george tenet

The White House just announced the leadership of the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board: former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), a big Obama supporter, and former Sen. David Boren (D-Okla.), a former intelligence committee chair and mentor of disastrous ex-CIA Director George Tenet. Their reactions, as per a White House release:
“I appreciate the privilege and opportunity that [...]

In case you’re wondering, as I’ve been writing about former CIA Director George Tenet’s “enhanced interrogation” guidelines — and the place of “prolonged diapering” within them –  I reached out to a representative for Tenet for comment, and was told that he’s not going to be talking. Perhaps that’s inevitable, given the criminal probe announced [...]

Marcy Wheeler may have solved a mystery about the previously unacknowledged CIA “enhanced interrogation” technique of “prolonged diapering.” I wondered in my initial post where the CIA got the legal authorization for the technique from, as the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on torture says that the CIA withdrew a 2002 request to the Justice [...]

The 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on torture says clearly that in 2002, the CIA proposed to the Justice Department the use of eleven “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Ten of them got the approval of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in August 2002 in the infamous Jay Bybee/John Yoo memo declassified by the Obama [...]

In a section of the 2004 CIA inspector general report about interrogation techniques that were used on detainees by the CIA but never approved by the Justice Department — including mock executions, blowing cigar smoke into someone’s face until he became ill, squeezing a detainee’s neck “to restrict the detainee’s carotid artery … [until he] [...]

A few months ago I pointed to declassified references in the 2005 Office of Legal Counsel torture opinions to guidelines issued by former CIA Director George Tenet in January 2003 for the application of torture techniques. It turns out, according to the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report, that Tenet issued guidelines for both the “enhanced [...]

Daphne’s already blown the kazoo and hung the streamers for today’s release of the 2004 CIA inspector general report on the agency’s use of torture “enhanced interrogation” techniques. We’ll be covering this throughout the day. But pay attention as well to what might not get released today: another long awaited report, this time from the [...]

What do I mean when I say that the inspectors general report on warrantless surveillance shows a larger role for CIA in the post-9/11 surveillance efforts than has been previously disclosed? According to the report, CIA would prepare a threat briefing for President Bush justifying the need for such surveillance. Then-CIA Director George Tenet’s chief [...]

Late in 2008, Mike McConnell, then the director of national intelligence, issued a directive instructing CIA officials at overseas outposts directly responsible to him. It was the first time in the brief history of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that the director had waded a toe into the operational side of spycraft. [...]

One last thing from today’s Zelikow/Soufan hearing. Phil Zelikow was an aide to Condoleezza Rice when she served as secretary of state during George W. Bush’s second term. In his testimony, perhaps unsurprisingly, he portrayed Rice as pushing to restrict the Bush administration’s torture policies. “As Secretary of State, Dr. Rice placed a high priority [...]