The sleuths are loose! ABC News reported yesterday on the National Security Council’s Principals Committee meetings in which torture techniques were discussed in detail and approved. While none of us were surprised, thje surprise is that we found out about it. From the article:
Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects …Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas."
"It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time," said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. "They’d say, ‘We’ve got so and so. This is the plan’"…
"These discussions weren’t adding value," a source said. "Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it’s legal, (you should) just tell them to implement it"…
Enter stage left, Plamologist Marcy Wheeler AKA emptywheel:
rincewind made an important point in my post on the torture briefings. At least one of the sources for the story must be one of the briefees, not a briefer. rincewind points to these two quotes that come from someone within the committee. [above] This source obviously considers himself as one of the people receiving the briefing, which further suggests this source is not in the CIA.
She continues:
As luck would have it, via Troutfishing’s diary and this McGovern piece, I checked out this February 7, 2002 memo in which Bush declares that Al Qaeda will not be entitled to Geneva Convention protections. The memo seems to indicate that it is addressed to all the people who have participated–at least thus far–in discussions on torture; it refers to "our recent extensive discussions regarding the status of Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees." Now check out the list of addressees: Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Rummy, John Ashcroft, Andy Card, George Tenet, Condi Rice, Richard Myers. In other words, two of the people whom Bush noted as being involved in "extensive discussions regarding the status of Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees" are not included in the list ABC News gave of the
attendees of the meetings that took place slightly later in 2002: Andy Card and Richard Myers. Either is a possibility to be the "high-ranking official" who objected to the repeated discussions of what techniques to use. Certainly, Myers is on the record as having opposed the decision not to extend Geneva Convention protections to Al Qaeda (most recently in reports from Feith’s book). And he would count as "high-ranking" in more than one sense (though neither he, nor Card, is still an official, after all)…
I would add that "These discussions weren’t adding value. Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it’s legal, (you should) just tell them to implement it" sounds like a soldier to me [Richard Myers was the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff].
Here’s the Memo heading:
Read Marcy’s post. There are other possible sources identified. Oh to have the youthful mind!
I hope we can begin to identify these sources, but more than that. The information is beginning to fairly flow about those early days of the Bush Administration. It’s almost beating the news cycle – the next piece comes out before the last one disappears. There have to be any number of people who know all sorts of things but have been quiet for years. That kind of information burns a hole in the mind, and not talking about it is painful, a pain that doesn’t diminish with time. There’s a symphony of whistles to be blown. And it’s been a long time – a very long time…
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