements with some skepticism. And his description certainly doesn’t accord with what Grenier testified to at the Libby trial. But for the moment, let’s look at what Kiriakou’s description would mean for the chronology of the week of June 8, 2003.

After a break of several weeks after Nicholas Kristof first reported Joe Wilson’s allegations, the allegations returned again on June 8, 2003, when George Stephanopolous asked Condi Rice about the allegations. Apparently first thing on the following day, June 9, 2003, President Bush expressed to Libby in some way his concern about the allegations. And that seems to have been what set OVP into overdrive trying to learn about the source of the allegations. Later that same afternoon, John Hannah had already completed a briefing for Cheney on the issue.

According to Kiriakou’s story, Libby had his furious outburst on June 10. That would probably mean it happened at the 12:45 NSC DC [Deputies Committee] meeting, four hours before Kiriakou wrote his email requesting more information. Though note, the content of the Kiriakou email we have–which asks for very specific information for John McLaughlin in anticipation of a meeting with Cheney the following day and doesn’t mention the meeting itself–doesn’t match the description he gave Jason:

After Libby’s outburst, Kiriakou said he “went back to headquarters and I wrote an email to all of the executive assistants of all the top leaders in the agency saying, this meeting took place, Libby is furious, we believe that he was conveying a message from the vice president. I wanted to know when did we know that Valerie was married to Joe Wilson, sent it around, nobody ever responded to my email.”

That says, if Kiriakou’s narrative is correct, Libby probably learned of the tie between Plame and Wilson between June 9 and June 10, if not earlier. Which might explain why the date on Libby’s note record learning of Plame’s tie to Wilson appears to be written over. One possibility, for example, is that the note originally read June 9, not June 12.

This is where Kiriakou’s story begins to conflict with Robert Grenier’s and Marc Grossman’s. Marc Grossman testified he told Libby, probably at a DC meeting on June 11 or 12, that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA (based on the INR memo). And Grenier testified that Libby asked him for information on a phone call on June 11, at which point, Grenier claimed, he “had never heard of [Wilson’s trip] before.” Both claims would be false if Libby had blown up in the June 10 meeting.

Now, both Grossman and Grenier’s testimony is problematic on a number of other levels, so we can’t use their testimony to dismiss Kiriakou’s story out of hand.

But Kiriakou’s story is interesting for two reasons. First, Cheney claimed the following in his interview with Patrick Fitzgerald:

The Vice President also had no recollection of discussing this matter at a meeting on 6/10/03 he attended with Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet and CIA Counter Proliferation Division Manager [redacted]

When asked about the Administrations efforts to research Wilsons mission, the Vice President advised that around the time of the initial media reports, exact date not recalled, he spoke to DCI Tenet directly on the secure telephone line (MLP) from his office

[redacted; snip]

Vice President Cheney believed that all of this discussion occurred during a single telephone convseration that he had with DCI Tenet. The Vice President described the tone of his conversation with DCI Tenet as cordial, however, he had a sense that the DCI was defensive and embarrassed about the issue and had not known what was going on with regards to this mission. The Vice President based this latter assertion on the tone and temperament used by the DCI in the conversation, which was uncharacteristic for Tenet.

The Vice President cannot recall if he mentioned the content of his conversation with DCI Tenet to Libby, but he stated that if would have shared it with anyone, it would have been Libby. He probably would not have shared this information with Cathie Martin or anyone else from the OVP staff.

That is, Cheney claims he learned of Plame’s identity not at a meeting with Tenet and Plame’s boss on June 10, the same day Libby allegedly blew up at a Deputies Committee meeting, but on a phone conversation that–at least in the unredacted interview report–lacks a date. Of course, if it came up at that meeting with Tenet and Plame’s boss, it might be more likely to include Plame’s name and covert status.

Then there’s the phone call to Grenier on June 11. As I have noted before, the call to Grenier (the first he ever received from Libby, Grenier testified) was almost certainly not a request for new information, but a request that would have elicited information that Libby and Cheney already knew, but which Martin did not know.

But we know that Libby called Robert Grenier for more information at 1:15 PM that day—precisely halfway into the meeting. Presuming the calendar is accurate, Libby called Robert Grenier in the presence of Cheney and Martin, looking for information he likely already knew (from Grossman and almost certainly from Cheney).

