Scrapple and Pelosi

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Yes, I’m glad that Arlen "the Scrapple formerly known as Haggis" Specter has come out in support of Nancy Pelosi’s suggestion that CIA misled her in her September 2002 briefing.

"The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say ‘candid’; that’s too mild — to honesty," Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a lunch address to the American Law Institute. He cited misleading information about the agency’s involvement in mining harbors in Nicaragua and the Iran-Contra affair."Director [Leon] Panetta says the agency does not make it a habit to misinform Congress. I believe that is true. It is not the policy of the Central Intelligence Agency to misinform Congress," Specter said. "But that doesn’t mean that they’re all giving out the information."

Because of leaks that have come from Congress, Specter said, he understands the agency’s hesitancy to disclose all its information.

"The current controversy involving Speaker Pelosi and the CIA is very unfortunate, in my opinion, because it politicizes the issue and it takes away attention from … how does the Congress get accurate information from the CIA?" Specter said. "For political gain, people are making headlines."

But one thing should be mentioned about Specter’s comments. Note that Scrapple, unlike John Boehner and Crazy Pete Hoekstra and John McCain, doesn’t claim to know WTF Pelosi was briefed.

Rather, his statement is general (a sentiment Specter probably formed when he was on SSCI): Specter’s noting that CIA is less than forthcoming with Congress, and that that needs to change. (He’s also correctly suggesting that those making headlines are doing so for political spin.)

The distinction is important. This whole debate has largely been drummed up by people who have no fucking clue how CIA briefed Congress in 2002. It’d be nice if that kind of rank ignorance wasn’t making the headlines anymore. 

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April 13, 2002; May 6, 2002, May 20, 2002; May 23, 2002; May 28, 2002; August 4, 2002; August 11, 2002

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April 13, 2002; May 6, 2002, May 20, 2002; May 23, 2002; May 28, 2002…

Those are some of the most important dates from  from the log of "all contemporaneous and derivative records" on the destruction of Abu Zubaydah’s (and some time that fall, al-Nashiri’s) interrogation tapes [corrected per Spencer–thx Spencer].

Here’s why they’re important.

April 13, 2002: This is the first date, the CIA claims, for which it has any records. That either suggests they weren’t keeping records right away (in spite of claims that they were meticulously trying to document that they weren’t killing Abu Zubaydah). Or it represents the first date that the CIA got to him. If it’s the latter, it would suggest the FBI had a while–perhaps as many as ten days–working with Abu Zubaydah before the CIA came in.That would be consistent, though, with Ali Soufan’s narrative.

May 6, 2002, May 20, 2002; May 23, 2002; May 28, 2002: Check out how many pages each of these cables from the field (Thailand) back to HQ is. The longest days are:

May 6, 2002: 28 pages

May 20, 2002: 12 pages

May 23, 2002: 13 pages

May 28, 2002: 12 pages

June 12, 2002: 10 pages

August 11, 2002: 11 pages

August 20, 2002: 10 pages

November 17, 2002: 11 pages

November 30, 2002: 11 pages*

December 2, 2002: 11 pages

Most of the rest of the cables are just 2-5 pages long. 

These dates are significant because, with the exception of two August dates, all of the longer reports came when at least one of the FBI interrogators remained on the scene; the longest one came when Ali Soufan was on the scene. 

The CIA’s description of most of the cables from August are fairly standard (part one, part two).  Here’s what they’re willing to tell us about that August 11, 11-page cable:

This is an eleven-page cable from the Field to CIA Headquarters. The cable includes information concerning the strategies for interrogation sessions; the use of interrogation techniques to elicit information on terrorist operations against the U.S.; reactions to the interrogation techniques; raw intelligence; and a status of threat information. The cable also includes CIA organizational information, CIA filing information, locations of CIA facilities, and the names and/or identifying information of personnel engaged in counterterrorism operations.

Like I said, most of these descriptions are pretty standard, with just a little variation. Though we have descriptions only for August cables, not May ones.

From that we can surmise one of several things about those days when the Field sent longer cables. The days with the longer cables might include more raw intelligence. Read more →

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The CIA Won’t Give Abu Zubaydah His Own Diaries

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When Abu Zubaydah had his Combat Status Review Tribunal hearing on March 27, 2007, the President of the tribunal admitted that the government could not or would not produce key volumes of Abu Zubaydah’s diaries in preparation for the hearing.

