Trusting the People In Power

Greg Miller at the LA Times gives us a somewhat disturbing story today. To quote:

"Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

...

'Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after
the bad guys,' said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of
anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. 'The legal advisors working on
this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a
big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable
practice.'

One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret
prison sites 'do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.'

...

The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even
among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a
sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.

'Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place' for renditions,
said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.
'What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to
design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to
be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time.'

Malinowski said he had urged the Obama administration to stipulate that
prisoners could be transferred only to countries where they would be guaranteed
a public hearing in an official court. 'Producing a prisoner before a real court
is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance,' Malinowski
said."

The problem with renditions goes beyond whether or not the prisoner is directly shipped off to a country that will torture him/her. It's a problem that has to do with accountability as well. If the abductions are secret, how will we know those abducted get their day in court? Obama preserving rendition also makes it more difficult to pinpoint the errors of the Bush-era CIA. Unless Team Obama is willing to go very public with their hair-splitting, Hayden & Tenet just got a lot of cover. Miller's article is pretty flattering to, and uncritical of, Hayden. For example:

The CIA has long maintained that it does not turn prisoners over to other
countries without first obtaining assurances that the detainees will not be
mistreated.

In a 2007 speech, https:// www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2007/general-haydens-remarks-at-the-council-on-foreign-relations.html "> www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony/2007/general-haydens-remarks-at-the-council-on-foreign-relations.html the agency had to make a determination in every case "that it is less, rather than more, likely that the individual will be tortured." He added that the CIA
sought "true assurances" and that "we're not looking to shave this 49-51."

Even so, the rendition program became a target of fierce criticism during
the Bush administration as a series of cases surfaced.

That is a completely ridiculous assertion that has been disputed by many. Hell, the whole premise of Reuel Marc Gerecht's op-ed of Dec 2008 is that we know which countries torture, and we might just want to keep our options open regarding them. And later from Miller:

"But U.S. intelligence officials contend that the EU report greatly
exaggerated the scale of the program and that most of the flights documented by
the Europeans involved moving supplies and CIA personnel, not prisoners.

Instead, recent comments by Hayden suggest that the program has been used
to move no more than a handful of prisoners in recent years and that the total
is in the 'midrange two figures' since the Sept. 11 attacks."

Well, Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann found evidence of "117 renditions that have occurred since September 11, 2001." They continue "When we excluded renditions to Afghanistan, CIA secret prisons (or "black sites"), Guantanamo, or American custody, we found 53 cases of extraordinary rendition. All individuals for whom the rendition destination is known were sent to countries that have been criticized by the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, which document 'torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.'" But, eh, how can a non-CIA driven storyline possibly be true?

Another issue with renditions is that they aren't good for much of anything - Miller's intelligence source admits they are in some ways the "worst option." Again, the Abu Omar rendition is a great example of the stupidity of renditions. I'll refer again to Matthew Cole's excellent piece, Blowback:

But today, as they spoke over coffee, there was something Lady couldn’t
tell Megale: A team of CIA officers were tracking Omar as he walked from his
home to noon prayers, intending to abduct him, put him on a plane, and send him
to Egypt for “questioning,” and that the only reason Lady had scheduled today’s
meeting in the first place was to keep an eye on Megale, in case something went
wrong.

In fairness, it was a plan Lady never believed in. He thought the intelligence being gathered would, in a few months, be enough to ensure Omar’s arrest and conviction; why put a promising joint investigation (not to mention Lady’s relationship with Megale) at risk by doing something as provocative as kidnapping a man off the street in a major Italian city? Progress was being made; Lady was preaching patience.

So rendition was a stupid alternative - it disrupted the progress being made between two cooperating intelligence services. And why did this rendition happen? Again from Matthew Cole:

"Of course, this operation was one that he—and CIA leadership—had been pushing
for all along, to 'show the wimps in the NSC and the House Intelligence
Committee that the agency didn’t need help from foreign governments,' said
the former official."

Greeeat. I am glad the United States intelligence agencies will still hold a place for that kind of mentality.

If you don't have the evidence to try a terrorism suspect, what good is done by whisking them away to another country, to "stand trial"? Or, of course, that may not be the point.

CIA In Motion

Spencer Ackerman gets a great scoop today about Obama's executive orders:

“It’s a great leap forward in terms of respect for human rights,” said John
Kiriakou, the retired CIA official who supervised the early interrogation of Al
Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah in 2002. “From the very beginning, the CIA should
not have been in the business of enhanced interrogation techniques and
detentions.” CIA interrogators waterboarded Abu Zubaydah, but not while Kiriakou
supervised the interrogation.

