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From The Ed Schultz Show, Jerrold Nadler says the appointment of a Special Prosecutor doesn't go far enough and that the law is that when torture occurs under American jurisdiction there must be an investigation of everyone who may have been involved and if warranted prosecutions. Nadler expressed concern that we aren't being aggressive enough and limiting the investigations too much. He also adds this:

Nadler: We are well into territory already, where because of the pardon of Nixon after Watergate and the people around him, because of in the Iran Contra, we're getting into territory where it becomes taken for granted that high officials can violate the law and get away with it.

Schultz: Yep.

Nadler: If high officials violated the law here, if Cheney did, if Rice did, etc., they've got to be prosecuted to show that no one is above the law.

I agree with his point that no one is above the law. I disagree that we're "getting into territory" where high officials take it for granted that they will never be held accountable for their law breaking. We're well past that point now.

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(h/t Michael.)

Well, well, well. Isn't this interesting:

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2004 hired outside contractors from the private security contractor Blackwater USA as part of a secret program to locate and assassinate top operatives of Al Qaeda, according to current and former government officials.

Executives from Blackwater, which has generated controversy because of its aggressive tactics in Iraq, helped the spy agency with planning, training and surveillance. The C.I.A. spent several million dollars on the program, which did not capture or kill any terrorist suspects.

The fact that the C.I.A. used an outside company for the program was a major reason that Leon E. Panetta, the new C.I.A. director, became alarmed and called an emergency meeting to tell Congress that the agency had withheld details of the program for seven years, the officials said.

It is unclear whether the C.I.A. had planned to use the contractors to capture or kill Qaeda operatives, or just to help with training and surveillance. American spy agencies have in recent years outsourced some highly controversial work, including the interrogation of prisoners. But government officials said that bringing outsiders into a program with lethal authority raised deep concerns about accountability in covert operations.

Officials said that the C.I.A. did not have a formal contract with Blackwater for this program but instead had individual agreements with top company officials, including the founder, Erik D. Prince, a politically connected former member of the Navy Seals and the heir to a family fortune. Blackwater’s work on the program actually ended years before Mr. Panetta took over the agency, after senior C.I.A. officials themselves questioned the wisdom of using outsiders in a targeted killing program.

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Rachel came to the same conclusion I did when first hearing about this story and trying to make some sense of it. Since it was public information that the CIA was going after al Qaeda terrorists, what made CIA Director Leon Panetta feel the need to come running to Congress as soon as he knew about this program, and to stop it immediately? Something isn't adding up here.

MADDOW: It has now been five full days since we first got news that the CIA had been operating some sort of secret program that it was actively hiding from the Congress. It‘s been three days since that allegation that the CIA was hiding that program at the direction of former Vice President Dick Cheney—in what would appear to be a direct violation of federal law.

Since the story broke, there has been lots of speculation about what the secret program was that Cheney didn‘t want Congress to know about. And while all the speculation is really titillating and makes for great headlines, it does seem—when you start to look more closely at it—that there‘s something not quite right here, at least something is yet unexplained.

Here‘s what we‘ve seen: “Newsweek” says, “CIA squads to track and kill al Qaeda terrorists.” “The Wall Street Journal” says, the program “was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.” “New York Times” says, “CIA Had Planned to Assassinate al Qaeda Leaders.” Liz Cheney, her own very special voice of America, described the program as “ways that we could capture or kill al Qaeda leaders.”

The reason that doesn‘t make sense is because this strategy of capturing and killing top leaders of al Qaeda, it‘s not exactly classified. It‘s not exactly a secret plan. That‘s the war on terror. That‘s the war on terror strategy we heard articulated again and again and again by the Bush administration.

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John Amato:

Nancy Pelosi is once again vindicated by the actions of the CIA and Dick Cheney. Darth Vader continually opens his mouth to defend his horrific actions, but as more information leaks out it's quite obvious that he had no regard for the rule of law or the Constitution. The new breaking story is that Cheney told the CIA to keep their mouths shut and not inform Congress of what they were up to. This should be reviewed to see if he broke the law.

