CIA Fights Full Release Of Detainee Report
White House Urged to Maintain Secrecy
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick
Washington Post
June 17, 2009
… After the report was issued, then-CIA director George J. Tenet demanded that the Justice Department and the White House reaffirm their support for the agency’s harsh interrogation methods, even when used in combination, telling others at the time that "no papers, no opinions, no program." At a White House meeting in mid-2004, he resisted pressures to reinstate the program immediately, before receiving new legal authorization, according to a source familiar with the episode.
The Justice Department subsequently sent interim supporting opinions to the CIA, allowing its resumption after Tenet’s departure, and went on to complete three lengthy reports in 2005 that affirmed in detail the legality of the interrogation techniques with some new safeguards that the CIA had begun to implement in 2003…
This report came out in May 2004. Tenet resigned in early June 2004, presumably related to his refusal to go forward with the program after the Report was published. Good for him. And recall that this report was released just a few months after the pictures from Abu Ghraib became public, about the time that Jim Comey’s fought off Gonzales and Card in Ashcroft’s hospital room, after Jack Goldsmith had repudiated the Bybee/Yoo Memos Patrick Fitzgerald had been appointed Special Prosecutor in the C.I.A. leak case. With all of this going on, they still tried to keep up the Torture Program, using new Memos written by Steven Bradbury – appointed when Jack Goldsmith resigned. In spite of all those things, the Administration pressed ahead, and Dick Cheney’s still at it…
June 16, 2009… Panetta said of Cheney’s remarks: "It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics."
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told Fox News on Monday that Panetta should apologize and retract his statement, which he called "really out of bounds." Cheney’s own response was more tepid. "I hope my old friend Leon was misquoted. The important thing is whether the Obama administration will continue the policies that have kept us safe for the last eight years," he said in a statement issued Monday.
Cheney has said in several interviews that he thinks Obama is making the U.S. less safe. He has been critical of Obama for ordering the closure of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, halting enhanced interrogations of suspected terrorists and reversing other Bush administration initiatives he says helped to prevent attacks on the United States.
Cheney’s logic is hard to follow. How does torturing captives in Gitmo or an overseas prison prevent attacks on the United States? al Qaeda’s essential weapons are suicide bombers. How does our torturing prisoners prevent that? It makes no sense. If al Qaeda attacks us tomorrow, does Cheney propose it’s because Gitmo is closing? That just doesn’t follow. Even if we were attacked again, it wouldn’t make Cheney’s point.
You are saying if we were attacked, it wouldn’t make Cheney’s point. You are thinking like a scientist or engineer would.I don’t think Cheney is a logical thinking person. I think he has a lot of problems mentally but you’re the expert in that department. He twists and turns his words to make his point and he does a good job convincing himself.
Am I correct that Tenet was replaced by Peter Goss, who had a short stay as CIA Director. He was seen as a patsy for the bush team, I think. So what happened to him? Where was he in all this?