That is, regardless of whether or not Kiriakou’s story is true, Libby and Cheney were almost certainly trying to get someone from the CIA to tell their press person what they already knew about Plame (but, at least according to Martin’s testimony, that she didn’t know they knew). Libby and Cheney were trying to get CIA to tell their press person information so she could pass it onto journalists (notably, Walter Pincus, who had an active request in with OVP for information). And, in fact, that ploy worked; either that day or the next Bill Harlow passed on the Plame information to Martin, though she claims that she never passed it onto reporters.

But consider how this story changes if, the day before this ploy, Libby stormed into a meeting bitching that CIA never told him that Plame was married to Joe Wilson. While that would mean Grenier’s testimony is incorrect on a number of levels, it would add one more level of duplicity on Libby’s part, given that he effectively had already made it clear that Grenier knew who Plame was before he called for information on June 11.

In any case, at the very least the story means that someone–in addition to Scooter Libby–is lying (though if it’s Kiriakou, thanks to the work of now-Criminal Division head Lanny Breuer, he didn’t do so under oath). But given the number of things that happened on June 10, 2003, Kiriakou’s story does add an interesting wrinkle.




CEO Mud Wrestling

One of the key moments of yesterday’s Environment and Public Works hearing on the BP Disaster came when Tom Udall tried to pin the CEOs down on whether, as reported by WSJ, at BP’s direction, Halliburton swapped out the drilling mud for seawater prematurely–something we’ve looked at as well.

BP, the well owner, blames the failure of a big set of valves on the sea floor, known as the blowout preventer, to halt the blowout once it started.

A different account comes from Halliburton, a contractor in the drilling. This account is corroborated to some extent by Transocean, as well as by two workers on the drilling rig, The Wall Street Journal has determined.

This account describes a failure to place a cement plug within the well. The plug is designed to prevent gas from escaping up the pipe to the surface.

Before such a plug is placed, the job of keeping underground gas from coming up the pipe is done by heavy drilling fluid inside the well, commonly known as “mud.”

The plug is normally put in before the mud is removed, but according to the account of Halliburton, Transocean and the two workers, in this case, that wasn’t done—drilling mud was removed before a final cement plug was placed in the well.

It is not clear why such a decision would have been made. Rig owner Transocean says that BP, as owner of the well that was just being completed, made key decisions on how to proceed. BP declined to comment on this account of the drilling procedures.

Predictably, no one really wanted to go on the record whether that was one of what appear to be numerous problems that contributed to the spill. Equally predictably, no one seems to have the well plan that would make this all clear.




A More Revealing BP Hearing?

The House Commerce Committee is holding the third hearing into what went wrong on the BP Deepwater Horizon rig (CSPAN is showing it on CSPAN3). As is typical for a Waxman/Stupak hearing, the Committee has done its homework, advancing the understanding of what went wrong.

Henry Waxman’s opening statement reveals that the well failed a number of tests, but BP kept testing until getting a passing test, and then proceeded to close the well.

Rigs like the Deepwater Horizon keep a daily drilling report. Transocean has given us the report for April 20, the day of the explosion. It is an incomplete log because it ends at 3:00 p.m., about seven hours before the explosion. But it confirms that three positive pressure tests were conducted in the morning to early afternoon.

The next bullet says: “After 16.5 hours waiting on cement, a test was performed on the wellbore below the Blowout Preventer.” BP explained to us what this means. Halliburton completed cementing the well at 12:35 a.m. on April 20 and after giving the cement time to set, a negative pressure test was conducted around 5:00 p.m. This is an important test. During a negative pressure test, the fluid pressure inside the well is reduced and the well is observed to see whether any gas leaks into the well through the cement or casing.

According to James Dupree, the BP Senior Vice President for the Gulf of Mexico, the well did not pass this test. Mr. Dupree told Committee staff on Monday that the test result was “not satisfactory” and “inconclusive.” Significant pressure discrepancies were recorded.

As a result, another negative pressure test was conducted. This is described in the fourth bullet: “During this test, 1,400 psi was observed on the drill pipe while 0 psi was observed on the kill and the choke lines.”