Normally this would be a shocking revelation under any other administration, but with Bush and Cheney---this is the norm.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney directed the CIA eight years ago not to inform Congress about a nascent counterterrorism program that CIA Director Leon Panetta terminated in June, officials with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Subsequent CIA directors did not inform Congress because the intelligence-gathering effort had not developed to the point that they believed merited a congressional briefing, said a former intelligence official and another government official familiar with Panetta's June 24 briefing to the House and Senate Intelligence committees.

Panetta did not agree. Upon learning of the program June 23 from within the CIA, Panetta terminated it and the next day called an emergency meeting with the House and Senate Intelligence committees to inform them of the program and that it was canceled.

From Fox News Sunday, Dianne Feinstein and John Cornyn are asked about the recent revelation that the CIA was asked by the Bush administration not to reveal one of their programs to members of Congress.

FEINSTEIN: Oh, I think this is a problem, obviously. This is a big problem, because the law is very clear. And I understand the need of the day, which was when America was in shock, when we had been hit in a way we’d never contemplated, where we had massive loss of life, where there was a major effort to be able to respond and -- but this -- see, I don’t -- I think you weaken your case when you go outside of the law.

Feinstein feels the concealment may have broken the law and has no problems with Attorney Gen. Holder appointing an independent I.G. to investigate the Bush administrations interrogation methods. Cornyn's response is predictable.

WALLACE: In our final moments, I want to turn to another subject, and this involves your role, Senator Feinstein, as chair of the Intelligence Committee.

CIA director Panetta briefed you recently on an 8-year-old program that he had stopped but that Congress had never been told about. Now there are reports that Vice President Cheney ordered the CIA not to tell Congress about it.

One, should Congress have been told about this program, which apparently was never fully implemented? And what do you make of the vice president’s apparent role in telling the CIA not to brief Congress?

FEINSTEIN: The answer is yes, Congress should have been told. We should have been briefed before the commencement of this kind of sensitive program.

Director Panetta did brief us two weeks ago -- I believe it was on the 24th of June -- said he had just learned about the program, described it to us, indicated that he had canceled it and, as had been reported, did tell us that he was told that the vice president had ordered that the program not be briefed to the Congress. This is...

WALLACE: And what do you think of that?

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July 12, 2009 NBC News

(h/t Media Matters)

Washington Independent:

Much remains unclear about the substance of the “significant actions” that CIA Director Leon Panetta conceded that the agency didn’t sufficiently brief to Congress. What’s absolutely crystal clear is that for days on end, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough popped off at the mouth about how the CIA would never ever never mislead Congress and how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) “needs to shut up” instead of saying otherwise.

What? Expecting Joe Scarborough to be intellectually honest and acknowledge his role in the smearing of a Democratic politician? *Snort* Like that will ever happen.

It's kind of funny, isn't it? We seem to get more transparency out of the CIA director than we do out of the president:

WASHINGTON -- Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon E. Panetta has told lawmakers that CIA officials misled Congress "for a number of years" since 2001, according to a letter released Wednesday from seven Democratic lawmakers.

The lawmakers say the CIA also withheld information about unspecified "significant actions."

The letter didn't identify when Mr. Panetta made the statements or to what they referred.

"This is similar to other deceptions of which we are aware from other recent periods," the letter continued.

CIA spokesman George Little said "it is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress." Mr. Little said the CIA itself "took the initiative to notify the oversight committees" about the lapses.

The release of the letter is the latest twist in a tussle between House Democrats and the CIA. Earlier this year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of misleading her in briefings about the agency's use of waterboarding, an allegation refuted by the agency and challenged by Republicans.

It also comes one day before the House is scheduled to debate an intelligence bill. President Barack Obama issued a veto threat on Wednesday over provisions that would require more expansive briefings of intelligence committee members on sensitive matters.

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Andrea Mitchell reports on the latest dust up between the CIA and House Democrats. Spencer Ackerman has more:

On June 26, six seven Democrats on the committee — Anna Eshoo (Calif.), John Tierney (Mass.), Rush Holt (N.J.), Mike Thompson (Calif.), Alcee Hastings (Fla.) and Jan Schakowsky (Ill.) [Update: I received an early version of the letter. Rep. Adam Smith (Wash.) also signed it) — wrote to Panetta, “Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all Members of Congress, and misled Members for a number of years from 2001 to this week.” The letter — which doesn’t explain what those “significant actions” concerned — asks that Panetta “publicly correct” his May 15 statement that it isn’t CIA “policy or practice to mislead Congress.” TWI acquired a copy of the letter, which comes after CQ reported that committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) also nebulously stated that CIA “affirmatively lied” to the committee.

