Word coming down the pike: the Senate Armed Services Committee is gearing up to release a fuller version of its report from last year on how the Rumsfeld-era Defense Department got into the torture business. Last year, you’ll recall, the committee held a series of hearings that provided the More…
Former Vice President Dick Cheney — the avatar of secrecy — really did say this last night. Daphne puts together a wish list:
[I]f there are memos showing that torture and the CIA’s other “extreme” interrogation techniques were successful, I’d like to see those, too — all of
After digging through the newly-disclosed Office of Legal Counsel memos, my friend Marcy Wheeler of Firedoglake discovered that CIA interrogators waterboarded 9/11 architect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times in one month. The New York Times piece that follows up today appropriately acknowledges Marcy’s discovery. (Full disclosure: my personal blog More…
Praise be to Bill Kristol. Someone should issue him a remedial reading-comprehension exam.
Recall yesterday that Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, wrote a morale-boosting memo yesterday to the CIA saying, “Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing.” What More…
Here’s the OLC memo from May 30, 2005, which states that “enhanced interrogation techniques” used by the CIA are “consistent with United States obligations”:
Here’s the Office of Legal Counsel memo from May 10, 2005, which outlines approved interrogation techniques, including waterboarding:
The Obama administration is apparently going to release the 2005-era Office of Legal Counsel memoranda about what torture techniques the CIA could employ. Keep hitting refresh here. MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell had former CIA Director Mike Hayden on to make the case against disclosure of the memos, and for the More…
President Obama just announced that Harold Hongju Koh, the head of Yale Law School and a human rights official during the Clinton administration, will be the legal adviser to the State Department. That’s big news as the administration proceeds with its review of interrogations, detentions and renditions policy. Koh, More…
As TWI’s lightning-fast national security reporter Spencer Ackerman just wrote, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence just formally announced what we’ve known and been reporting on for weeks now: it will review the CIA’s detention and interrogation program during the Bush years.
That’s welcome news for all of More…
In The New York Times’ Sunday piece on the “Truth Commission” proposed by Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) , which I wrote about last week, reporter Scott Shane notes that during an interview, Leahy said that any commission investigating abuse of detainees under the Bush administration should also investigate More…
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