So this was the reason for all the hub-bub?

On June 23, 2009, Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta learned of a highly compartmentalized program to assassinate al Qaeda operatives that was launched by the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When Panetta found out that the covert program had not been disclosed to Congress, he canceled it and then called an emergency meeting June 24 to brief congressional oversight committees on the program. Over the past week, many details of the program have been leaked to the press and the issue has received extensive media coverage.

That a program existed to assassinate al Qaeda leaders should certainly come as no surprise to anyone. It has been well-publicized that the Clinton administration had launched military operations and attempted to use covert programs to strike the al Qaeda leadership in the wake of the 1998 East Africa embassy bombings. In fact, the Clinton administration has come under strong criticism for not doing more to decapitate al Qaeda prior to 2001. Furthermore, since 2002, the CIA has conducted scores of strikes against al Qaeda targets in Pakistan using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) like the MQ-1 Predator and the larger MQ-9 Reaper.

These strikes have dramatically increased over the past two years and the pace did not slacken when the Obama administration came to power in January. So far in 2009 there have been more than two dozen UAV strikes in Pakistan alone. In November 2002, the CIA also employed a UAV to kill Abu Ali al-Harithi, a senior al Qaeda leader suspected of planning the October 2000 attack against the USS Cole. The U.S. government has also attacked al Qaeda leaders at other times and in other places, such as the May 1, 2008, attack against al Qaeda-linked figures in Somalia using an AC-130 gunship.

A program being set in place to kill the leadership of our enemy….and somehow, someway, this is shocking to people. Why in the world would we NOT have a program like this set up? Read the rest of this entry »

There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun at Nancy’s expense is there?

Here’s a little ditty that is guaranteed to get stuck in your head for the rest of the day today.

Roll the tape:

Mrs. Pelosi insisted at a news conference that “We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.” Mrs. Pelosi also claimed that the CIA “did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true.” She had earlier said on TV, “I can say flat-out, they never told us that these enhanced interrogations were being used.”

The Obama administration’s CIA director, Leon Panetta, and Mr. Goss have both disputed Mrs. Pelosi’s account.

In a report to Congress on May 5, Mr. Panetta described the CIA’s 2002 meeting with Mrs. Pelosi as “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on [legal] authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.” Note the past tense — “had been employed.”

Mr. Goss says he and Mrs. Pelosi were told at the 2002 briefing about the use of the EITs and “on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission.” He is backed by CIA sources who say Mr. Goss and Mrs. Pelosi “questioned whether we were doing enough” to extract information.

We also know that Michael Sheehy, then Mrs. Pelosi’s top aide on the Intelligence Committee and later her national security adviser, not only attended the September 2002 meeting but was also briefed by the CIA on EITs on Feb. 5, 2003, and told about a videotape of Zubaydah being waterboarded. Mr. Sheehy was almost certain to have told Mrs. Pelosi. He has not commented publicly about the 2002 or the 2003 meetings.

So is the speaker of the House lying about what she knew and when? And, if so, what will Democrats do about it?

Read the rest of this entry »

In looking at the tons of declassified documents from the CIA, two things were noticed.

First,
TRADITIONAL FORMS OF INTERROGATION WERE TRIED FIRST.
Part of the criteria put forth in determining who, when, how, and why Enhanced Interrogation Techniques would be used was the REQUIREMENT that traditional interrogation methods had to be tried first, and had to have failed. Only after that had been determined (according to the declassified documents, could the process for getting authorization to use EIJ’s be pursued. If you’re lazy, just look at the table of contents and you’ll see that this was not a case of, “Woo hoo! We got so-and-so! Get a bucket!”
tinyurl.com…
or
media.mcclatchydc.com…

Second,
IT WORKED; ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE WAS GAINED
from using EIJs.
7/15/04
www.politico.com…
(Gosh, looks like they got something from the interrogations/”torture” after all. )

Supposedly…
September 11, 2002: Ramzi bin al-Shibh captured, purportedly as a result of intelligence gained through “torturing” Abu Zubaydah.
www.washingtonpost.com…

Now, was it worth it? We don’t know because the Obama Admin (despite claiming that it wasn’t) refuses to release the documents from this date and others (as requested by VP Cheney, the Washington Post, and the New York Times) which allegedly show that yes…attacks were thwarted by the use of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

What are Obama and the Democrats hiding?

