Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Obama's Intel Chief: Coercive Interrogations Worked (and Did I Mention that Democrats In Congress Approved?) [Andy McCarthy]
At the Standard, Steve Hayes has a must-read article today about the letter Adm. Dennis Blair, Obama's intel chief, sent to the intelligence community about coercive interrogations ... and the public statement he made on the same issue, which had some very interesting edits. Steve writes:
Admiral Dennis Blair, the top intelligence official in the United States, thanks to his nomination by Barack Obama, believes that the coercive interrogation methods outlawed by his boss produced "high-value information" and gave the U.S. government a "deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." He included those assessments in a letter distributed inside the intelligence community last Thursday, the same day Obama declassified and released portions of Justice Department memos setting out guidelines for those interrogations.
That letter from Blair served as the basis for a public statement that his office put out that same day. But the DNI's conclusions about the results of coercive interrogations—in effect, that they worked—were taken out of Blair's public statement. A spokesman for the DNI told the New York Times that the missing material was cut for reasons of space, though the statement would be posted on DNI's website, where space doesn't seem to be an issue.
Curious.
There's more. Blair's public statement differed from his letter to colleagues in another way. The letter included this language: "From 2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended, the leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities both to Executive Branch policymakers and to members of Congress, and received permission to continue to use the techniques." Blair's public statement made no mention of the permission granted by "members of Congress"—permission that came from members of Obama's own party.
Read it all, here.
04/22 09:32 AM
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