From the evidence request I received, again, from your Personal Representative, you believe the statements in the Summary of Evidence document that you provided that–excuse me, that you were provided are a misrepresentation of what you actually wrote in your diary. I reviewed the Summary of Evidence document and noted that there were at least three items listed which specifically cited your diary as the source of the information. Each of these items referenced operational plans and actions which were associated with enemy forces of particular interest to the Tribunal. It would be helpful for the Tribunal to review the source document of these statements and hear your representation of what you wrote in your diary. I therefore found your diary request relevant. On February 22nd, I ordered the production of your diary. As of today, the government has produced portions of your diary. These have been provided to your Personal Representative to prepare for the Tribunal’s hearing today. I understand your statements provided today or the evidence previously provided will refer and provide us some of those diary entries for us to consider. I do need to address one additional matter regarding your diary. There are two volumes of your diary in U.S. Government custody: volumes five and six. The government has made a diligent effort to produce those volumes for us today but–; however, they have not been located. So they are not available for us during this hearing. I therefore find that the volumes five and six are not available for us during this hearing. Given this situation, the Tribunal will consider your statements if you wish to make any, of what you believe the diary entries represent.

According to Abu Zubaydah, one thing included in the parts of the diary not turned over includes a condemnation of 9/11 and of the killing of innocent children, which violates the tenets of Islam.

I can’t remember exactly what you talk about in my diary. I know exactly what I wrote. — writ wrote [asks for correction from Linguist] –One part I do remember, I write against eleven September.

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Mark Your Schedules

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I’m working on stuff that I will post later this PM. But in the meantime, I wanted to draw your attention to two upcoming events.

First, on Friday, May 22, at 10:45 AM ET, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse will be joining us at the front page for a chat. He’ll be here for 45 minutes, and Senators’ schedules are always subject to change, so plan to be flexible. In the meantime, be sure to think of questions and mark your schedule for Friday morning. Here’s your chance to pose all the intelligent questions you’ve said you’d like to ask Senator Whitehouse in comments.

Second, as you may have heard, the Hillman Foundation has honored me with their award for blogging this year. I’ll be traveling to NYC next Wednesday to receive the award. Like any blogger, my success is really a tribute as much to the quality of our community as to any thing I do, so I’d love to see those of you from the NYC area there.

Here’s the invite. The ceremony is at:

Wednesday, May 27, 2009
5:30 – 8:00 PM
Program begins promptly at 6:30 PM

Hudson Theater at the
Millennium Broadway Hotel
145 West 44th Street, New York City

But you gotta RSVP and attire is businesswear (so you probably shouldn’t dress like DFHers).  There are a lot of great honorees, including Jane Mayer, so even if I bore you, the others won’t.

And if you plan to attend, drop a comment in the thread so I know to look out for you.

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Torture Appropriations

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Greg Sargent suggests the error revealed today in the CIA briefing list–that the CIA claims an appropriations staffer attended but he didn’t–is no big deal.

This, obviously, is not the biggest foul-up in the world.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. We don’t know.

Remember what Nancy Pelosi said about the way the Bush Administration used the appropriations committees to bypass the intelligence committees in Congress.

And that is why when people are talking about – whether they are talking about torture, or whether they are talking about wiretapping, or whatever you are talking about, we really have to have a change now in how Congress can do its oversight, because we expect and demand the truth.

[snip]

It used to be the Intelligence Committee – you couldn’t appropriate unless the Intelligence Committee authorized. It was almost effectively an appropriation. Over time the Intelligence in the Bush years became part of supplementals so there was absolutely no sharing of information. They would just stick the request in the supplementals. We said, "Okay, if they are going right to appropriations, we will have members of the Intelligence Committee serve in this hybrid committee, part Intelligence, part Appropriations." [my emphasis]

According to Pelosi, with both the illegal wiretap program and the torture program, the Bush Administration would work through appropriations subcommittees, thereby gaining the only kind of Congressional approval they gave a damn about–purse string approval–while avoiding any intelligence oversight.

And the briefing in question was, after all, an appropriations briefing. As I’ve discussed, there are three, total, appropriations briefings listed in the CIA briefing list. 

October 18, 2005: Interrogation techniques briefed. Ted Stevens, Thad Cochran

September 19, 2006: Briefing on full detainee program, including the 13 EITs. Bill Young, John Murtha (John Murtha did not stay for EIT portion of briefing)

October 11, 2007: The Director discussed the number of detainees subjected to EITs and discussed EITs. John Murtha

The October 2005 briefing appears to have been, among other things, an attempt to coordinate with two Republicans who voted against the McCain amendment and who had already been named to the conference committee on the overall funding bill. Sure, they may have snuck something else through Toobz and Cochran, but there is a reasonably transparent explanation for what the Administration was doing, in October 2005, talking to the appropriators about torture rather than the intelligence committees. They were watering down the McCain Amendment.

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The CIA’s Comedy of Briefing List Errors

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Now that we know of another problem with the CIA’s briefing list, I thought I’d collect all the known problems with the list in one place so those trying to claim the CIA has any credibility on this issue can see just how wrong CIA has been on this issue.

