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Followup - Pelosi and Waterboarding
Earlier this morning Nancy Pelosi told reporters that the CIA had specifically denied waterboarding prisoners back when they briefed her in 2002. Fine, I said, but "what about reports that one of your aides, Michael Sheehy, was briefed about waterboarding in early 2003 and passed the news along to you? Any comment on that?"
Robert Waldmann in turn has a pair of questions for me:
1) Did you listen to Pelosi's statement and/or read a transcript ?
2) Should you have checked what she said before accusing her of an omission ?
Um, no. And yes. Sorry. I screwed up. I didn't read Pelosi's whole statement, which did indeed address the issue of the 2003 briefing:
Five months later, in February 2003, a member of my staff informed me that the Republican chairman and new Democratic Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee had been briefed about the use of certain techniques which had been the subject of earlier legal opinions.
Following that briefing, a letter raising concerns was sent to CIA General Counsel Scott Muller by the new Democratic Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, the appropriate person to register a protest.
This is a reference to Jane Harman's letter, which raised some questions about whether the president had approved the various interrogation techniques then in use. It was hardly a full-throated denunciation of torture, and it's never been clear whether Pelosi even knew about the letter at the time. In other words, there are still plenty of questions here.
But I still should have looked up the whole statement first. Sorry.
Apology accepted.
Apology accepted.
Wow
Oh My God. I bow down before and take my hat off to Kevin Drum's intellectual integrity.
Also I am kicking myself. I've been reading this blog since it was calpundit and never ever criticized it. Now I criticize and I get a link.
So Mr Drum sir I have 2 more questions
3) what do you think of the concept of "incentives ?"
4) do you think I will be able to resist the temtpation to nit pick everything I read here angling for another link ?
I hope the answer to question 4 is yes.
"Following that briefing, a
"Following that briefing, a letter raising concerns was sent"
Haha. Masterpiece.
Somewhere, Harman is grinning
Pelosi's defense on this score pretty much boils down to, "But, but, but..." It is, in a word, unimpressive. This is hardly what the founders envisioned when they conceived of oversight.
What is the ranking minority
What is the ranking minority member of a committee supposed to do when they get an intelligence briefing acknowledging waterboarding?
1) Intelligence briefings are not to be discussed with other members of congress
2) The house minority doesn't do oversight
3) The house minority doesn't write legislation
Yeah, writing a letter sounds like a crappy solution but the main purpose of these briefings is not the consent of congress.
When dems finally took charge I seem to remember Bush vetoing a bill clearly outlawing waterboarding.
au contraire
Any member of Congress who discovers illegal activity -- and that's what we're talking about here -- is obligated to report it. As the ranking Democrat in the House, Pelosi could've gone straight to the President & said, "Look, if you don't explain what's going on -- and completely -- I'll make this very ugly for you." And you don't necessarily have to be a ranking member of either party; there are whistleblower protections for garden-variety GS employees for just these occasions.
Whatever...
This happens to me all the time! Kevin shows humility one damn time and he's the...what?...I'm just wrong a lot more?...whatever...
Kevin is his old self, but I
Kevin is his old self, but I am sorry to say that his site is not that appealing for some inexplicable reason.
The design of Washington Monthly site gives you a sense of seriousness and rigor that matched Kevin Drum's personality perfectly. This one I do not much care for. I think I am not the only one, as the substantially reduced number of commentators here seems to confirm.
Do you really think Pelosi could have done anything?
Do you even remember what the political climate was back in 2003-2004? Politicians on both sides were being strung up by the Bush administration whenever prisoner torture was mentioned. In those years, you were accused of being a terrorist sympathizer for not wearing your American flag lapel pin. Citizens who disagreed with the President were corralled into "free speech" zones blocks away from any presidential speaking engagement. We have a tendency to forget how the politics of fear gripped Washington DC during those first few years after 9/11. There were no dissenters on either side at first (except Ron Paul, but I think he disagrees with everything by default), because doing so was career suicide. I'm absolutely, positively sure that some politicians on both sides were totally against our detainee questioning policy. The primary motivation of a politician is to stay in office, sometimes you have to go with the flow in order to do that. Bush may have been a dimwit, but he had the best handlers and political hitmen to ensure that there was very little dissent to Republican party policies. Most politicians have made some bad decisions and have some skeletons in their closets, going against the Presidential grain can have some really dire consequences.
She did not answer the question you had
Wait, I don't understand why you think you are wrong Kevin. You wrote "Fine, I said, but 'what about reports that one of your aides, Michael Sheehy, was briefed about waterboarding in early 2003 and passed the news along to you? Any comment on that?'"
I just listened Nancy Pelosi's entire news briefing - she did not answer your question at all. What she does say numerous times is that she was told by an aide that there had been a briefing Feb 2003. The only two people she mentioned to be at that briefing were the ranking Democrat and Republican on the committee. She specifically omitted the fact that her aide was at that briefing also. The whole reason the aide was at the briefing in the first place was to keep Pelosi in the loop without her having to take time out of her schedule to attend.
Telling her aide that waterboarding was taking place was the same as telling her - that was the whole point to his being there in the first place. Her story that an aide said that other members of congress were briefed is substantially different from the truth that the aide was also at the same briefing.