You may know Kiriakou from the right-wing defenses of torture that you see and hear every day. He claimed that torture saved lives and prevented attacks. And also said we need to stop enhanced interrogation. [Transcript] If your goal is to imagine someone who more perfectly fits the image of mixed bag, it's hard to top Kiriakou.

But to Ackerman he says:

"Kiriakou said that the reaction to Obama’s harmonization of interrogations
policy would get 'a very positive reaction' inside the CIA. 'There are people at
CIA who engaged in what were certified as enhanced [interrogation] techniques,
but were never supportive of it,' he said. 'This should make people very happy.
No one wants to be in harm’s way [legally]. Despite what the Bush White House
and Bush Justice Department said was legal, I think people at the CIA understood
that this was not legal and [the techniques] were torture.'”

Contrast Hayden - "If the techniques used are said to be legal, should they not be used?" (NYT).
Got some questions? Me too. Let's investigate.

Hayden responded to Obama's executive order today here.

Update: Sorry, it's creepy.

From Hayden's statement:

The legal and policy landscape under which the Agency has conducted itself in
the global war on terror has changed in the past and we have consistently and
scrupulously adjusted our efforts to reflect these changes. [emphasis mine]

From the Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of detainees:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was then the National Security Advisor,
said that, "in the spring of 2002, CIA sought policy approval from the National Security Council (NSC) to begin an interrogation program for high-level al-Qaida terrorists." (pg.5) [emphasis mine]

The other OLC opinion issued on August 1, 2002 is known commonly as theSecond
Bybee memo. That opinion, which responded to a request from the CIA, addressed the legality of specific interrogation tactics. (pg.6) [emphasis mine]

Mr. Bellinger, the NSC Legal Advisor, said that "the NSC’s Principals reviewed
CIA’s proposed program on several occasions in 2002 and 2003" and that he
"expressed concern that the proposed CIA interrogation techniques comply with
applicable U.S. law, including our international obligations." (pg.6) [emphasis mine]

Again...I do not understand this. Hayden and many other CIA management officials wish to collapse the whole process of obtaining legal authorization into an extremely simple interaction. It was assuredly not. Was it impossible for the CIA to request a copy of the Geneva Conventions? Was it impossible for CIA lawyers to do the lightest amount of research necessary to know that something was fishy with the memos that almost everyone in the legal community has dumped upon? Knowing if someone was told to shut up, or if someone decided to shut up, would be important. Last I checked, the Office of Legal Counsel is not the last word on the Law of the Land. The CIA would be within its rights to contest certain interpretations. There is a clear failure here, beyond the CIA's convenient mythologizing of its role. Determining the nature of that failure is essential to the interests of the country. If future Bushes are insistent upon torturing, let them waterboard their own suspects. Right now we do not have those conditions in place. We ought to.

Hayden's Words

Don't let the door hit you on the way out...

"Arguing that Department of Justice lawyers had issued several legal
decisions ruling on the CIA's interrogation methods, Hayden said the agency was
motivated by duty, not 'enthusiasm.' 'If the techniques used are said to be
legal, should they not be used?' he asked, adding that interrogations produced
the 'maximum amount of information' from the first groups of detainees captured
after the 9/11 attacks."

US News



I would think it would be up to the CIA management to determine how the CIA ought to operate. How far they ought to go, if it is worthwhile, if torture is working. Just because it's in some way legal doesn't mean it's a good idea. You know - “ninety per cent of the information was unreliable.”



As far as the potential for real investigations goes, there are contradictory accounts. From WaPo:

"President-elect Barack Obama has privately signaled to top U.S. intelligence
officials that he has no plans to launch a legal inquiry into the CIA's past use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, agency director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday."

Public Record's Jason Leopold suggests Obama staff think otherwise:

"But when asked on Friday to respond Hayden’s statements, two high-level
aides on Obama’s National Security transition team who were privy to details of
Hayden and Obama’s briefings disputed the CIA chief’s comments, saying that
Obama did not make any such assurances to Hayden or anyone else in the Bush
administration about not investigating interrogation practices. The aides
requested anonymity because they said they were not cleared to speak
publicly."

"'That is a wholly inaccurate characterization of their conversation' said
one of the aides on the National Security team. 'President-elect Obama did not
make any promises to Mr. Hayden nor did President-elect Obama engage in a
discussion about investigations of any sort, about any past policies, with Mr.
Hayden or anyone in the Bush administration.'”

