Weekend Open Thread
* Zachary Roth points out that whatever Nancy Pelosi was told about torture — and she was told something, make no mistake — she didn’t actually do much of anything about it.
* Marc Ambinder does a deep dive into the nature of these briefings and what Pelosi could have done.
* Sam Stein reports that an aide to another member of Congress given a torture briefing at around the same time didn’t hear anything about waterboarding.
* Michael Goldfarb thinks that Pete Hoekstra has got the goods on Pelosi.
* Andrew Sullivan memorably characterizes the Family Research Council’s position on a gay SCOTUS as follows:
FRC: Closet Cases Welcome On SCOTUS
* Speaking of Sessions reverting, check out this Sessions video flashback.
* Dick Cheney just won’t go away, much to the delight of Dems.
* Republicans keep up the 9/11 attacks on Obama.
* Conservatives keep up the assault on Obama’s taste in condiments.
* And for now I won’t be posting on weekends, so please consider this an open thread. Back first thing Monday morning.
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Greg
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This is from the Roth piece
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I am going to say this again, the rules governing the gang of 8 and the gang of 4 need to be explored in connection with this story. As far as I can tell nobody has ever enumerated what the rules are other than just some paraphrasing. What we need to know is what recourse Pelosi or Harman or Rockefeller had at their disposal because if they didn’t have any then we should be pushing to have those rules changed. It seems to me that if we could find out whether or not Pelosi could tell someone or voice opposition to someone or not then it will refocus the conversation where it should be. On who ordered torture and who abided it If there was nothing they could do then the story about what they knew and when they knew it is just a red herring anyway to block an investigation. If there was something they could have done then its time to put them under the microscope along with the rest of the pro torture crowd.
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Are the secrecy rules also a secret?
SG, you mean, figure out precisely what the rules were governing the conduct of members of Congress who had been briefed?
Greg
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Yes. Because think of it this way, going forward if they really couldn’t tell anybody what was going on back then that means that in the future it could happen again and the next President that wants to torture will have the same amount of cover. Those rules need to be changed in situations where the Gang of 8 or the Gang of 4 think the President is over stepping his bounds. Otherwise what check does he have on his authority when it comes to torture?
Quite honestly I would like it if one of the Gang of 4 or the Gang of 8 could take their dissent to the Chief Justice and have them rule on the constitutionality of any kind of interrogation program. And it should also be secret but if he rules against it the Chief Justice can then block the authorization. Or at the very least note on the authorization that should it ever come out, the Chief Justice of the SCOTUS disagreed with OLC lawyers.
yep. def worth nailing down, for many reasons. will do. thx.
Greg
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Wondering if you had seen this
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-hamsher/feinstein-specter-comprom_b_200427.html
SG – I think you zero in on a really important point. Oversight means nothing if it’s illegal to exercise it. This has to be looked at along with everything else.
Greg, the Marc Ambinder post you link to is definitely worth the read. For one thing, it made me remember just what the climate in the whole country was after 9-11, how profoundly changed everything felt–and for quite a long time. To me, any shortcomings in early Congressional oversight need to be read in that light in a way the apparent administration decision to ramp up waterboarding to gain “intelligence” of an Al Qaeda link to Iraq really can’t be. And in terms of culpability, we are talking orders of magnitude.
This begs the question: What could she do? I honestly do not know, so maybe one of you can tell me – what could she have done?
Allbutcertain – “just what the climate in the whole country was after 9-11, how profoundly changed everything felt–and for quite a long time. ”
I agree with you. The entire country was paranoid after 9-11. Very paranoid. Those were the days when I was chased down the streets in Dallas for my anti-war and anti-Bush bumpers stickers. Literally chased and yelled at. I was followed into restaurants and yelled at for my stickers. It was a very different country after 9-11 – until about 2004, when Bush stole the election again and people suddenly woke up and went “O snap! What just happened?”
Tena, that’s a good question about just what Pelosi could have done. Whoever takes a stab at answering it might want to figure in the fact that the briefing in question was in September of 2002, and Pelosi had become minority whip only earlier that year. Though she was in the leadership, it was a fairly new post for her and not one with a major amount of power. We can’t project her current power back to 2002.
“We can’t project her current power back to 2002.”
Not only that, but as you pointed out – things were way way different in 2002. My god, that was the height of the insanity – from 2002 until January 2005, when Terri Schiavo’s poor corpse woke this country up. That is what work this country up, by the way – she saved us, posthumously.
The whole pelosi/harman/rockerfeller thing is, in fact, quite old news. This was known about back in 2007, and on top of it, nobody in the 30 or so briefings that were held objected, rather some wondered if they were pushing hard enough:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664_pf.html
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers’ recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. “Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing,” said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. “And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement.”
There’s a Paul Kane article with input from Walter Pincus in today’s WAPO that deals some with the timeline on this as well as the restrictions on the 4 & 8 gangs that SG is after.
Link on that Kane article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/08/AR2009050803967.html?hpid=topnews
ABC
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Thanks for the link. I still think they didn’t do much more than gloss over what kind of restrictions were already in place for the Gang of 4 and Gang of 8 although they did at least raise the issue of changing those restrictions in the future.
SG – Yes, it is a pretty glancing mention, but I think the more people out there who point to the fact there actually were restrictions, the better. It becomes an issue that needs to be addressed–what they were exactly and what that means for the possibility of effective oversight. The question of whether and how they should be changed then becomes almost inevitable.
Sessions reverts?
The man may be a krackkker of the first order, but I’m not seeing the fire in this smoke show.
I listened to the tape. He answered questions about his own views and a followup on Sen. Thune’s statments.
What I heard was a Republican stating one of that party’s few defensible positions “we don’t do identity politics”. True, accuarate or not – it’s reasonable discourse.
Responding to the followup about Thune, I heard him say some Americans may have a concern about a gay Justice. That’s certainly true. He may have been trying to soften what Thune said, or simply stated his own view of the electorate. Relevant? Maybe not. But again, it’s not an outrageous statement.
I heard nothing contrary to his earlier statement that he, personally, will look first and only at judicial qualifications.
Where’s the beef, folks?
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