CIA has made errors on at least seven different briefings, there are at least two briefings for which some of the attendees contest the CIA’s version, and CIA claims to be unable to provide full details on seven other briefings. [Update] Crazy Pete Hoekstra also notes the CIA is missing a few briefings. [Update, h/t sailmaker] And the CIA consistently uses the term "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" in the list, even though it did not use that term until 2004. No wonder Leon Panetta continues to say that "it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened." The CIA’s own version of when it briefed and whom is riddled with errors. 

April 2002 (two briefings), September 2002: When Bob Graham first asked the CIA when they had briefed him on torture, they gave him a list of four dates, two in April 2002, and two in September 2002. However, when Graham reviewed his famously detailed notes, he discovered he had not attended any briefing on three of those dates (both April dates and one September date). The CIA conceded he was correct on the issue.

September 4, 2002: According to the CIA, it briefed Nancy Pelosi and Porter Goss on the "use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah" and "the particular EITs that had been employed." While that description does not say clearly that the CIA told Pelosi and Goss they had already used these EITs, including waterboarding, on Abu Zubaydah, it implies it. However, both Pelosi’s and Goss’s description of the briefing indicates they were told torture might be used in the future, not that they were told it had already been used. And now Crazy Pete Hoekstra, after having reviewed the CIA notes, admits that, "when [those documents] are made public it won’t be crystal clear as to exactly what went on in the briefing."

September 27, 2002: According to the CIA, it briefed Bob Graham and Richard Shelby on the "use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah" and "the particular EITs that had been employed." Bob Graham does not remember anything like this and finds it implausible that they discussed torture techniques themselves, given that the briefing occured in the Hart Office Building, not the White House (where highly classified briefings occurred), and two staffers were included in the briefings. Richard Shelby, however, was less clear about what was said. In a formal statement, he says they were briefed on "what was purported to be a full account of the techniques." Only in a follow-up does Shelby say this included mention of waterboarding specifically. In addition, Graham says they were briefed by Stan Moskowitz of the Office of Congressional Affairs, rather than by the briefers from CounterTerrorism Center the CIA claims conducted the briefings.

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David Obey: Yet More Proof the CIA Briefing List Is Totally Wrong

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According to House Appropriations Chair David Obey, the CIA interrogation list records a Democratic Appropriations staffer attending a September 19, 2006 torture briefing, when all the staffer did was walk John Murtha and Bill Young to the briefing, but was turned away at the briefing.

In light of current controversy about CIA briefing practices, I was surprised to learn that the agency erroneously listed an appropriations staffer as being in a key briefing on September 19, 2006, when in fact he was not.  The list the agency released entitled “Member Briefings on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs)”, shows that House Appropriations Committee defense appropriations staffer Paul Juola was in that briefing on that date.  In fact, Mr. Juola recollects that he walked members to the briefing room, met General Hayden and  Mr.Walker, who were the briefers, and was told that he could not attend the briefing.   We request that you immediately correct this record.  

This is particularly significant given that Murtha, according to the CIA list, did not stay for the part of the briefing on torture. Obey’s complaint is also interesting given that this is one of a number of briefings for which CIA claimed details on the briefing–such as who attended–were "not available."

But don’t worry. I’m sure Pete Hoekstra will be out today claiming that it’s John Murtha’s fault that Dick Cheney ordered CIA to torture. 

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Pincus and CIA Panic

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On Saturday, I wrote this about Leon Panetta’s statement to the CIA.

This is a statement reflecting not just the worries at CIA that they’ve been sold out again, asked to break the law, but then hung out to dry after the fact. This is a statement given at a time when the very people being investigated (probably)–Rodriguez and Goss–are two of the three key players in the briefing at the time.And this is a statement that narrowly affirms the accuracy of the briefing (given the briefing notes), while admitting that Congress should determine the full story. Yes, Panetta gives that narrow defense of CIA’s statement. But the bulk of Panetta’s statement implores the rest of CIA not to get hung up on the circus happening around them. 

Panetta is doing two things. First, affirming that CIA has not misrepresented what got recorded in the briefing notes and that the language of the briefing notes is accurate–as far as that goes. And, at the same time, casting doubt on the full meaning of the statement while imploring the rest of CIA not to get distracted by yet another challenge to CIA’s credibility.

This morning, Walter Pincus makes precisely the same point.

Battered by recriminations over waterboarding and other harsh techniques sanctioned by the Bush administration, the CIA is girding itself for more public scrutiny and is questioning whether agency personnel can conduct interrogations effectively under rules set out for the U.S. military, according to senior intelligence officials.