But CIA spokesman George Little says it’s “completely wrong” to say Panetta determined CIA misled Congress, as the six legislators charge. “Director Panetta stands by his May 15 statement,” Little said. “It is not the policy or practice of the CIA to mislead Congress.

I'd love to tell you that I'm so erudite and cosmopolitan that I eagerly gobble up The New Yorker cover to cover every month. But it would be a lie. The honest truth is that I read The New Yorker occasionally when articles come up through keyword searches for research for the site and when other bloggers I respect recommend an article.

But this article on Leon Panetta at the CIA was sent to me by one of my Iranian friends (living abroad) who has been filling my inbox with reports of protests and the rumors flying around Tehran. This article has filled her with dread of American interference in Iran.

In fairness, it's a reasonably balanced article; it fairly states the delicate balance that Panetta must tread between the all-too-often opposing forces in the Agency and the Executive Branch. But this section, buried deep on page 6 of the 8 page article, hit me (like my friend) right in the gut:

No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as the result of mistreatment. In the first case, an unnamed detainee under C.I.A. supervision in Afghanistan froze to death after having been chained, naked, to a concrete floor overnight. The body was buried in an unmarked grave. In the second case, an Iraqi prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi died on November 4, 2003, while being interrogated by the C.I.A. at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad. A forensic examiner found that he had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs. Military pathologists classified the case a homicide. A third prisoner died after an interrogation in which a C.I.A. officer participated, though the officer evidently did not cause the death. (Several other detainees have disappeared and remain unaccounted for, according to Human Rights Watch.)

During his tenure at the C.I.A., John Helgerson, the former inspector general, forwarded the crucifixion case, along with an estimated half-dozen other incidents, to the Justice Department, for possible prosecution. But the case files have languished. An official familiar with the cases told me that the agency has deflected inquiries by the Senate Intelligence Committee seeking information about any internal disciplinary action. (Helgerson told me, “Some individuals have been disciplined. And others no longer work at the agency.”)

Panetta acknowledges that there are some people still at the C.I.A. who may be tainted by the torture program. Nevertheless, he says, “I really respect the people who say we shouldn’t have gotten involved in the interrogation business but we had to do our jobs. I don’t think I should penalize people who were doing their duty. If you have a President who exercises bad judgment, the C.I.A. pays the price.”

Excuse me? We're literally crucifying detainees (who have not had the right to even know what they're charged with, much less any other legal right) and there's been NO accountability, NO investigation and Panetta's worried about the CIA paying the price?

Methinks they have the wrong priorities.

Although I normally take everything the CIA says with a very large grain of salt, I just don't think Leon Panetta's all that far from the truth. I think Dick Cheney would rather be right than see the country safe from harm:

WASHINGTON -- CIA Director Leon Panetta says former Vice President Dick Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's approach to terrorism almost suggests "he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point."

Panetta told The New Yorker for an article in its June 22 issue that Cheney "smells some blood in the water" on the issue of national security.

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 U.S.

Last month the former vice president offered a withering critique of Obama's policies and a defense of the Bush administration on the same day that Obama made a major speech about national security.

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."

The CIA releases a detailed document at the request of Republicans that says 19 Democrats were routinely briefed on interrogation techniques. The Republicans are playing hardball, and this one's a little chin music for anyone who dares to try to prosecute BushCo over torture. (Here's a link to the document.)

And maybe this is why Democrats are so evasive over torture. If true, this is what happens when Democrats embrace Republican policies: They're always the ones who get blamed. You'd think they'd learn:

The document appears to conflict with recent statements from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was then the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee. Ms. Pelosi has said she hadn't been told that the CIA was using the technique known as waterboarding, or simulated drowning. According to the document, Ms. Pelosi was one of the first lawmakers briefed on the interrogations in 2002.

