John Conyers Jr to hold hearings on OLC report

Sometimes ya just have to do what's right. Especially if it includes proving the integrity of a government agency you're responsible for protecting.

Here's the full release from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.):

"For years, those who approved torture and abuse of detainees have hidden behind legal memos issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel," Conyers said. "The materials released today make plain that those memos were leglly flawed and fundamentally unsound, and may have been improperly influenced by a desire to tell the Bush White House and the CIA what it wanted to hear."

"The Office of Legal Counsel has a proud tradition of providing independent, high-quality legal advice to the executive branch," Conyers continued. "The materials released today make clear that the lawyers who wrote the torture memos did not live up that tradition. While the department ultimately concluded that the lawyers did not breach their minimum professional obligations, I certainly hold top lawyers at OLC to a higher standard that, as all Americans should.

"Given the serious nature of the issues raised in this report, the committee intends to hold hearings on these matters in the very near future."

All released materials can be found here.

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Note: Headline links to source.

U.S. Attorney Says Two CIA Interrogation Tapes Thought Destroyed in '05 Still Exist

Accusations of a cover-up of video evidence of alleged torture tactics by the CIA in interrogating terror suspects in the wake of the destruction of hundreds of hours of CIA interrogation videos are almost certain to intensify after a U.S. attorney disclosed that at least two such tapes still exist -- contrary to a public statement by CIA Director Michael Hayden (pictured above) that the videos were destroyed in 2005. (Photo courtesy ABC News)

I wasn't gonna post about this story. Everybody and his/her cat has, but this is a whole new spin on it.

The tapes likely were not destroyed as claimed by Hayden.

A letter by a Virginia-based U.S. attorney to a federal appeals court appears to contradict CIA Director Michael Hayden's public statements on the destruction of hundreds of hours of video footage of "extreme" interrogations of suspected al-Qaida operatives by strongly indicating that at least two of the videos still exist, The 'Skeeter Bites Report has learned.

Charles Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote that his office viewed two videotapes of CIA interrogations of al-Qaida suspects as recently as September 19 and October 18 of this year -- contrary to Hayden's statement that the tapes were destroyed in 2005.

So now we have the CIA claiming, in 2003, no such tapes existed. Then they admitted the non-existent tapes were destroyed in 2005. And finally we learn that probably was a lie too. The tapes did exist as recently as October 2007.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave.


And we don't appreciate other's weaving their own webs.

SPIIDERWEB™ Rulz!

Via

US Coup Planned for Venezuela?

Larry Johnson doesn't buy this story (two posts earlier with same title) at all. He believes Venezuela produced the memo as disinformation and possibly to create a red herring if something goes wrong in the upcoming elections.

How something could go wrong I have no idea considering the control Hugo Chávez has over all things Venezuelan.

As the official bubble burster let me state for the record, this is patent nonsense. State Department officers do not write memos to Hayden. Particularly mid-level Foreign Service Officers. A CIA officer under diplomatic cover sends his communications to headquarters via an encoded message. We call these messages cables, harkening back to the days of telegraphs and telegrams.

Via No Quarter.

Spooks refuse to toe Cheney's line on Iran

Anyone who has ever worked in a corporation or just a large business knows this is how it works. Several people are assigned to assess "something". A few wear knee pads.* Others make objective analysis as they were hired to do which doesn't conform to what the boss wants to hear and are asked ordered to revise their conclusions.

Its bullshit of course, but its business. It may affect production, profits or the bottom line, but it doesn't involve bombs and dead people.

Please ask your Congress critter to get behind the Cheney impeachment. That asshole has to be removed from office asap.

The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program. The aim is to make the document more supportive of Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts provided by participants in the NIE process to two former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers.

But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the "unsatisfactory" draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.

A NIE coordinates the judgments of the US's 16 intelligence agencies on a specific country or issue.

A former CIA intelligence officer who has asked not to be identified told Inter Press Service (IPS) that an official involved in the NIE process says the Iran estimate was ready to be published a year ago but has been delayed because the director of national intelligence wanted a draft reflecting a consensus on key conclusions - particularly on Iran's nuclear program.

There is a split in the intelligence community on how much of a threat the Iranian nuclear program poses, according to the intelligence official's account. Some analysts who are less independent [read Cheney's poodles] are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the alarmist view coming from Cheney's office, but others have rejected that view. [emphasis mine]

* So they're more comfortable when kissing the boss's ass.

Via Asia Times.

CIA inquiry urged holding Tenet, others to account for 9/11

They do protect their own, don't they. This is, if true, a glaring dereliction of duty. What could have been more important in early 2001?

A two-year-old CIA inquiry urged holding former CIA director George Tenet and other top agency officials to account for leadership failures before the September 11, 2001 attacks, a summary released Tuesday said.

The CIA's inspector general recommended in June 2005 that CIA set up "accountability boards" to consider disciplinary action against Tenet and other top officials for the failures, but was turned down by then CIA director Porter Goss.