“On the question of so-called torture, we don’t do torture. We never have. It’s not something that this administration subscribes to. Again, we proceeded very cautiously. We checked. We had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross.

The professionals involved in that program were very, very cautious, very careful — wouldn’t do anything without making certain it was authorized and that it was legal. And any suggestion to the contrary is just wrong. Did it produce the desired results? I think it did. “- Dick Cheney, ABC News exclusive interview on Dec. 15, 2008

I was hoping one of the FA authors would blog about the Obama Administration’s declassification of 4 memos from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, from 2002 to 2005.

I haven’t had time to read up on these releases; and since no one else has made a post as of yet, I figured I’d put out an open thread before it becomes yesterday’s the other day’s news.

Was the Administration right in releasing these? For what purpose does it serve the public?

Did the “harsh interrogation techniques”, from what we know, constitute “torture”? And did they achieve any positive results in the way of actionable intelligence?

August 1, 2002
Memorandum for John Rizzo
Acting General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency
Interrogation of al Qaida Operative

May 10.2005

Memorandum for John A. RIZZO
SENIOR DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Re: ApplicatiQnoJ18 u.S.C. §§ 23·(0-23404 iol!l1~f:eililttiqull’s
That May Be Used in the Interrogation of a High Value al Qaida Detainee

May 10,2005
Memorandum for JOHN A. RIZZO
SENIOR DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Re: Application of18 USc. §§ 2340-2340A to Use Certain Techniques
in the Interrogation of High Value al Qaeda Detainees

May 30, Z005
MEMORANDUM FOR JOHN A. RIZZO
SENIOR DEPUTY GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Re: Application of United States Obligations Under Article I6 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture and to Certain Techniques that May Be Used in the Interrogation of High Value al Qaeda Detainees

Also of interest:
The President Ties His Own Hands on Terror
The point of interrogation is intelligence, not confession.
By MICHAEL HAYDEN and MICHAEL B. MUKASEY

Would this lib have a problem with someone saying the Gitmo prisoners should be summarily executed? I’m pretty sure she would. But this liberal talk show host has no problem saying that Rush should be shot for saying he wanted Obama’s Socialist policies to fail.

Here is Stephanie Miller on Larry King Live:

LARRY KING, HOST: Nancy, what do you make of hoping for failure. Supposing it worked, and there were maybe some socialistic inclines, but more people went to work and more people had health care? Why would that be bad?

NANCY PFOTENHAUER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: Well, I think the point is that Rush — and I agree with him wholeheartedly on this — believes these policies are antithetical to the American dream, and absolutely the wrong direction for the economy. I would be delighted to challenge the other two panelists on this one. What he has put together in the so-called stimulus package is an embarrassment. You had Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid writing the bill. You’ve put in 46 billion for 15 programs that OMB already declared ineffective. You have 300 million dollars going for golf carts, for heavens sake. Then turns around and, in a downturn economy, and advocates a tax increase. At the same time, he is making protectionist noises. This is a nasty economic cocktail, and it is going to hurt the American people. And I think that’s what Rush Limbaugh has been trying to underscore. And he is exactly right. Read the rest of this entry »

CLASSIC! OMG, he hasn’t even taken office yet, and Pres-elect Obama is already demonstrating that his campaign was just sizzle-not steak. It was about taking power, not CHANGE. Remember all that complaining about secret CIA prisons, warrentless wiretapping, enhanced interrogations, and so forth? Yeah, well, turns out Barack Obama (now that he’s gotten the votes) doesn’t care about those things. In fact, he’s turning a blind eye to them, and turning a deaf ear to the leftist civil liberty groups that complain.

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama is unlikely to radically overhaul controversial Bush administration intelligence policies, advisers say, an approach that is almost certain to create tension within the Democratic Party.