According to Mr. Dupree, this is also an unsatisfactory test result. The kill and choke lines run from the drill rig 5,000 feet to the blowout preventer at the sea floor. The drill pipe runs from the drill rig through the blowout preventer deep into the well. In the test, the pressures measured at any point from the drill rig to the blowout preventer should be the same in all three lines. But what the test showed was that pressures in the drill pipe were significantly higher. Mr. Dupree explained that the results could signal that an influx of gas was causing pressure to mount inside the wellbore.

Another document provided by BP to the Committee is labeled “What Could Have Happened.” It was prepared by BP on April 26, ten days before the first document. According to BP, their understanding of the cause of the spill has evolved considerably since April 26, so this document should not be considered definitive. But it also describes the two negative pressure tests and the pressure discrepancies that were recorded.

What happened next is murky. Mr. Dupree told the Committee staff that he believed the well blew moments after the second pressure test. But lawyers for BP contacted the Committee yesterday and provided a different account. According to BP’s counsel, further investigation has revealed that additional pressure tests were taken, and at 8:00 p.m., company officials determined that the additional results justified ending the test and proceeding with well operations.

This confusion among BP officials appears to echo confusion on the rig. Information reviewed by the Committee describes an internal debate between Transocean and BP personnel about how to proceed. [my emphasis]

And Bart Stupak’s opening statement reveals that the Blowout Preventer had had some modifications that may have contributed to its failure.

In his testimony today, Lamar McKay, the President of BP America, says that blowout preventers are “intended to … be fail-safe.” But that didn’t happen. The blowout preventer used by the Deepwater Horizon rig failed to stop the flow of gas and oil, the rig exploded, and an enormous oil spill is now threatening the Gulf Coast.

We know that the blowout preventer, the BOP, did not properly engage. The BOP has multiple rams that are supposed to slam shut to pinch off any flow around the drill pipe and stop the flow of oil from the well. There are also shear rams in the BOP that are supposed to cut and seal the pipe to prevent oil and gas from flowing. The question we will ask is why did these rams fail?

Our investigation is at its early stages, but already we have uncovered at least four significant problems with the blowout preventer used on the Deepwater Horizon drill rig.

First, the blowout preventer apparently had a significant leak in a key hydraulic system. This leak was found in the hydraulic system that provides emergency power to the shear rams, which are the devices that are supposed to cut the drill pipe and seal the well.

[snip]

Second, we learned that the blowout preventer had been modified in unexpected ways. One of these modifications was potentially significant. The blowout preventer has an underwater control panel. BP spent a day trying to use this control panel to activate a variable bore ram on the blowout preventer that is designed to seal tight around any pipe in the well. When they investigated why their attempts failed to activate the bore ram, they learned that the device had been modified. A useless test ram – not the variable bore ram – had been connected to the socket that was supposed to activate the variable bore ram. An entire day’s worth of precious time had been spent engaging rams that closed the wrong way.

BP told us the modifications on the BOP were extensive. After the accident, they asked Transocean for drawings of the blowout preventer. Because of the modifications, the drawings they received didn’t match the structure on the ocean floor. BP said they wasted many hours figuring this out.

Third, we learned that the blowout preventer is not powerful enough to cut through joints in the drill pipe. We found a Transocean document that I would like to put on the screen. It says: most blind shear rams are “designed to shear effectively only on the body of the drillpipe. Procedures for the use of BSR’s must therefore ensure that there is no tool joint opposite the ram prior to shearing.”

[snip]

And fourth, we learned that the emergency controls on the blowout preventer may have failed. The blowout preventer has two emergency controls. One is called the emergency disconnect system or EDS. BP officials told us that that the EDS was activated on the drill rig before the rig was evacuated. But the Cameron official said they doubted the signals ever reached the blowout preventer on the seabed. Cameron officials believed the explosion on the rig destroyed the communications link to the blowout preventer before the emergency sequence could be completed.

In other words, the emergency controls may have failed because the explosion that caused the emergency also disabled communications to the blowout preventer. [my emphasis]

Needless to say, today’s hearing should be a lot more comprehensive than yesterday’s hearings.