Michael Hayden, the spy agency's current director, said in declassifying the top secret summary that he saw no reason to revisit the inspector general's recommendations.

The report found that Tenet failed to produce a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaeda before the September 11 attacks, and did not make effective use of his authority to marshal support for a counter-terrorism effort that he had proclaimed as a top priority.

Via Agence France-Presse.

Bush ''saddened'' by verdict in CIA leak case

Forget about the hundreds of thousand dead in Iraq and Afghanistan. Forget about the thousands still homeless 18 months after Katrina hit NOLA. Bush is "saddened" because one fucking slime ball lobbyists has been convicted of lying to the FBI and perjured himself. Ya gotta love his sense of priorities.

U.S. President George W. Bush was "saddened" by the jury's verdict on Tuesday that Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was guilty in the leak case regarding the identity of Valerie Plame, a former covert agent of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the White House said.

"He said that he respected the jury's verdict, that he was saddened for Scooter Libby and his family," White House Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino said at a news briefing.

Its really difficult to tell who the bigger slime ball is. Oops, it isn't difficult at all. No one is a larger slime ball than Dim Son.

(read more)

US Iran intelligence 'is incorrect'

So they're cooking the intelligence again. Wow, talk about your déjà vu.

What baffles me is why all the smoke and mirrors? Bush will attack Iran if he wants to and really couldn't care less what America or the rest of the world thinks about it.

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by US spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, diplomatic sources in Vienna said today.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme.

That report, delivered to the security council by the IAEA director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, sets the stage for a fierce international debate on the imposition of stricter sanctions on Iran and raises the possibility that the US could resort to military action against Iranian nuclear sites.

At the heart of the debate are accusations - spearheaded by the US - that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons.
However, most of the tip-offs about supposed secret weapons sites provided by the CIA and other US intelligence agencies have led to dead ends when investigated by IAEA inspectors, according to informed sources in Vienna.

"Most of it has turned out to be incorrect," a diplomat at the IAEA with detailed knowledge of the agency's investigations said.

"They gave us a paper with a list of sites. [The inspectors] did some follow-up, they went to some military sites, but there was no sign of [banned nuclear] activities.

"Now [the inspectors] don't go in blindly. Only if it passes a credibility test."

One particularly contentious issue was records of plans to build a nuclear warhead, which the CIA said it found on a stolen laptop computer supplied by an informant inside Iran.

In July 2005, US intelligence officials showed printed versions of the material to IAEA officials, who judged it to be sufficiently specific to confront Iran.

Tehran rejected the material as forged, and there are still reservations within the IAEA about its authenticity, according to officials with knowledge of the internal debate in the agency.

"First of all, if you have a clandestine programme, you don't put it on laptops which can walk away," one official said. "The data is all in English which may be reasonable for some of the technical matters, but at some point you'd have thought there would be at least some notes in Farsi. So there is some doubt over the provenance of the computer."

(read more)

Must Read IMHO

Just so you know what's going on now in Lebanon.

Bombs destroyed two commuter buses today in the small Christian community of Ain Alaq, in the mountains north of Beirut.

Reports of fatalities varied, but ranged from three (Red Cross, security forces) to 12 (LBC and other media sources.) Ten to 20 were wounded. The first bomb was apparently attached to the undercarriage of the first bus while the second was in a back seat on the second, according to my fixer, who is trying to find more info. I’ll update if this changes.

The wounded were civilians possibly traveling to work, marking a change in the two-year campaign of bombings and assassinations that has wracked Lebanon since the killing of Rafik Hariri on Feb. 14, 2005. Before, the attacks were either targeted assassinations of well-known anti-Syrian politicians and journalists or small bombs exploded in buildings late at night so as to minimize casualties. This seems aimed at Iraq- or Israel-style terror. Random, anywhere, pitiless.

Details are still emerging, but speculation is rampant. Was this Syria? Hezbollah? CIA? (A Hezbollah spokesman said it was the latter.) Was it a warning to the March 14 coalition not to attend the big rally planned for downtown tomorrow to mark the two-year anniversary of Hariri’s death?

To clarify, the story goes on to say speculation the CIA is behind the bombings is not unusual in the Mid-East and not necessarily correct.

(read more)

I'm at a loss here

Why is Germany the one to prosecute Rumsfeld and the CIA agents? Why doesn't the US take care of their own problems? Just asking.

Germany has ordered the arrest of 13 people believed to be CIA agents over the alleged kidnapping of a Lebanese-born German national, in one of the best-known cases of US "renditions" of terror suspects.

The prosecutor's office in Munich, southern Germany said in a statement that the city's administrative court had issued the arrest warrants on suspicion of abduction and grievous bodily harm.

German authorities are probing allegations by Khaled el-Masri that he was abducted by US agents in the Macedonian capital Skopje on New Year's Eve 2003 and flown to a prison in Afghanistan for interrogation before he was released five months later in Albania.

Masri has said he was tortured while imprisoned.

(read more)