Civil-liberties groups were among those outraged that the White House sanctioned the use of harsh intelligence techniques — which some consider torture — by the Central Intelligence Agency, and expanded domestic spy powers. These groups are demanding quick action to reverse these policies.

Former National Counterterrorism Center chief John Brennan, leader of Obama’s intelligence-transition team. Mr. Obama is being advised largely by a group of intelligence professionals, including some who have supported Republicans, and centrist former officials in the Clinton administration. They say he is likely to fill key intelligence posts with pragmatists.

link

EXIT QUESTION: If you voted for Barack Obama in the hopes of a more transparent intelligence gathering administration, do you realize that you’ve just been pwnd?

How will we fight and win this war? We will direct every resource at our command — every means of diplomacy, every tool of intelligence, every instrument of law enforcement, every financial influence, and every necessary weapon of war — to the disruption and to the defeat of the global terror network.

This war will not be like the war against Iraq a decade ago, with a decisive liberation of territory and a swift conclusion. It will not look like the air war above Kosovo two years ago, where no ground troops were used and not a single American was lost in combat.

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. It may include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success. We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. (Applause.) From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.
-President Bush in an address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, United States Capitol, Washington D.C., September 20, 2001.

While al Qaeda blusters and purports to be planning new attacks, they’ve been getting their asses kicked in, all across the globe. This is especially true in Iraq, where the Iraqi government will begin paying salaries to 51,000 members of the Sons of Iraq, and where al Qaeda lost the hearts and minds of the Muslim world.

Critics of President Bush’s Iraq War venture love to claim that “he took his eye off the ball; we should be in Afghanistan and Pakistan- that’s where al Qaeda is.”; “We let bin Laden get away.” And of course, they also love to point out, “al Qaeda was never in Iraq….until we invaded.”

al Qaeda has had operations in 50 countries, and we’ve killed and captured operatives in 102 different countries since 9/11. Although we have a large, visible, military footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve been engaging al Qaeda all across the globe.

Leaked to today’s NYTimes, which leaks it to the American public, is the following:
Read the rest of this entry »

The entire article by Lance Fairchok at American Thinker is spot-on excellent, and exactly what I was looking for as an answer to this, which surprisingly seemed to get little media traction. However, I’d like to cite the following passage as a lead-in for a different, if not unrelated topic:
Read the rest of this entry »

ABC News is leading their newspage with the headline “Harriet Miers Knew of Destruction of Interrogation Tapes.”  Wow, OMG!  The left will scream “the White House knew about it and did nothing?”  Ahem:

Three officials told ABC News Miers urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes.

But they did anyways. 

As for myself, I could care less.  KSM and his buddy deserved nothing less then waterboarding, and I think that technique let them off the hook too easy to be frank.

But the left and the right is starting to pile on and they do make some valid points.  Like the timing of this news:

The news just happens to be perfectly timed as the Supreme Court hears a Gitmo case and, as the WaPo,
notes, on the same day “House and Senate negotiators reached an
agreement on legislation that would prohibit the use of waterboarding
and other harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA and bring intelligence
agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military.”

Oh no, the MSM would never hold on to this kinda news just to influence legislation would they? 

Hoekstra and Reyes are coming out swinging:

The CIA did not tell Congress about the destruction in 2005 of
videotapes recording aggressive CIA interrogations of two Al Qaeda suspects
until this year, the top two members of the House Intelligence Committee said in
an angry letter Friday to CIA Director Michael V. Hayden.

Anticipating an upcoming New York Times article revealing the destruction,
Hayden said in a memo to employees on Thursday that congressional oversight
committees had been notified about the existence of the tapes and plans to get
rid of them.

“Based upon available records and our best recollection, this simply is not
true,” said a joint letter from House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre
Reyes (D-Texas) and the committee’s ranking member and former chairman, Rep.
Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.).

Oh come on.  They told Congress about the tapes existence and their plans to destroy them. No stink was raised, no investigations, no hoopla.  Jane Harmon has already gone on record stating she was told about them.

Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat
on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of only four members of
Congress in 2003 informed of the tapes’ existence and the CIA’s
intention to ultimately destroy them.

“I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a
bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it,” Harman said. While
key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA’s intention to destroy the tapes,
they were not notified two years later when the spy agency actually
carried out the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay
Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes’
destruction in November 2006.

So you have the White House counsel and the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee telling the CIA it wasn’t a good idea to destroy the tapes.  But they did anyway and now you have the Democrats yelling and screaming with selective outrage, as Marty Lederman describes:

Jay Rockefeller is constantly learning of
legally dubious (at best) CIA intelligence activities, and then saying
nothing about them publicly until they are leaked to the press, at
which point he expresses outrage and incredulity — but reveals nothing.

…Jane Harman also knew of the intention to destroy
the tapes, and she at least “urged” the CIA in writing not to do it.
(Where were her colleagues?) But when she found out the CIA had
destroyed the tapes, where was Harman’s press conference? Where were
the congressional hearings?

But now its outrageous.

Just like the Plame episode prior to the election the timing of this whole thing stinks.

But beside all that my question is why would they videotape the damn things anyways? 
Waterboard them, I don’t care.  Those scum deserved much worse.  But to
videotape it?

UPDATE

You just have to listen to John Gibson today….he was on fire: (18 minutes long)

Check out Kevin Drum crying for al-Qaeda:

So here’s what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had
brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally
tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking,
(b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d)
eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical
“confessions” under duress.

Idiots.

The left is having a little fit over the news that the CIA destroyed tapes of interrogations (per their S.O.P) with the more moronic of them alleging that it was because they tortured the terrorists.  First the story:

“WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 — The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.

The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.

The official spokesman said it was done because they held no intelligence value, and if the tapes were to get out (which is more then likely seeing as how the CIA leaks like a sieve) it could jeopardize the agents lives.  You would think the left could understand that since they were aghast at the danger the Plame leak put her under.  But big shocker….they ain’t so worried about the CIA agents now:

These tapes were destroyed to protect the people who didn’t protect any sense of decency in interrogations.

There is no internal reason, except saving your own ass from prosecution. And keeping the tapes out of court. The decision on the lowest techniques was made at the highest levels. And now we will witness lowdown denials as to who high up ordered the tapes destroyed. “What matters here is that it was done in line with the law,” he said. He is Michael Hayden. And he talks not just about the destruction of the tapes. But about the techniques used too. We do not torture is all you need to know. But this all tortures credibility in a week where it has previously been flayed and fileted.

There is no internal reason. But there may be an infernal reason. Because if there were tapes of waterboarding, all the waterboarding in the world shouldn’t keep torturers from burning in hell. We do not torture is all you need to know.

Poor fella, I think he broke a blood vessel pounding the keys during that post.

Of course after the official spokesman the NYT’s quotes anonymous sources as saying they were destroyed because of “possible legal jeopardy.”  Which is hogwash.  Waterboarding is not illegal, and the CIA viewed the tapes prior to destruction and saw nothing illegal.  Not that the left will believe them.  They take the IC’s word as
gospel when it jives with their worldview, ie the NIE, but when it
delves into areas they don’t agree with, well then the IC is full of
it.  Funny how that works huh?

Another compelling reason for the destruction of the tapes was the fact that after the leak of the “panties on the Iraqi’s head” photo’s caused such an uproar in the Muslim community the CIA was worried that pictures of interrogations, which I am sure is not pretty…and shouldn’t be, would be leaked and create further turmoil in the Muslim world:

A former intelligence official who was briefed on the issue said the
videotaping was ordered as a way of assuring “quality control” at
remote sites following reports of unauthorized interrogation
techniques. He said the tapes, along with still photographs of
interrogations, were destroyed after photographs of abuse of prisoners
at Abu Ghraib became public in May 2004 and C.I.A. officers became
concerned about a possible leak of the videos and photos.

He said the worries about the impact a leak of the tapes might have in the Muslim world were real.

It has been widely reported that Mr. Zubaydah was subjected to
several tough physical tactics, including waterboarding, which involves
near-suffocation. But C.I.A. officers judged that the release of photos
or videos would nonetheless provoke a strong reaction.