Ms. Pelosi's spokesman Thursday reiterated the speaker's earlier contention that she was told in the briefing that waterboarding had been authorized but not yet used.

CIA Director Leon Panetta said the agency compiled the document -- based on the files and meeting summaries written at the time that represented the best recollections of the briefers -- in response to requests from Republican lawmakers, including the top Republican on the intelligence panel.

Greg Sergeant says there's more to it:

As you can see, this letter says that the info about briefings is taken from notes based on the “best recollections” of those who were there, adding:

In the end, you and the Committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened.

That would appear to be a concession that the CIA isn’t willing to vouch for the accuracy of the info about the briefings in the docs, and that only further inquiry will produce a reliable recounting of what happened.

To be clear, it’s perfectly possible that the info about what Dems were told is right. But not even the CIA is willing to promise this right now. So it’s unclear how much stock to place in the documents at this point.

***

Update: I’ve just learned that this same letter was also sent to GOP Rep Pete Hoekstra, a leading proponent of the claim that Dems knew the full scope of the torture program early on. I’ve edited the above to reflect this.

I’ve obtained the letter to Hoekstra, which you can read right here. What this means is that the Republican who has lodged the highest-profile attacks on Dems over what they knew and when has been directly informed by the CIA that the info on the briefings may not be reliable.

Bonus Update: Marcy Wheeler nails exactly why this is important.

Special Update For Waterboarding Obsessives: Here’s the key question in a nutshell.

So they're finally closing the book on this bloody chapter and nope, no one will be held accountable for anything. It was all some horrible misunderstanding - albeit, one in which CIA officials actually demanded CYA legal clearance because they knew what they were doing were actually war crimes.

But hey, bygones!

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency said Thursday that it would decommission the secret overseas prisons where it subjected Al Qaeda prisoners to brutal interrogation methods, bringing to a symbolic close the most controversial counterterrorism program of the Bush administration.

But in a statement to employees, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, said agency officers who worked in the program “should not be investigated, let alone punished” because the Justice Department under President George W. Bush had declared their actions legal.

Mr. Panetta and other top Obama administration officials have said they believe that waterboarding, the near-drowning method used in 2002 and 2003 on three prisoners, is torture, which is illegal under American and international law. The International Committee of the Red Cross, which interviewed 14 prisoners, said in a report made public this week that prisoners were also repeatedly slammed into walls, forced to stand for days with their arms handcuffed to the ceiling, confined in small boxes and held in frigid cells.

Mr. Panetta said the secret detention facilities were no longer in operation, but he suggested that security and maintenance had been continuing at the sites at the taxpayers’ expense since they were emptied under Mr. Bush in 2006. Terminating security contracts at the sites would save “at least $4 million,” Mr. Panetta said.

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Keith talks to Jonathan Turley about the statements made by Leon Panetta during and after his confirmation hearing regarding prosecutions for torture.

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Bill O'Reilly devoted another Talking Points Memo segment last night to his new pet thesis that Barack Obama is going to make the nation vulnerable to terrorist attack by taking torture off the table, and then brought Karl Rove on to back it all up:

You know, when he gets behind that desk, and has the awesome responsibility of protecting our country, anybody who's chief executive of the United States is going to want to have the ability, in a time of a great crisis, to call upon enhanded interrogation techniques.

A little later, he closes with this:

Look, if you've taken techniques that have kept America safe and you discard them, you are putting the country at risk and you're going to have to bear the consequences of that.

OK, let me see if I can keep this all straight.

We're now getting advice on how to prevent a terrorist attack from "the Brain" of an administration that manifestly failed at that because it was asleep at the wheel on 9/11, am I right? And they're telling us the torture regime they installed in the interim is responsible for the lack of subsequent attacks afterward -- rather than making the likelihood of future attacks greater?

Karl Rove was a key player in an administration that, in the first eight months of its tenure, specifically undermined counterterrorism programs in an essentially political dismissal of such work as "a Clinton thing."

There was the Aug. 6, 2001, presidential daily briefing titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US," which concluded that terrorists planned to attack us using airplanes. It was ignored.

