{"id":3215,"date":"2009-06-11T22:22:42","date_gmt":"2009-06-12T02:22:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3215"},"modified":"2009-06-11T22:22:42","modified_gmt":"2009-06-12T02:22:42","slug":"they-just-threw-it-all-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2009\/06\/11\/they-just-threw-it-all-away\/","title":{"rendered":"they just threw it all away…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
When faced with a superior intelligence, it is best to admit it, and only discuss what you understand, leaving the part that’s beyond you for other to grapple with on their own. That was my dilemma with the posts of eriposte in the early days of the unraveling of the Niger forgeries. Now, years later, I get what he was making clear to us – the many twists and turns the Bush Administration went through to bring off their "sixteen word" hoax. Now, emptywheel is on a similar quest. She’s proposing that the C.I.A. is dangling a "shiny object" in front of us – the waterboarding tapes they destroyed – when what they are trying to hide is even more than the fact that they used this nasty method. A "shiny object" is something to attract our attention – the horror that we used this odious technique. What they’re trying to hide is when and why we used it. It’s there that she loses me. What I suspect those tapes showed was that torture was used to try to extract a reason to invade Iraq – a false confession. But I think emptywheel has even more in mind. But I can’t get it yet, and must await as I did with eriposte until a later time when things become clear. That may not be too long, in this case. The CIA IG Report is around the corner as is the OPR Report from the DoJ. And then there’s the SSCI Investigation. And the court cases. And the A.C.L.U. [blessed they art]. And empywheel. And Senator Whitehouse. Somewhere in all of this, the truth is going to peek out from behind the clouds of obfuscation and slap us in the face.<\/em><\/sup><\/div>\n
\n
Why the CIA Would Want to Hide May 2002 from Judge Hellerstein [and the ACLU]<\/a><\/strong>
By: emptywheel<\/strong>
June 11, 2009<\/div>\n

I’ve had a couple of really weedy posts examining the CIA’s response to the torture FOIA. And I wanted to pull back a bit, and explain what I think they might mean.<\/p>\n

We’re getting all these documents because the CIA is trying to avoid being held in contempt for not revealing the now-destroyed torture tapes in a response to this FOIA in 2004. At that time, the CIA had to reveal the torture related documents held by its Inspector General or Office of General Counsel. When ACLU learned of the torture tape destruction, it argued that the tapes should have been included in that FOIA compliance and certainly should not have been destroyed. The CIA argued, though, that since the Inspector General had never physically had the tapes, they were not responsive to the original FOIA…<\/p>\n

The CIA was hoping – it appears – that its narrative that the torture tapes portrayed waterboarding, and that’s the big reason they were sensitive, would distract Hellerstein and the ACLU and therefore allow them to hide a slew of other information: the success of the FBI before Abu Zubaydah’s torture started, the torture that started before the OLC opinions were written [and the White House’s intimate involvement in approving the earlier torture], the role of contractors in the torture, the quality of intelligence they got using persuasive interrogation as compared to the quality of intelligence they got using torture, whatever happened in al-Nashiri’s waterboarding that led them to stop and even admit it didn’t work with him, whatever happened to Abu Zubaydah around October 11, 2002 that led them to take a picture of him, and the Inspector General’s reconstruction of the Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation [which should have been turned over in the first FOIA]…<\/p>\n

[big snip] <\/p>\n

And so we get the Vaughn Index released the other day. Panetta’s declaration makes a couple of big new admissions: Contractors were present at the interrogations, and someone at NSC, rather than George Tenet, made this program a special access program. But the new materials continue to hide the following evidence that might support a contempt citation: <\/div>\n
    \n
  • \n
    Details about the interrogations from May [May overall was undersampled, particularly from May 14 through 23]<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    Deliberative discussions that took place before August [which might include the approval of torture before the OLC memos]<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    The degree to which torture, as practiced, exceeded the torture as authorized <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    Mistakes the CIA made about Abu Zubaydah’s identity<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    The extent to which FBI interrogators got more and better intelligence than the CIA contractors<\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    Someone’s – perhaps the Inspector General’s – reconstruction of the timeline concerning the torture <\/div>\n<\/li>\n
  • \n
    Interview records from both the Inspector General’s investigation or the early CIA response to revealing the torture tapes had been destroyed <\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
    Perhaps most telling, the CIA undersampled in May and did not turn over any of four timelines and six notes\/outlines [which I suspect were part of the IG investigation], but included in Vaughn B two totally decontextualized descriptions of waterboarding [and mark my words–I bet the CIA will soon agree to hand those over to prove its cooperation].<\/div>\n

