Dems: No Protection for These Spooks
"Angry Democratic lawmakers called for investigations Friday into the Central Intelligence Agency's destruction in 2005 of at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency's custody," the New York Times reports in its Paris edition:
Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts accused the CIA of "a cover-up," while Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois said it was possible that people at the agency had engaged in obstruction of justice. Both called on Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate.
At issue is the possibility that the videos depicted "waterboarding," an interrogation technique that only simulates drowning. CIA agents are believed to have used it to obtain lifesaving information from three top al Qaeda terrorists, and, according to the Washington Post, top Democratic lawmakers knew about it and did not object to it:
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Fox News reports that "the CIA said Thursday it destroyed the tapes because of concerns that its agents could be put at risk." The same lawmakers who are untroubled by putting agents at risk now were up in arms over the exposure of CIA analyst Valerie Plame as a consequence of her husband's publicity-seeking. They really seem to view Karl Rove, not Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, as the enemy.
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