"In fact, both aides said as much as Obama would like to 'look ahead' and
deal with what they said were more pressing issues, such as economic turmoil,
unemployment, healthcare, and the housing crisis, they said the fact that Obama
will inherit two ongoing investigations that began under Bush’s presidency into
torture policies means the issue revolving around torture will remain on the
front-pages and in the headlines and makes it all the more likely that
Obama’s Justice Department will be forced to undertake some sort of
investigation." [emphasis mine]

Leopold looks into the IG Helgerson's report on torture and rendition:

"Another matter Hayden discussed, the aides said, and was particularly
concerned about, was the findings of a classified CIA inspector general’s report completed in May 2004 about the agency’s techniques used on terrorist detainees between 2001 and 2003 that is said to be brutal in its detailed description of interrogation methods. The report, prepared by Inspector General John Helgerson, concluded that certain methods used by CIA interrogators 'appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture.'"

'In his report, Mr. Helgerson raised concern about whether the use of the
techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability,' according to a Nov.
9, 2005, story in The New York Times. 'They said the report expressed skepticism
about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading
treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they
take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.'"

More:

"According to Mayer, Vice President Dick Cheney stopped Helgerson from fully
completing his investigation. That proves, Mayer contends, that as early as 2004
'the Vice President’s office was fully aware that there were allegations of
serious wrongdoing in The [interrogation] Program.'”

...

"In October 2007, Hayden ordered an investigation into Helgerson’s office,
focusing on internal complaints that the inspector general was on 'a crusade
against those who have participated in controversial detention programs.'”

I would be extremely interested to know the contents of that IG review. Hayden claims waterboarding stopped after 2003.


We know renditions did not stop in 2003. And other practices that may've been specified in Helgerson's report likely did not either.


Hayden's gone now. I wonder how loudly he will continue to make a fool out of himself. He seems to be suggesting Addington & Yoo ran the entire country. Not really true.

Investigate Now

On the subject of the CIA, Digby writes a very good piece on torture - referring to a piece by BTD "Why The Torture Issue Can't Be Swept Under the Rug." To quote mutual source Hayden from the LA Times again:

"These techniques worked," Hayden said of the agency's interrogation program
during a farewell session with reporters who cover the CIA. "One needs to be
very careful" about eliminating CIA authorities, he said, because "if you create
barriers to doing things . . . there's no wink, no nod, no secret handshake. We
won't do it."

Give them an inch, they'll take a mile. And again it makes you wonder - if the only way the CIA tortures is through rules (at least by their logic - Digby points out that the CIA has been torturing for a long time) and we now have the appropriate authorization for torture...well, how exactly DID that authorization come about? Go searching for material that exonerates the CIA, and you'll likely only find the quotes from CIA sources - saying it wasn't their fault. Meanwhile, other material suggests the CIA asked for authorization to implement "its" programs.

To quote from the recent official Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment fo detainees :

page 5:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was then the National Security
Advisor, said that, "in the spring of 2002, CIA sought policy approval from the
National Security Council (NSC) to begin an interrogation program for high-level
al-Qaida terrorists." Secretary Rice said that she asked Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet to brief NSC Principals on the program and asked the
Attorney General John Ashcroft "personally to review and confirm the legal
advice prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel." She also said that Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld participated in the NSC review of CIA’s program. [emphasis mine]

page 6:

The other OLC opinion issued on August 1, 2002 is known commonly as the
Second Bybee memo. That opinion, which responded to a request from the CIA, addressed the legality of specific interrogation tactics.

...

And Steven Bradbury, the current Assistant Attorney General of the OLC,
testified before the House Judiciary Committee on February 14, 2008 that the
CIA’s use of waterboarding was "adapted from the SERE training program."

...

Mr. Bellinger, the NSC Legal Advisor, said that "the NSC’s Principals
reviewed CIA’s proposed program on several occasions in 2002 and 2003" and that he "expressed concern that the proposed CIA interrogation techniques comply with applicable U.S. law, including our international obligations." [emphasis mine]

Some of these sources are most certainly implicated in the worst of what the Bush administration authorized (Rice? Bradbury?). That said, is the picture that emerges of the CIA any more flattering? We know that Cofer Black came up with a lot of ideas - the CIA was able to feed the Bush Administration's thirst for blood. Now as the Bush Administration leaves, the CIA is left alone, pushing to further institutionalize that thirst for blood.