[snip]

The agency’s defensiveness in part reflects a conviction that it is being forced to take the blame for actions approved by elected officials that have since fallen into disfavor. Former CIA director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview that CIA managers and operations officers have again been put "in a horrible position." Hayden recalled an officer asking, "Will I be in trouble five years from now for what I agree to do today?"

 [snip]

Although President Obama has said no CIA officers will be prosecuted for their roles in harsh interrogations if they remained within Justice Department guidelines in effect at the time, agency personnel still face subpoenas and testimony under oath before criminal, civil and congressional bodies.

As part of an ongoing criminal inquiry into the CIA’s destruction of videotapes depicting waterboarding, CIA personnel will appear before a grand jury this week, according to two sources familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is continuing. Read more →

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If the Detainee Dies, Doing Sleep Deprivation Is Wrong

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afghandrawing1.thumbnail.jpgOne of the most shocking quotes from the Senate Armed Services Committee torture report came from Jonathan Fredman, then the Counsel for CounterTerrorism Center at CIA, now working for the Director of National Intelligence, told some interrogators at Gitmo, "It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies you’re doing it wrong." Fredman is reported to have said that on October 2, 2002. A month later, on November 1, 2002, the staff JAG for a Special Ops unit in Bagram judged there was a risk to participating in CIA interrogations; "we are at risk as we get more ‘creative’ and stray from standard interrogation techniques and procedures taught at DoD and DA schools and detailed in official interrogation manuals." A month after that, two prisoners at Bagram died as a result of torture; Habibullah on December 3 and Dilawar on December 9 or 10.

This is not news. Their deaths–particularly that of Dilawar–have received a good deal of attention. There was an extensive report on their treatment in the NYT. (And as Loo Hoo notes, Dilawar was the subject of Taxi to the Dark Side.)

What I did not know, though, is that the criminal report on their deaths found the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation, "combined with other mistreatment," to have "caused" or have been "direct contributing factors" in the two homicides. From the SASC report:

In December 2002, two detainees were killed while detained by CITF-180 at Bagram. Though the techniques do not appear to have been included in any written interrogation policy at Bagram, Army investigators concluded that the use of stress positions and sleep deprivation combined with other mistreatment at the hands of Bagram personnel, caused or were direct contributing factors in the two homicides. 1174 In the wake ofthe deaths of Habibullah and Dilawar, CITF-180 and the SMU TF began developing written standard operating procedures (SOPs) for interrogations. [my emphasis]

This report was dated October 8, 2004.

Mind you, this is the best demonstration available that (as Jeff Kaye has explained) "sleep deprivation"–as described in the torture program–is never just sleep deprivation. 

What this … demonstrates is the proclivity of the CIA and other government torturing agencies to twist the meaning of words, and stuff into the nomenclature of one "technique" or procedures a veritable cornucopia of different torture methods. In this "enhanced interrogation" version of sleep deprivation, forced sleep deficit was combined, as we can see, with shackling, forced positions and forced standing, humiliation, manipulation of diet, sensory overload, and possibly other torture procedures.

Rather, "sleep deprivation" is the excuse for shackling prisoners, in the case of Dilawar, hanging him from the ceiling by his arms.

That October 8, 2004 criminal investigation report, then, was effectively an admission that the "sleep deprivation," as practiced, combined with other harsh treatment (in the case of Dilawar, extensive beatings to his legs while he was hanging from his arms), could kill.

Now look at that date once more: October 8, 2004, Read more →

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Bob Graham: It Was OCA, with the Briefing, in the Hart Senate Building

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Bob Graham was just on CSPAN’s Washington Journal. He raised two more potential problems with the CIA’s account of its briefings on torture.

First, he said Stan Moskowitz, from the CIA’s Office of Congressional Affairs, conducted the briefing.  Yet the CIA says that people from the CounterTerrorism Center conducted the briefing. As I have suggested, that might mean that Jose Rodriguez, then head of CTC, conducted the briefing; Rodriguez is the guy who later ordered the destruction of the torture tapes. Or it might mean that Jonathan Fredman, the guy who once said "If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong," and then-Counsel for CTC, did the briefing. But Graham was absolutely unequivocal that-based on his famously anal notes, Moskowitz did the briefing.

Now, this may not be a real discrepancy. Maybe people from CTC attended the briefing and Moskowitz led it. I’ll try to get some clarification on this question. One place we can’t get clarification on the briefing, though, is from Moskowitz himself; he passed away in 2006. 

But Graham’s other point was clearly damning. He said the briefing occurred in the Hart Senate Office Building and not–as happened with highly classified briefings–at the White House. That detail, plus Graham’s earlier observation that staffers attended the briefing, suggest the briefing was not treated as typical "Gang of Four" or "Gang of Eight" briefings were generally treated. 

Boy, Bob Graham, with his notoriously detailed notes, is just killing the CIA’s credibility on these briefings.

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