And you know damn well another rogue agent ala Valerie Plame would leak the thing if they could get their hands on it.

Lastly, the left is upset that the tapes were supposedly asked for and they were lied to:

The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of
the terror suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission,
which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and any
other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency
prisoners.

C.I.A. lawyers told federal prosecutors in 2003 and 2005, who
relayed the information to a federal court in the Moussaoui case, that
the C.I.A. did not possess recordings of interrogations sought by the
judge in the case. It was unclear whether the judge had explicitly
sought the videotape depicting the interrogation of Mr. Zubaydah.

It was unclear?  Meaning the judge didn’t ask for the specific tapes and that being the case why would a intelligence agency offer up information and intelligence it didn’t have to?  There are big security concerns when it comes to national intelligence and if anyone is that foolhardy to believe the CIA would just open up the cupboard and say “have at it!” they are quite naive.

But don’t hold you breath that the left will buy any of this, and neither should anyone care if they do.  They will see conspiracies and evil conglomerates around every corner so they should be ignored.

Hugh Hewitt had a great interview today with Douglas Feith, who headed up the group that took the CIA to task for spinning intelligence to fit their view of the world.

Here a few of the questions and answers to wet your appetite:

HH: Do you believe, as opposed to your staff, that the CIA was filtering its own intelligence, Mr. Feith?

DF: Yes, I think that there were people, there were people in the CIA who had a theory that the Baathist secularists would not cooperate with the religious extremists in al Qaeda. And because they had that theory, when they looked at information that was, that showed, or that suggested that there was cooperation, they were inclined not to believe that information. And so what they were doing is they were preparing reports about the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship in the year 2002, that were either excluding altogether, or downplaying older intelligence reports that suggested that there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda.

[...]HH: Now there has been for some time speculation that there is a war against the war inside of the CIA. Is that fair?

DF: Well, we know now quite clearly from people who were in the CIA at the time, and who have since left, and have written books and articles, and given interviews, that there were a substantial number of people, including some analysts at very high levels, who were fundamentally at odds with the President’s policy. And that’s…I mean, that’s okay in principle, as long as they are doing professional work. The problem is that some of these people, I think very unprofessionally, were leaking stories, making allegations, one of the standard techniques is using former intelligence officials as a vehicle for leaking stories about what’s going on within the administration, and a lot of those stories that came out were very harmful, very false, and have had a lasting effect in hurting the President.

And the whole 30 minute interview here:

Is anyone really surprised that the New York Times would write a whole article about a once secret letter (nothing is ever secret when it comes to the NYT’s) to President Bush from Peter Hoekstra, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and not once mention the REAL story in the letter? (h/t JustOneMinute)

Sure, the author goes on and on about the fact that Hoekstra was upset over not being briefed about a intelligence program:

In a sharply worded letter to President Bush in May, an important Congressional ally charged that the administration might have violated the law by failing to inform Congress of some secret intelligence programs and risked losing Republican support on national security matters.

The letter from Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, did not specify the intelligence activities that he believed had been hidden from Congress.

But Mr. Hoekstra, who was briefed on and supported the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and the Treasury Department's tracking of international banking transactions, clearly was referring to programs that have not been publicly revealed.

But fails to mention this part in the letter about Steve Kappes, who was at the time of the letter being brought back into the CIA as Deputy Director under nominee Hayden:

“I understand that Mr. Kappes is a capable, well-qualified, and well-liked former Directorate of Operations (DO) case officer. I am heartened by the professional qualities he would bring to the job, but concerned by what could be the political problems that he could bring back to the agency. There has been much public and private speculation about the politicization of the Agency. I am convinced that this politicization was underway well before Porter Goss became the Director. In fact, I have long been convinced that a strong and well-positioned group within the Agency intentionally undermined the Administration and its policies. This argument is supported by the Ambassador Wilson/Valerie Plame events, as well as by the string of unauthorized disclosures from an organization that prides itself with being able to keep secrets. I have come to the belief that, despite his service to the DO, Mr. Kappes may have been a part of this group. I must take note when my Democratic colleagues – those who so vehemently denounced and now publicly attacked the strong choice of Porter Goss as Director – now publicly support Mr. Kappes’s return.” (.PDF of letter here)

Wh-wha-what! The Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee believes the Deputy Director of the CIA was involved in the leaks of our classified national security secrets!