As has been said again and again, this is not about case officers. This is about taking a serious look at the conduct of senior management in the CIA. I can't think of any law that would say that is inappropriate. There are so many good reasons to do it:


1. Investigate the CIA now so we at least know. The CIA should welcome this opportunity to air their dirty laundry. If they are secondary, we will find out that they are, and how. Otherwise future political opponents will accuse them of being the masterminds behind all of this. See Dick Cheney:

Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, Cheney said, the CIA "in effect came in and
wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well
as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it."

2. To restore the moral authority of the CIA and the US. See Jack Devine on human rights and the CIA.

3. Because the CIA is not just accountable to the executive branch -they are accountable to us.

Each side has a story. Cheney deserves a thorough investigation. The CIA does as well. Hayden has been very forthcoming about his side of the story:

Hayden said the agency did not undertake the controversial program of rendition
and interrogations out of "enthusiasm, it did it out of duty and it did it with
the best legal advice it had."

Are you effing kidding me? The CIA, as it represents itself, is a massively conservative organization - so much so that the lightest investigation would decimate their operational capacity - they can't be interrupted or interfered with - and yet their best legal advice was, screw the Geneva Conventions, let's go for broke? Scott Horton, in my mind, effectively debunked that in December in an interview with Professor Mary Ellen O’Connell, who said:

As I told one former CIA lawyer who asked me about the “good faith” defense in
these cases, the quality of the memos is so poor, the process of producing them
so at odds with government standards, and the general knowledge is so high that
torture and cruelty are prohibited, that it difficult to see how good faith
could possibly provide a defense.

Hayden has basically been terrorizing the Media, Congress, and (in a few hours) President Obama over the past few days. See the NYT:

“If I’m going to go to an officer and say, ‘I’ve got a truth commission, or I
want to post all your e-mails, or, well, we’ve got this guy from the bureau who
wants to talk to you,’ ” Mr. Hayden said, it would discourage such a C.I.A.
officer from taking risks on behalf of the new president’s policies.
“We have no right to ask this guy to bet his kid’s college education on who’s going
to win the off-year election,” Mr. Hayden said, alluding to legal fees that such
a C.I.A. officer might face.

But it's not case officers we want - it's you, Hayden. Oh, and wasn't the CIA going to cover appropriate legal fees?

This is an appallingly pathetic display. If only to avoid a future where managers of the intelligence community spend their time hiding behind operatives who actually do the grunt work, we must investigate the CIA. Again, Bob Lady has gone all this time without the help of the CIA. The legal fees have all fallen on HIM as far as I know. Tell me again, who are they - the senior management of the CIA -looking out for? Themselves. That's all this is. It's the same as the private sector. Investigate now.

[Crossposted at TalkLeft]

Amped Up American Exceptionalism

Hi everyone. I have been out of town for a few days. I still have to catch up on my reading. But I caught this AP article from Big Tent Democrat over at TalkLeft:

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques by ordering the CIA to follow military rules for questioning prisoners, according to two U.S. officials
familiar with drafts of the plans. Still under debate is whether to allow exceptions in extraordinary cases.
The proposal Obama is considering would require all CIA interrogators to follow conduct outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the officials said. The plans would also have the effect of shutting down secret "black site" prisons around the world where the CIA has questioned terror suspects — with all future interrogations taking place inside American military facilities.
However, Obama's changes may not be absolute. His advisers are considering adding a classified loophole to the rules that could allow the CIA to use some interrogation methods not specifically authorized by the Pentagon, the officials said. They said the intent is not to use that as an opening for possible use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning.

A loophole? No, no no. More:

The CIA also banned waterboarding in 2006 but otherwise has been secretive about
how it conducts interrogations. In the past, its methods are believed to have
included sleep deprivation and disorientation, stress positions and exposing
prisoners to uncomfortable cold or heat for long periods. It's also believed
that some prisoners have been forced to sit in cramped spaces with bugs, snakes,
rats or other vermin as a scare tactic.

And this is completely illogical:

For Obama, who repeatedly insisted during the 2008 presidential campaign and the
transition period that "America doesn't torture," a classified loophole would
allow him to follow through on his promise to end harsh interrogations while
retaining a full range of presidential options in conducting the war against
terrorism.
The proposed loophole, which could come in the form of a classified annex to the manual, is designed to satisfy intelligence experts who fear that an outright ban of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques would limit the government in obtaining threat information that could save American lives. It would also preserve Obama's flexibility to authorize any interrogation tactics he might deem necessary for national security.

