Panetta's parsing shows need for full investigation

by: Carnacki

Mon May 18, 2009 at 07:23:00 AM EDT

Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing "the enhanced techniques that had been employed." Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.

Take a look at this from Marcy Wheeler:

Panetta is stating two things:

1. The contemporaneous records (that is, the CIA briefer's own notes on the briefing) show that the briefers "briefed truthfully ... describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed'" on Zubaydah.
2. It is up to Congress to evaluate this evidence and "reach its own conclusions about what happened."

Now, first of all, Panetta is not saying (nor has anyone said, not even Porter Goss) that the briefers briefed Congress that these techniques had been used. I know this sounds weasely, but until someone says, in plain language, that the CIA told Congress those techniques had already been used on Abu Zubaydah, we should assume that's not what the notes reflect, because if they did, you can be sure both the briefing list and the public statements would say so. But no one is saying that. And against that background, Panetta is reiterating the statement that Congress should determine what happened--a reiteration of the admission that CIA's own briefing records are not the totality of the story.

The CIA briefing list records that the following people participated in the briefing: Nancy Pelosi, her staffer Michael Sheehy, Porter Goss, his staffer Tim Sample, briefers from the CounterTerrorism Center (CTC), and the Office of Congressional Affairs (OCA; elsewhere, we've been told four people, total, from CIA attended).

While CIA doesn't say it, the chances are very good that the head of CTC was among the four CIA officials who attended that briefing--he probably led the briefing. On September 4, 2002, the head of CTC was Jose Rodriguez.

Jose Rodriguez, you'll recall, is one of the key suspects in the torture tape destruction.

digby has an interesting view of Panetta's parsing:

I will take the simple route here and just point out that if Panetta's statement "ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened" isn't weaselly, CYA language then nothing is. He doesn't know what happened in those briefings and he knows very well that those notes aren't reliable. After all, the most anal retentive politician in Senate history has already disputed these briefing memos by going back to his own infamously detailed notes.

My rule of thumb on this stuff is when politicians use awkward tenses and odd phrases instead of a simple declarative answer in response to a simple question, they are playing lawyer games.

Keep in mind too the CIA briefer's notes came at the same time that then Vice President Dick Cheney was putting undue pressure on the CIA. From the Washington Post on June 4, 2003:

Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.

With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior agency official said yesterday.

Considering Cheney was pressuring the CIA to fix the intelligence around the agenda and the Bush administration ordered the torture of detainees to get false confessions to justify the Iraq invasion, there is little reason to trust the CIA's account of intelligence briefings to members of Congress.

As Sen. Jay Rockefeller said on April 16 in regards to the Obama administration releasing of the four torture memos:

"The Senate Intelligence Committee has been pressing for years for greater openness regarding interrogation, particularly as it became clear over time that the Congress had not been fully informed.  In the wake of 9-11 we all wanted to leave no stone unturned in pursuing terrorists and preventing future attacks, but some serious mistakes were made with lasting implications and very senior Bush Administration officials made a concerted effort to distort and hide the truth, at the time and in the years that followed.