And the New York Times mentions that not once.

How about the fact that Hoekstra is convinced the Plame story is part of these schemes to undermine the Bush administration?

Any mention? Nope.

But Tom Meguire did find the Washington Post writing a story where they added “domestic” to the letter written by Hoekstra. Problem is that no where in his letter does he mention that the program he is complaining about is domestic:

In a sharply worded letter, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee has told President Bush that the administration is angering lawmakers, and possibly violating the law, by giving Congress too little information about domestic surveillance programs.

Isn’t that special? My how they jump to conclusions based on what they HOPE they will find don’t they?

The Washington Post does allude to the fact that the Hoekstra letter contained his disappointment over the Kappes appointment, but fails to mention WHY he was disappointed over Kappes. Another shocker huh?

Stephen Spruiell has some extensive analysis over the briefing part of the letter:

We should, I suppose, consider ourselves lucky that the NYT didn’t find out which programs Hoekstra was referring to and splash their details all over the front page. But I keep wondering: Are these the alleged “special access programs” that disgruntled ex-NSA employee Russ Tice told the Senate Armed Services Committee about last May; at around the same time that Hoekstra sent his letter? On May 12th, Congress Daily reported (via Nexis):

A former intelligence officer for the National Security Agency said Thursday he plans to tell Senate staffers next week that unlawful activity occurred at the agency under the supervision of Gen. Michael Hayden beyond what has been publicly reported, while hinting that it might have involved the illegal use of space-based satellites and systems to spy on U.S. citizens. Russell Tice, who worked on what are known as "special access programs," has wanted to meet in a closed session with members of Congress and their staff since President Bush announced in December that he had secretly authorized the NSA to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens without a court order. In an interview late Thursday, Tice said the Senate Armed Services Committee finally asked him to meet next week in a secure facility on Capitol Hill.

Is it just a coincidence that Hoekstra wrote his letter to President Bush so soon after Tice started talking about these programs? And what are we to make of Tice himself, who was fired from the NSA after he repeatedly accused a co-worker of being a Chinese spy and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation that found him to be paranoid?

Whatever the case may be, it’s of concern that one of the administration’s closest allies on intelligence-gathering is suddenly starting to rebel. Is this just about the firing of Porter Goss and the hiring of Stephen Kappes? Or is this in some way related to weird whistleblower Russ Tice? And if so, is there anything to the claim that the administration has improperly withheld information from the intelligence committees, given that the NSA directed Tice to the armed services committees instead?

My point is that perhaps the intel committee was not briefed because the NSA believed in good faith that it was a matter for the armed services committees. If the programs are the ones that Russ Tice testified about (and Hoekstra made several statements on FNS about “the whistleblower process” leading me to believe that they are), then we know that the NSA believed them to be a matter for the armed services committees. Hoekstra obviously disagreed, and perhaps his arguments were persuasive.

Interesting argument. If the NSA believed that the program did not need to be briefed to the House Intelligence Committee since it fell under the DoD umbrella, what’s the problem? Hoekstra obviously disagreed and when he stomped his feet enough Bush caved and briefed them.

Me thinks Spruiell is on to something here regarding Tice. The nutcase testifies about some secret programs to the Armes Services Committee and then all of a sudden Hoekstra writes the letter. He wanted to be in the loop obviously.

But the big story here is the fact that he acknowledges the CIA coup, and even pointedly referrers to the Plame affair as an example.

The New York Times and the Washington Post doesn’t see it that way I suppose. Hell, they don’t even mention it in passing.

Other’s Blogging:

• Right Voices
• Say Anything
• Sweetness & Light
• Macsmind
• Dinocrat
• Hot Air
• Captain’s Quarters
• Old War Dogs