The conflict appears to be between Eric Holder and the John Brennans on Obama's team. Both are powerful:

Senate Democrats aren't likely to support a classified annex. Holder on Thursday
said the interrogation methods outlined in the Army manual would be just as
effective as those used by the CIA.
"I'm not convinced at all that if we restrict ourselves to the Army field manual that we will be in any way less effective in the interrogation of people who have sworn to do us harm," Holder said.

BTD makes a good point, borrowing from Glenn Greenwald: war crimes via loopholes are still...war crimes.

But I also find it interesting that the CIA wants to apply public pressure to so many aspects of Obama's policy, yet take none of the blame for the creation of that policy. John Brennan goes on TV and defends rendition - but he reassures the Obama team that he had nothing to do with "enhanced interrogation" policy construction, and they nod their heads in agreement. The CIA doesn't want to be investigated - they were just following orders (which as BTD says, does not excuse war crimes as per Article 2 - "3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. . . ."). They nonetheless openly condone and put pressure on the Obama administration to continue torture and rendition. From the AP article:

Speaking with reporters Thursday, outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden said
harsh interrogation tactics have been needed to get information from the most
hardened terror suspects. He and some other U.S. intelligence
officials oppose limiting the CIA to the Army manual, which was written
specifically for military interrogations and may not be effective on the most
dangerous detainees.

"It is an honest discussion to talk about what techniques we should use,
but to assume automatically that the Army Field Manual would suit the needs of
the republic in all circumstances is a shot in the dark," Hayden said.
[emphasis mine]

Are we really supposed to believe that the U.S. intelligence community bears no culpability for the torture regime? Everytime Hayden, Brennan, and others open their mouth to cheerlead for the Bush administration's policies, they put the lie to that theory and suggest that things may've been more complicated than they seem.

Mark Lowenthal's B.S. is a little tired. And apparently Obama's hedging on This Week was intentional. If Obama somehow continues any aspect of the Bush torture regime, I would be hardpressed to see how pressure from the intelligence community was not largely to blame.

Hayden ...

It wasn't so long ago that Hayden staying on as CIA Director was a joke. It may still be, but it is getting a lot of play from various corners. There was the report from ABC News that Obama "felt comfortable" with Hayden. And today Paul Bedard of "Washington Whispers" writes of a CIA holiday celebration "The giving came with a broader Christmas message sent out by CIA Director Mike Hayden-said to be in line to stay on in the Obama administration." This is a bit of a departure from his report on Dec 15th that begins "We still don't know if CIA boss Michael Hayden will stay on as Barack Obama's top spy."

Is it odd that Hayden might stay, as McConnell departs? Beats me. Obviously Obama is interested in shaking up the intelligence community to some degree - I would think Hayden staying on would make that more difficult.

Melvin Goodman has written another article on the intelligence community for all to enjoy at The Public Record. He has been excellent and aggressive on intelligence issues - and I think his early op-ed in the Baltimore Sun really helped get the ball rolling against John Brennan's potential nomination to DNI/DCIA. He offers Richard Holbrooke or Thomas Pickering as promising DCIA candidates.

Lee Hamilton, apparently offered the no.2 position at the State Dept., has written an editorial as well.

The intelligence community is causing noted people to pick up their pens. Add Thomas A. Schweich to the list of op-ed writers.

The tea-leaf reading continues. But at least Barack Obama knows that the American people are extremely interested in who he chooses for DCIA and understand the importance of his choice.

Quick Links

Some reading for you... Bill O'Reilly is a moron, but you know that ...of interest is his description of Eric Holder as an "anti-agency attorney general." Tom Burghardt wrote an article on future DNI Dennis Blair for the Dissident Voice. And, inspired by Jeff Stein's long and somewhat oddball list of suggestions for CIA Director, I give you this oldie-but-goodie on CIA Inspector General John Helgerson, from Think Progress. The CIA is often discussed in terms of its morale - but in all honesty, I do not see how the status quo - Hayden inspecting his Inspector General - is good for morale at all.

Small wonder that "No Drama Obama" hasn't picked a CIA Director yet. Whoever believes the CIA is free of internal politics (and it's only us liberals who politicize it) is full of it.

A CIA at the Crossroads

As I continue my research into Obama's reported CIA and DNI candidate fields, I am finding it remarkable that among the candidates there is such dissent when it comes to what they believe is right/acceptable in interrogation policy and information collection. It's really quite amazing.

