From The Washington Post:
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.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.
Yet long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane HarmanJohn D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan). (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
This article just confirms a pattern of behavior from the Democratic leadership. They were briefed on the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” and had no objections. Once the program was leaked to the public, the Dems pretended to shocked and outraged at this so-called “illegal wiretapping.”
The Democratic leadership was briefed about our enhanced interrogation program repeatedly including the use of waterboarding, and they raised no objections. Once that program was leaked to the public, the Dems once again pretended to be shocked and outraged that the President would allow “torture.”
It should be noted that the Terrorist Surveillance Program wasn’t called “illegal wiretapping,” and Waterboarding didn’t become “torture” until after the public became aware of them.
It really shows just how disingenuous Nancy Pelosi and the rest of her team really are. All the “investigations” they call for are just “dog and pony shows” used to score cheap political points with their incredibly ignorant Bush-hating base.
-Chris Jones
