Thursday, May 21, 2009

Um, Duh.

Specter Says Record Needed of Future CIA Briefings

"In a letter Thursday to the White House and leaders of congressional intelligence committees, Specter says this would prevent disputes later -- like the recent one over what and when House SpeakerNancy Pelosi was told about severe interrogation methods used on terrorism detainees.

He says if the dispute involves classified materials, the transcript could be reviewed by top members of the intelligence committees or even a court. Specter is a former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee."

I thought that was pretty obvious.  I am hoping that one product of the Bush mess is that more stringent oversight will be conducted over the CIA by Congress.  dday at Hullabaloo has a great post about why that oversight is needed - members of both parties during the Bush years have said the CIA lied.

Another example of the "CIA lied" genre - Jane Harman regarding the videotape destruction:

"Lawmakers were initially told only of the existence of a single tape showing Mr. Zubaydah, said California Rep. Jane Harman, who was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee in 2003, when she warned the CIA not to destroy that tape. A committee spokeswoman said it was told in the past year that there were 92 tapes, after Rep. Harman departed the committee.

'My jaw fell through the floor,' Rep. Harman said. 'My impression was that this was a videotape. I never imagined it would be 92 videotapes.' The CIA misled her, she said, and 'it may also be a violation of law.'" [emphasis supplied]

I don't know who is doing the briefing over at the CIA, and who is telling them what to brief Congress about, but that person(s) should be in a little trouble right now.  They would be if we were "looking back," anyway.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, should there be a space between Speaker and Nancy?