So in Dec 13's NYT, you have Reuel Marc Gerecht (admittedly not a candidate for either the DNI or CIA Director position) giving us the many advantages of extraordinary rendition and establishing a completely hypothetical "ticking time bomb" scenario:

What would Mr. Obama do? After all, if we’d gotten our hands on a senior member
of Al Qaeda before 9/11, and knew that an attack likely to kill thousands of
Americans was imminent, wouldn’t waterboarding, or taking advantage of the
skills of our Jordanian friends, have been the sensible, moral thing to do with
a holy warrior who didn’t fear death but might have feared pain?

This is the type of Bushism that gives us the "it's okay to beat it out of 'em!" mentality of John Brennan, Michael Hayden, and all other high-level CIA brass who knew the details of the implementation of the CIA's detention programs and interrogation policies. As I documented in another diary, candidate Steve Kappes no doubt had some connection to these controversial programs. Hayden, who rumor has it may maintain his position at the CIA, of course has been in charge of defending them, as digby documents here.

This is a distinct group that occupies the toilet bowl of implementation, authorization, and rationalization of some of the worst of Bush's abuses of detainees.

Let's check out the candidate list provided by the AP:

CIA DIRECTOR
John Gannon, former deputy director for intelligence at the CIA during the Clinton administration
Jami Miscik, former head of CIA's analytical operations
Steve Kappes, CIA's current No. 2
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who now heads House Homeland Security subcommittee on intelligence.
John McLaughlin, former interim CIA chief

So three of these people are from the dark side era of the Bush administration. Miscik (current member of the Obama transition team), according to former CIA Melvin Goodman on Democracy Now, "went along with the phony intelligence estimate of October 2002, the phony white paper that was prepared by Paul Pillar in October 2002. She helped with the drafting of the speech that Colin Powell gave to the United Nations—[inaudible] 2003, which made the phony case for war to the international community."

McLaughlin, as the former no.2 to George Tenet from 2000-2004, is an almost improbable candidate for Obama's CIA director position.

Including those two, along with Brennan, Hayden and Kappes, you end up with 5 reported candidates for the position that were involved in intelligence wrong-doing and incompetence.

Other candidates for the CIA Director position are coming from the complete opposite perspective on torture and renditon. Take former Congressman Tim Roemer, floated various times, here at the NYT. He contributed to the Washington Monthly an article that is almost the exactly opposite of that of Gerecht's quoted above:

Those who argue in favor of torture usually do so in the scenario of a single
suspect with knowledge of a "ticking time bomb." This hypothetical never
addresses how torture would have to work in the real world, or how we would
defuse the next bomb after America is revealed as a practitioner of torture.

and

Ultimately, we cannot torture our way out of terrorism, but we certainly can
torture our way into more of it. Torture trades the illusory promise of
short-term gain for the near certainty of eventual loss. It tries to convince us
that we can defeat terrorists on the cheap by avoiding the long, hard work that
counterterrorism entails. The Army's Field Manual on counterinsurgency tells us
that this work comprises building a government's legitimacy and denying
terrorist and insurgent groups like al-Qaeda the political oxygen they need to
survive. Very few things could be more toxic to our legitimacy than the image of
the world's greatest democracy practicing one of the world's oldest evils.

Current Congresswoman Jane Harman has also been floated. Harman opposed the destruction of the CIA torture tapes Hayden defended; she officially protested the CIA's interrogation program in 2003. Though Harman (via Greenwald) supported the NSA wiretapping program...

Retiring Senator and friend of Obama's Chuck Hagel has also been floated for CIA. He has registered his opposition to torture, and his support of the government-wide use of the Army Field Manual, in the Washington Monthly like fellow candidate Roemer. John Gannon and Jack Devine, both floated for the position, can be included in this second group as well, as they have no ties to the Bush administration.

So that's 5 other potential candidates for the CIA Director position that are in varying degrees of active opposition to the other 5.

What is going on here? Could there be a more stark demonstration of an agency, and a future administration, at a crossroads?

The Obama transition team has been remarkably quiet, although Isikoff and Hosenball were able to quote a "top Obama adviser" source who said of Brennan: "He was our guy on intelligence." Other than this adviser, what Obama is actually thinking right now is pretty murky.

But make no mistake, there are many around Obama, especially those connected to the 5 Bush-era candidates, who are aggressively lobbying for their friends. The Washington Times finds Hayden's supporters actively working to protect him and help him hang onto his job:

In the meantime, Hayden supporters have tried to disassociate the CIA director from the Bush administration counterrorism detention and interrogation programs that Mr. Obama routinely railed against during his campaign.

"Waterboarding, which was used on three hardened terrorists, hasn't been used since 2003. That is more than three years before Mike Hayden became the director of CIA," said an intelligence source with knowledge of the subject.

