All hands on deck in the MSM press!
Update: Hayden knew! Hayden knew of interrogation videotapes
"Questions linger after Hayden testimony" by Pamela Hess/Associated Press December 11, 2007
WASHINGTON - Tuesday's hearing came as a former CIA agent who was part of the interrogation team went public with his account, saying the waterboarding of a top al-Qaida figure was approved at the top levels of the U.S. government.
That's why the tapes were destroyed!
According to the former agent, waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah got him to talk in less than 35 seconds. The technique, which critics say is torture, probably disrupted "dozens" of planned al-Qaida attacks, said John Kiriakou, a leader of the team that captured Abu Zubaydah, a major al-Qaida figure.
Kiriakou did not explain how he knew who approved the interrogation technique but said such approval comes from top officials. He did not witness or participate in the waterboarding, he said.
Mr. Kiriakou, in a round of television news show appearances:
"This isn't something done willy-nilly. This isn't something where an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he's going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department."
This guy smells more like DAMAGE-CONTROL than a CONFESSIONAL!
Which makes Algiers all the more of a coincidence, huh?
Taking this HUGE STORY on BUSH ADMINISTRATION CRIMINALITY off the front pages!!!!!
Press secretary Dana Perino, at the White House, said the CIA interrogation program approved by the president is safe, tough, effective and legal:
"It's no secret that the president approved a lawful program in order to interrogate hardened terrorists. We do not torture. We also know that this program has saved lives by disrupting terrorist attacks."
What, they just pull a rope in the back of her neck for that?
Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee taken by the CIA in 2002, is now being held with other detainees at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He told his interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, and the two men's confessions also led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who the U.S. government said was the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
As to the CIA videotapes, President Bush said he didn't know about the tapes or their destruction until last week.
Bush, in an interview Tuesday with ABC News:
"My first recollection of whether the tapes existed or whether they were destroyed was when Michael Hayden briefed me. There's a preliminary inquiry going on and I think you'll find that a lot more data, facts will be coming out. That's good. It will be interesting to know what the true facts are."
Ah, what's ANOTHER LIE, anyway, right?
And that would be the "true" facts?
As opposed to the FALSE FACTS you spew out your mouth every time you open that rectal pie-hole, fucker?
And if you WANTED FACTS, WHY WERE THE TAPES DESTROYED, lying shitmouth?!?!
Waterboarding is a harsh interrogation technique that involves strapping down a prisoner, covering his mouth with plastic or cloth and pouring water over his face. The prisoner quickly begins to inhale water, causing the sensation of drowning.
The CIA is known to have waterboarded three prisoners -- Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, whom the U.S. government says coordinated the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. The CIA has not used the technique since 2003, according to a government official familiar with the program. Hayden prohibited waterboarding in 2006. The U.S. military outlawed it the same year.
Hayden told CIA employees last week that the CIA taped the interrogations of two alleged terrorists in 2002. He said the harsh questioning was carried out only after being "reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice and by other elements of the Executive Branch." Hayden said Congress was notified in 2003 both of the tapes' existence and the agency's intent to destroy them.
The CIA destroyed the tapes in November of 2005. Exactly when Congress was notified of that and in what detail is in dispute.
Attorney General Michael Mukasey told reporters he still has not determined whether waterboarding is torture. He said he is reviewing the Bush administration's legal opinions that underpin the CIA interrogation and detention program to determine if they are sound, and if so, whether the CIA's interrogation program conforms with them.
A former head of the military's intelligence agency said Tuesday that waterboarding is torture.
Retired Army Lt. Gen. Harry Soyster, who headed the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1988 to September 1991:
"The technique of having someone think he's drowning, his life is in danger? In my book that's torture. You are using a technique that can kill someone."
That clear it up for you, Muk?
"C.I.A. Director Speaks to Senate Committee" by MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON — Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, distanced himself on Tuesday from the decision to record and subsequently destroy hundreds of hours of video taken during the interrogations of senior Qaeda captives.
Speaking in public after delivering classified testimony before a Senate committee, General Hayden said that the decision to record the interrogations in 2002 was made under George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and that the destruction of those tapes in 2005 came under the watch of Porter J. Goss, who succeeded Mr. Tenet.
Look at him pass it off! This could get interesting!
Hayden, after he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee:
“There are other people at the agency who know about this far better than I.”
He had become the agency director in May 2006, six months after intelligence officials have said the tapes were destroyed. Congressional officials said Tuesday that they would probably call Mr. Goss and Mr. Tenet before the committee as part of its investigation into the matter.
In a statement to agency employees on Thursday, General Hayden indicated that he supported the decision to destroy the videos. He did not reiterate that support in his public comments on Tuesday, although he did not say the decision was wrong.
Congressional officials said General Hayden tried to provide a timeline of events surrounding the destruction of the tapes that he had constructed from agency records. Emerging from the meeting, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is chairman of the committee, called the hearing “useful” but said he still had questions about who authorized the destruction of the tapes in 2005 and why Congress was not told at the time.
General Hayden, said Thursday that the C.I.A. had informed leaders in Congress about the destruction of the videos, which documented the interrogations of two suspects, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. But Republicans and Democrats have said that they can find no record of any formal notification.
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, in a statement:
“Trouble arises, as we see with the C.I.A. tape case, when intelligence leaders refuse to comply with their constitutional duty to keep Congress ‘fully and currently’ informed.”
One Democratic aide said the Senate Intelligence Committee also planned to meet with John L. Helgerson, the agency’s inspector general, to learn more about a joint, preliminary investigation of the tapes’ destruction that he is conducting with the Justice Department.
The aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not a spokesman for the committee, said members did not want to get in the way of what could become an investigation that could ultimately lead to criminal charges:
“We have to be very careful not to interfere with their ability to bring those charges.”
President Bush, in an interview with ABC News on Tuesday:
“It will be interesting to know what the true facts are [after the inquiry by the Justice Department and C.I.A. inspector general is complete]."
But lawmakers from both houses showed far less patience. The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, delivered a blistering indictment of the agency’s decision to destroy the videos, questioning whether there was a broader cover-up behind the agency’s decision.
One Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey, said the Justice Department inquiry was not sufficient and asked that Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appoint an independent counsel in the matter.
Mr. Mukasey indicated that he would probably turn down such calls, saying the Justice Department “is capable of doing whatever it needs to do.” During his first news conference as attorney general, Mr. Mukasey said Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Wainstein, who is leading the investigation, would “go wherever the facts lead him.”
Much of the news conference was dominated by questions about Mr. Mukasey’s views on the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, in which a subject is made to believe he is being drowned. The issue nearly cost Mr. Mukasey his Senate confirmation after he refused to say if he considered the technique to be torture.
He said Tuesday that he still had not decided and that he was still reviewing classified legal opinions within the Justice Department. Government officials have said that during Mr. Zubaydah’s interrogation sessions, his C.I.A. questioners used tactics including noise, stress positions, isolation and waterboarding.
The Justice Department’s role in the videotape episode was questioned Tuesday by the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who in a letter to Mr. Mukasey asked for a complete account of the department’s involvement in the matter.
The letter was signed by Senators Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is the chairman, and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the committee’s senior Republican. It asked for responses to several questions that have gone unanswered by Justice Department officials about whether officials viewed the tapes, whether they were ever aware of plans to destroy them and when they were first told they had been destroyed."
Given this Congress' record on hot fart misting, I don't expect much to come of this!
All political theater, that will quickly fade from the news pages!
Just like all the other torture tales over the last six years!