There was that briefing George Tenet gave Condi Rice on the immensity of the threat, which both she and George W. Bush also ignored -- and then lied about doing so afterward. Indeed, Rice and the Bush administration ent to great measures to cover up their own incompetence.

There was the Hart-Rudman Commission report, which warned the White House in May 2001 that it needed to take serious steps to prevent a terrorist attack. The report was ignored.

So was Richard Clarke's memo of January 2001 warning of the terrorist threat.

And finally, there were the Bush White House's pre-9/11 actions on a pure policy level: "Attorney General John Ashcroft not only moved aggressively to reduce DoJ's anti-terrorist budget but also shift DoJ's mission in spirit to emphasize its role as a domestic police force and anti-drug force." The administration also shifted Department of Defense counter-terrorism funding into missile-defense-system programs.

And yet for all that record, everyone in the press -- most especially Bill O'Reilly -- gave the Bush administration a pass for its massive malfeasance on terrorism, and came to believe that the lack of subsequent attacks meant that suddenly this gang knew what it was doing.

Even though what it was doing entailed violating basic international war-crimes laws and stoking the flames of hatred for the United States. As the 2006 National Intelligence Estimate found, Bush's invasion-under-false-pretenses of Iraq has actually made it far more likely we will have to endure future terrorist attacks.

That report noted that "actions by the United States government that were determined to have stoked the jihad movement" included "the indefinite detention of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay and the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal."

In other words, Karl Rove and his Jet Set Junta made it far more likely that we're going to be hit by terrorists in the coming years, the credit going in part to misbegotten torture policies that have been proven ineffective and counterproductive. And calling an end to those policies will make us more vulnerable? Oh really?

And if such an attack happens, it will be Obama's fault, according to Bill O'Reilly. Because only Republicans get to skate when terrorists strike on their watch.

These people are not just crooks and liars. They're also insane.

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I guess Bill O'Reilly decided he'd had enough of being just a demagogue last night and made the leap into his new persona as an unmistakably dangerous demagogue.

His Talking Points Memo segment is almost always amusing for its incoherence, but this time it was just inchoate: an attack on the Barack Obama's selection of Leon Panetta as CIA chief, ostensibly because of Panetta's lack of experience. The argument, as well as we could make it out, was that Obama is making the U.S. vulnerable to terror because he has chosen a CIA chief who wants us not to torture terror suspects.

Most of the early part of the rant is a regurgitation of O'Reilly's recent warnings that the "far left" wants to hijack Obama's presidency and that his approach to torture is reflective of that. Then he pulls a clip from his radio show earlier in the day, in which he interviewed Michael Scheuer, who's lately been absorbed by the Ron Paulians. Scheuer says this:

Michael Scheuer: I think that the only way to change policy is, sadly, another attack on the United States, and I think that's coming.

O'Reilly: Are you going to predict that?

Scheuer: Oh, I think so, sir. I think that within the next year we'll be attacked again. The opportunity is just too good a one. Um, taking down a lot of the rendition program and that kind of stuff makes things easier for the enemy --

And then O'Reilly launches into a classic naming-the-enemy rant -- the enemy, evidently, being embodied in l'il ole Baghdad By The Bay:

O'Reilly: But some Americans don't care. In fact, some Americans are even are supporting the enemy. In San Francisco, Ground Zero for anti-American displays, supporters of Hamas openly demonstrate against Israel and the USA. These people believe America is evil. And so do many in the media.

Bottom line on this, Barack Obama is taking a major risk by handcuffing U.S. intelligence in its vital task of disrupting and defeating terror. If we get hit, the U.S. will have huge problems.

So let's see: If Obama lets Panetta muck up the CIA's ability, we're going to get hit in the next year. But wait -- aren't we going to be hit no matter what? And isn't all that reflective of the 2006 NIE which warned that the Iraq war and Bush administration's handling of it (including the Abu Ghraib revelations) had made us actually more vulnerable to terrorist attack? Ah, but O'Reilly has long ago swept that particular fact under his mental rug.

That's just for starters. Next up on the program, he had on author/CIA expert Gary Berntsen, and "Fox Military Analyst" Col. David Hunt. Berntsen was largely baffled by the Panetta selection. Hunt, on the other hand, was largely bats--t crazy:

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