The source added that current administration policies and U.S. laws directed the CIA's actions.

"If the president says he doesn't want something done, that's it," the source said. "These are his programs."

Funny how that is remarkably similar to the line taken up by some Obama supporters who believe his appointments are almost immaterial to policy-making during his administration. I actually don't find that vision very reassuring; it ignores the basic fact that Obama will no doubt be in consultation with the heads of all of his agencies pretty frequently. Who you choose for the head of an agency like the CIA is important; it gives you some idea of what they will advise ("extraordinary rendition is necessary!" "no we can't do that!") and what they will prevent ("torture was the result of Cheney, Addington, & Yoo! - don't look at me!" or "yes, you should investigate & charge former CIA officials"). The world will be watching to see who we put in charge of the CIA, as will the CIA interrogators and case workers who rely upon the higher levels of the CIA for legal and moral leadership.

This was all supposed to be settled weeks ago, when Brenann was the clear favorite for CIA Director. Since then, we've been in pretty confusing territory. Who will Obama choose? Why is he being guided by so many Bush-era knuckleheads? Is that an indicator of his wide-ranging mind, or an indicator of the power of the status quo intelligence community, curious as to whether they'll lose influence as members of the intelligence private-sector industry or be put under the microscope when it comes to their involvement and complicity in war crimes?

I trust that Obama will not back down from his stated intentions to close Guantanamo and to not use torture. But I would like the leaders of his intelligence agencies to be able to successfully impart that vision and demonstrate an unshakeable committment to it. Further, I think the investigation of Bush-era CIA officials who participated in and authorized the implementation of Bush law-breaking is warranted. Putting apologists for Bush at the top is not change, and it is not an occassion for necessary revitalizing leadership.

Steve Kappes

I don't know what it takes to end up on the shortlist of an AP article for top CIA post. But let's assume there's a reason I'm not on it.

Steve Kappes:

"currently Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (DDCIA), having
assumed this position on July 24, 2006.

...He has held a variety of operational and managerial assignments at CIA Headquarters and overseas, serving as assistant deputy director to former Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) James Pavitt, and later as DDO after Pavitt stepped down in August 2004. At the time of the September 11 attacks, Kappes was the associate deputy director for operations for counterintelligence.

Kappes was named Deputy Director for Operations (DDO) for the CIA in June 2004 and took office in August 2004 while the appointment of Porter Goss as the next Director of Central Intelligence was still pending in the Senate. Kappes succeeded James Pavitt, who resigned in June 2004..."

Democratic Underground gives us more specific dates:

"March 2002-Abu Zubaydah is captured in Pakistan. George Bush is briefed
regularly by George Tenet on the details of Zubaydah's interrogation (see p. 22,
State of War by James Risen). Cofer Black is in charge of the CIA's
Counterterrorism Center and oversees the CIA's hunt for the terrorists. Zubaydah
is interrogated in Thailand, where the sessions were filmed. He was waterboarded
sometime in the May-June 2002 time frame. Enhanced interrogation methods were
used and approval for them came from Jim Pavitt (see p. 21 of ABC News interview
of former CIA case officer, John Kiriakou). Pavitt was the DDO (i.e., Deputy Director of Operations). Stephen Kappes, who currently serves as the Deputy Director of the CIA, was named Assistant Deputy Director of Operations in June 2002. Ron Suskind confirms Risen's report that the President and his National Security team were regularly briefed on the results of Zubaydah's
torture sessions (see The One Percent Doctrine, pp. 111-115)."

Considering KSM was captured in 2003, and waterboarded, Kappes was obviously intimately involved with that.

Ron Suskind in the "One Percent Doctrine" introduces us to Kappes thusly:

"He was, at that point, associate deputy director for operations - number two in the DO - and being groomed to take Jim Pavitt's job." [p.223]

(You will note the discrepancy in the exact description of Kappes' job - "associate" versus "assistant" deputy. Based on other sources compared to Suskind, I can say they are describing the same position over the same period - Kappes was no.2 to Pavitt from June 2002 onward.)

Now Pavitt is pretty much bottom of the barrel as far as the CIA goes. This is a guy whose job duties literally included approving every single coercive technique used against detainees, as they happened -

"Kirakou made the interrogations sound almost like a game of 'Mother, May I?' He
said, 'It was not up to the individual interrogator to decide 'I'm going to slap
him' or 'I'm going to shake him.' Each one of these, though they're minor, had
to have the approval of the Deputy Director for Operations, who during most of
this period was James Pavitt. 'Before you could lay a hand on him, you had to
send a cable saying, 'He's uncooperative. Request permission to do X.'...There
was, however, no known instance of the supervisors denying a request to use more
force." ["The Dark Side," Jane Mayer, p.167].

