Dennis Blair Confirmation Hearing

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) went hunting for Blair to say that the Bush administration didn’t pressure intelligence analysts ahead of the Iraq WMD National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002, citing a Senate intelligence committee report in 2004 in which the GOP totally rolled then-top-Democratic Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) into saying so. But Blair didn’t go [...]

Ret. Adm. Dennis Blair just refused to answer a very easy question, asked by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.): Is waterboarding torture? “I would say that there will be no waterboarding on my watch, there will be no torture on my watch.”
C’mon, a stunned Levin said. Blair: “I’m very much aware there were dedicated officers in [...]

Speaking to the point in my last post, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) asked Blair if his point to Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) about withholding some interrogation techniques from public release was meant to circumvent the new uniform standards for interrogation. Or did it mean compliance with “more or less the design of the Army field [...]

I don’t have the actual document yet, but here’s the White House’s just-released summary of the executive order on interrogations.
Executive Order revokes Executive Order 13440 that interpreted Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. It requires that all interrogations of detainees in armed conflict, by any government agency, follow the Army Field Manual interrogation [...]

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.) makes Dennis Blair run a right-wing gamut of questions on torture.
Should the intelligence community be on the offense in the war on terror? “Absolutely.”
Is the detention/interrogation program effective? “I’ll have to look into it more closely.”
Does the executive order on interrogation make the Army field manual a guide to getting around [...]

We have “245 of the meanest, nastiest killers still at GTMO,” says Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) Actually, we know no such thing, since all we have to go on is the Bush administration’s self-serving justifications for keeping Guantanamo open; and the administration kept letting those inmates go. But what does Blair think?

Anti-torture hawk Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) is pleased with retired Adm. Dennis Blair. Blair pledges to consult with the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel from the outset to review the Bush administration’s legal basis for detentions, interrogations and renditions in counterterrorism.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) asks retired Adm. Dennis Blair about a growing intelligence problem: the rise of contractor personnel in the community, and essentially urges “a resurgence of career infrastructure.”
“Absolutely,” Blair say he’ll look at it. “The growing role of contractors, the disparity in pay that arises from it … I will look into it, [...]

Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) wants to know if Blair agrees with harmonizing CIA interrogations with the Geneva-complaint Army Field Manual on interrogations. He does.
“The executive order which will be released here soon provides there will be a review of the Army Field Manual as a basis,” Blair said. “If it has my way, it won’t [...]

A big obstacle to retired Adm. Dennis Blair’s confirmation as director of national intelligence concerns his interactions with the Indonesian government as U.S. Pacific Command chief, when it came to East Timorese independence from Indonesia in 2000. Blair defended himself in an interaction with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) saying that he didn’t, as accused, turned [...]