    SHINY OBJECT!! WATERBOARDING!!!!<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n

    The CIA still wants to pretend this is all about waterboarding. But it is increasingly clear that it is about the things CIA did in May and June, the high level authorizations for it, the success of the FBI, and the completely false claims they used to later authorize their torture. The torture tapes were destroyed not because they showed OLC-authorized waterboarding. They were destroyed [among other reasons] because they proved that the foundation of our torture program was a lie. And the CIA is still trying to hide that fact from Judge Hellerstein.<\/strong><\/font><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
    The period between the September 11, 2001 attack on New York and the campaign for the Invasion of Iraq that began on September 8, 2002 was an intense time in Washington D.C. On the news, we heard about the War in Iraq, and the Axis of Evil. American cars were covered with magnetic patriotic stickers. It was the period when Bush talked like a cowboy [and approval rating slid from 90% down to 65%]. We obsessed about homeland security and worried about anthrax attacks. But in the background, all sorts of things were going on that we didn’t know about. There was the OSP<\/strong> in the DoD<\/strong> and WHIG<\/strong> in the White House. There were OLC<\/strong> opinions from the DoJ<\/strong> approving CIA<\/strong> Torture. There was NSA<\/strong> Spying. The net result of all these alphabet agencies was that the United States invaded Iraq instead of pursuing our enemy, al Qaeda. And we made war on Terror instead of the Terrorists.<\/div>\n

    During that year to year and a half, we’ve learned that our own government misbehaved in almost any dimension you might pick. Rather than rely on our existing agencies – the C.I.A.<\/strong><\/font>, the D.o.D.<\/strong><\/font>, the D.o.J.<\/strong><\/font> – the Executive Branch took them over and directed their activities – micromanaging each from the White House – specifically, the Office of the Vice President. It was a new meaning for the term, Commander in Chief. In their defense, it was certainly a tumultuous time and I’m sure the pressures were great. But as we learn more and more about their behavior, we would’ve been better off if they’d just taken the year off and gone to their ranches for a period of spiritual renewal.<\/p>\n

    Each new revelation seems to lead to a new deceit. Over the ensuing six years of the Iraq War, we’ve learned that the intelligence that warned of the al Qaeda attack was ignored. We’ve found out that the cause for the Iraq War was a lie. We’ve learned that we jettisoned the Geneva Conventions. Now, we’re learning that the illegal torture was part of the attempt to justify the illegal war. Above all, we’ve learned that the Executive perogative of classifying information was used extensively to evade the oversight that lies at the heart of the American Constitution. Rather than keeping secrets from our enemies, the Executive Branch kept secrets from Congress and the American people. The Department of Justice became their political arm, and the C.I.A. began to resemble the K.G.B. in Russia, a direct agent of the rulers rather than the intelligence gathering agency of the government. If that weren’t enough, the domestic functions of government – things like disaster relief, responsible fiscal policy, attention to our economy and our markets – fell to the wayside and our descent into an economic black hole went unattended until it was too late to do anything about it.<\/p>\n

    We’re going to learn a lot in the coming months about what happened back there  in 2002 when these unseen wheelings and dealings in the White House were at a fever pitch. And as much as we’ve all pondered why all of this played out like it did, I doubt that any of us can grasp how it all worked quite yet. The part I don’t understand to this day is that the American people were on their side. Bush had a 90% approval rating. The world was America’s ally. The U.N. was behind us. They could’ve played it straight and been heros. Instead, they threw it all away. They just threw it all away. And as emptywheel is telling us, there’s more darkness yet to be revealed …<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    When faced with a superior intelligence, it is best to admit it, and only discuss what you understand, leaving the part that’s beyond you for other to grapple with on their own. That was my dilemma with the posts of eriposte in the early days of the unraveling of the Niger forgeries. Now, years later, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}