It is pretty astonishing that the No.2 to all this is in any way in contention for the top CIA job.

Now, these rumors are not quite as intense as those surrounding John Brennan, and Kappes does not AFAIK have any official role in the Obama transition process as he is currently at the CIA. But Kappes does earn a mention in the Dec 2 Post-Brennan NYT Article by Mazzetti & Shane:

"It is widely expected that Mr. Obama will replace Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A.
director. Among those mentioned as possible candidates for the job are Stephen
R. Kappes, a C.I.A. veteran who is the deputy director; Tim Roemer, a former
congressman from Indiana who was a member of the Sept. 11 commission; Senator
Chuck Hagel, the Nebraska Republican who is retiring from the Senate in January;
and Jack Devine, a former head of the agency’s clandestine service who left the
C.I.A. before the Sept. 11 attacks."

Kappes appears not to have left a bloody trail of quotes like Brennan did. Good for him, but his record speaks for itself.

You can get legal clearance from somebody else...but how do you successfully implement a new torture policy? Can you do it if your brass hates it? Something about two to tango?

As Pavitt himself said:

"Pavitt, who declined to talk about specific CIA authorities or legal
memos, said the activities recently in the news were 'done in consultation with
the executive at all levels, the National Security Council and such. . . . Any
impression that we were operating high, wide and handsome, without appropriate
congressional oversight, I think would also be, incorrect.'"

I doubt this will surprise anyone, but John Yoo thinks it's all the CIA's fault:

"In early January 2002, soon after the CIA took custody of Al-Libi, a handful of
CIA officers at a high-level legal meeting in the Situation Room voiced a
problem they were facing. 'The CIA guys said, "We're going to have some
real difficulties getting actionable intelligence from detainees" if the
Agency's interrogators were required to respect the limits for treatment
demanded by the Geneva Conventions," John Yoo told the Washington
Post. In Yoo's version of events, the impetus to break out of
Geneva's strictures thus came from the CIA." ["The Dark Side," Jane Mayer,
p.120]

I have little doubt that Yoo's account is a crock of crap. But still, what about this?

"The Pentagon and CIA needed Uzbekistan as a forward base. If that
meant joining forces with a torture regime, known on ocassion to literally boil
political prisoners alive, he [Cheney] was ready...Craig Murray, the former
British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, complained that he tried to warn the CIA
station chief in Tashkent that much of the intelligence out of Uzbekistan was
derived from torture, most of which he said was 'rubbish.'...But he said that
while the station chief did not dispute that intelligence was being obtained
under torture, the CIA did not consider this a problem. 'There was no
reason to think they were perturbed,' Murray said."
"The new way of thinking was reflected by Tenet at a closed-door meeting of
top intelligence officials of the English-speaking world, gathered on March 10,
2002, in Queenstown, New Zealand. 'Gentlemen,' Tenet had reportedly said
with a dramatic pause, 'we are at war.' What this meant, he had gone on to
explain was "As for the CIA, I can tell you this. There's nothing we won't
do, nothing we won't try, and no country we won't deal with to achieve our
goals-to stop the enemy. The shackles, my friends, have to be taken off.'
...."
"Other top American officials in attendance included Lieutenant General
Michael Hayden, then head of the NSA; Mueller, the Director of the FBI; and the
CIA's head of covert operations, James Pavitt. Pavitt evidently amplified
the tough talk, noting, 'We're going to be working with intelligence agencies
that are utterly unhesitant in what they will do to get people to talk.'"
["The Dark Side," Jane Mayer, p.131-132].

Check out the timeline at Torturing Democracy. Though this meeting is after Bush issues his first executive order authorizing denials of Geneva Convention protections, [Feb 7 2002] it is before they capture Abu Zubaydah, the first torture experiment [March 28 2002].

Who started this thing? And why didn't anyone stop it? Clearly some of the top brass in the CIA were willing to go along and to effectively lead. I have issues with any of those people working in an Obama CIA which would simultaneously mean an acceptance of ills past and the ability to haggle your way out of a serious investigation into government-wide torture related wrongdoing ("Who, me? Your CIA head? Look, it's not our fault, let's not make this embarrassing...").

And that's not even addressing the existential, if you will, question of why Kappes' name is even getting thrown around. And what is a centrist intelligence policy after Bush?

I have some questions. I hope that Obama will set up a process to answer them.