{"id":3945,"date":"2010-03-18T22:44:37","date_gmt":"2010-03-19T03:44:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3945"},"modified":"2010-03-18T22:52:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-19T03:52:05","slug":"a-lie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2010\/03\/18\/a-lie\/","title":{"rendered":"a lie&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p align=\"justify\">Perusing the recent document dump from the CIA, I ran across some 2004 memos that seemed interesting, but I felt I was walking in on the middle of a movie. I was. It was an exchange between the 911 Commission and the Bush Administration &#8211; Gonzales [President], Scott Muller [CIA], and Stephen Cambone [DoD]. <strong><font color=\"#006699\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong> has the background.    <\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2010\/03\/16\/did-addington-oppose-911-commission-questions-to-avoid-independent-evaluation-of-torture-program\/\">Did Addington Oppose 9\/11 Commission Questions to Avoid  Independent Evaluation of Torture Program?<\/a><\/strong><br \/>      By <strong><font color=\"#006699\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong> <br \/>      March 16, 2010 <\/div>\n<p>    <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">Shortly after news broke that CIA destroyed the torture tapes, the  9\/11 Commission issued a letter <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2008\/01\/02\/911-commission-decries-obstruction\/\">complaining<\/a><\/strong>  that they had not been told of &ndash; much less been allowed to review &ndash; the  torture tapes.<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup><em>The commission&rsquo;s mandate was sweeping  and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent  revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda  operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to  our lawful requests for information about the 9\/11 plot. Those who knew  about those videotapes &mdash; and did not tell us about them &mdash; obstructed our  investigation.<\/em><\/sup> <\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">They released a <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/static1.firedoglake.com\/28\/files\/\/2009\/04\/20071222-intel-memo.pdf\">memo<\/a><\/strong>  from Philip Zelikow describing how the Administration refused to allow  the 9\/11 Commission direct access to detainees in early 2004.<\/div>\n<ul>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup><em>The full Commission considered this  issue in a meeting on January 5, 2004 and decided the CIA responses were  insufficient. It directed the staff to prepare a letter to  administration officials that would make the dispute public. There were  then discussions between Hamilton and White House counsel Alberto  Gonzales and several meetings of CIA lawyers with Commission staff. The  Commission offered various compromises to avoid disrupting the  interrogation process, including direction or observation of questioning  in real-time using one-way glass, adjoining rooms, or similar  techniques. In a January 15, 2004 memo to Gonzales, Muller, and  Undersecretary of Defense Steve Cambone, Zelikow wrote, &ldquo;We remain ready  to work creatively with you on any option that can allow us to aid the  intelligence community in cross-examining the conspriators on many  critical details, clarify for us what the conspirators are actually  saying, and allow us to evaluate the credibility of these replies.&rdquo;<\/em><\/sup><\/div>\n<p>     <\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup><em>But these negotiations made little progress. Hamilton and  commissioner Fred Fielding then met with Gonzales, Tenet, Secretary of  Defense Rumsfeld, and Chris Wray from the Department of Justice. The  administration offered to take sets of written followup questions, pose  them to detainees, relay answers back to the Commission, and take  further questions. In a January 26, 2004 meeting the Commission accepted  this proposal as the best information it could obtain to address its  longstanding questions.<\/em><\/sup><\/div>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"justify\">Today&rsquo;s document dump includes an interesting <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\/files\/assets\/CIA.pdf\">snapshot<\/a><\/strong> of the  Administration response to the Commission request. [<strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.aclu.org\/files\/assets\/CIA.pdf\">PDF 25-30<\/a><\/strong>]<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">The snapshot Marcy references involves four documents in the dump. The first [1] was from Phillip Zelikow, Executive Director of the 9\/11 Commission. They were obviously upset about the information they received about the interrogation of the detainees [Note that these memos are from <u><strong>before<\/strong><\/u> the Abu Ghraib scandal in September 2004, before we knew about the Torture Program]:<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/zelikow1.gif\" \/>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">It&#8217;s obvious that the Commission had been trying to gain direct access to the detainees to try to understand the lead-up to 9\/11, and they&#8217;d hit a stone wall. They had obviously gotten the run around from George Tenet. Zelikow&#8217;s impatience is palpable. Here&#8217;s the letter he was talking about sending [2]:<\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/zelikow2.gif\" \/>&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">I don&#8217;t know which seven, but I&#8217;d guess that the list would contain the people who had been tortured, though that wasn&#8217;t yet known. From the letter, one might suspect that they &quot;smelled a rat.&quot; Tenet&#8217;s reasons don&#8217;t sound very convincing, or rational. But then things take a bizarre turn. The response letter is being drafted by <strong>David Addington<\/strong>, then the Counsel to the Vice President. Why was the Office of the Vice President involved? We know the answer now, but I&#8217;m not sure we knew in January 2004. Torture was the OVP&#8217;s &quot;baby.&quot; [3]    <\/div>\n<div align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/zelikow3.gif\" \/><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">As you might guess, the answer was &quot;No.&quot; [4]    <\/div>\n<div align=\"center\">&nbsp;<img decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/zelikow4.gif\" \/><\/div>\n<div align=\"justify\">The 911 Commission was appointed to look into the 9\/11 attack. It seems only reasonable that they would want access to the detainees &#8211; particularly <strong>KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed]<\/strong>, the &quot;mastermind&quot; of 911. Why wouldn&#8217;t they want that? What could it hurt? What secrets? So, they settled for passing written questions and answers back and forth. Addington&#8217;s letter is firm with his special flavor of contemptuousness &#8211; playing the bully as ever. If you read it several times, it is absurd. <strong><font color=\"#006699\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong>  says:<\/div>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\">At the very least, letting Commission staffers view the  interrogations would have showed that the interrogators were incompetent  at what they were doing [which, Zelikow has made clear, was already  becoming apparent from the interrogation reports anyway]. But, too, there was another risk. If Commission staffers saw some of  these detainees in person, it would become clear that they weren&rsquo;t who  the Administration claimed them to be.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><font color=\"#200020\">I&#8217;d say it more directly. David Addington and Vice President Cheney didn&#8217;t want the 911 Commission to know that these detainees were spread around the world being tortured by the C.I.A. What David Addington was having Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, and&nbsp; John Ashcroft sign was a letter that hid the Torture Program behind a bogus claim of National Security. I can think of no other explanation for these documents. The central office for lies was, by this time, the Office of the Vice President of the United States.<\/font><\/strong> <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perusing the recent document dump from the CIA, I ran across some 2004 memos that seemed interesting, but I felt I was walking in on the middle of a movie. I was. It was an exchange between the 911 Commission and the Bush Administration &#8211; Gonzales [President], Scott Muller [CIA], and Stephen Cambone [DoD]. emptywheel [&hellip;]<\/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-3945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3945","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=3945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3945\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}