Um, yeah. I wonder if Ollie North is going to open his yap about this.

This, of course, is the same John Boehner who, as recently as 2007, said that he didn't trust U.S. intelligence agencies that gave him news he didn't want to hear.

And, of course, a member of the same Republican Party that 1) pressured the CIA to find evidence linking Saddam and al-Qaeda and 2) then blamed the CIA for Bush's misleading the American public into a costly war.

That's right, because Republicans have SO much confidence in the CIA. We saw how much they stood up for the agency when it questioned the intelligence Cheney was using to assert the WMD/al Quaeda connections to Iraq.

The operations side of the CIA is necessarily full of professional liars, after all.

The phrase of the day is "feigned outrage."

The theme since the election is "feigned outrage."

Fixed.

In the end it will be the GOP that forces a truth commission. I am sure there will be subpoena power to go with it and Whitehouse with subpoena power will be a terrible thing for the GOP to behold. I like the way this is going. These clowns still look at the daily news cycle as the end-all of the political universe.

eric

Pelosi misled? "Slam dunk," anyone?

The CIA has a long and glorious history of lying to Congress.

"feigned outrage"? Who you, or the Republicans?

Why are so many Democrats upset that the Republicans are playing politics? If Democrats can't stand the heat maybe they shouldn't be in the majority.

Some of us wanted the Dems to stand up to the Repugs -- but if they can not even be united enough to confirm Obama's cabinet picks maybe its time to admit that Democrats are ill equipped to be in the majority.

And since the Republicans have proven, after eight years, that THEY can't be trusted, I suggest a search for some alternatives to wingnuts or the wimps. Anyone have some suggestions for what the US would look like without either Dems or Repubs?

". . . I'd say they've told me the truth as they see it."

Exactly.

Appropriately weaseling words, Liebermann.

o
o

"The phrase of the decade is 'feigned outrage.'"
—Steve Benen 4:45 PM

FTFY

McGruber is one funny broad.

but pelosi did not say that the CIA "regularly misleads congress."

there's the professional journalists making crap up again.

MKULTRA. Operation Mongoose. Reporters on the CIA payroll. Guatemala 1954. Iran 1953. Richard Helms destroying thousands of documents so the Church Committee couldn't see them.

Are these people really that ignorant of history? Or are they tools?

And now, according to Lawrence Wilkerson, much of the 'enhanced interogation' was aimed not at getting information about possible future terrorist attacks, but rather, political information tying Saddam to al qaeda in order to gin up support for Bush's war. It was an intolerable episode before. Now? Words fail.

"...I'd say they've told me the truth as they see it."-Lieberman

"As they see it"???? So misleading may not be intentional??? Leave it to Jerusalem Joe, the mini mouth, to make such ridiculous statements.

Bush was lying to the point that the FBI refused to be a part of the CIA's practices.

And Bond...the CIA are not "terror fighters" they are intelligence gatherers...so sorry if you were "mislead". God I'll be so glad when you're out of office...you're such an embarrassment.

Boehner knows he's lying with his "oh here's an opportunity to run down a democrat" opportunist rhetoric...the CIA would never mislead a congress member assumes you think we are stupid...they run secret ops all the time and mislead you about them if you're not in the loop. God, you're pathetically stupid... but we aren't... Boner.

Yeah, all of this 'CIA said'/'she said' stuff is too confusing to follow. I would suggest that if Lieberman, Boehner, et al mistrust what the Speaker is telling them, perhaps they'd agree to convene, oh, I don't know, some kind of comprehensive, independent investigation of the whole 'enhanced interrogation' thing.

Maybe?

You know what? I am embarrassed for my country.

Our legislators are pathetic jokes. I still trust President Obama, and do believe we have maturity in the WH, but the senate and the house are fucking disgustingly pathetic.

The Republicans have literally become some sort of national lampoon sideshow, and the democrats are so used to having their asses kicked, they tremble in cowardice and fear every time someone shouts louder.

Our country is better than the people we have representing us. It's a Goddamn shame the system is rigged to where we can't do a fucking thing about it.

Joe Lieberman and John Boeher's claims that the "CIA would never mislead a member of Congress" or that Nancy Pelosi is "always changing her story" are pathetic torture defenders' pathetic excuses.

It seems to me that the CIA has been found guilty of the same tactics in the past. When the FBI backs away because what the CIA is doing is illegal, when Colin Powell is set up with false information and his warnings agains torture are dismissed, when others in the Justice Department and DOD who warn that "we could hang for this" those are a pretty good signs that something very wrong is going on here. The whole lead up to the Iraq War and the conduction of the "War on Terror"
was a conspiracy by the Bush administration, and now it's all coming out to haunt them. They are running like rats from a sinking ship. That's why Cheney and his daughter are out there, now even Duncan Hunter's son is joining in to put up flak. Who's next? Barney the former first dog?

Seems to me that Republicans keep coming up with new excuses for torture. They are more concerned with political embarrassment than justice. Excuses include:
The United States does not torture!

We have memos from Addington, Bybee, Yoo, and Gonzales that show we didn't torture.

It wasn't torture, it was "enhanced interrogation."

We didn't torture (but the CIA whisked detainees away on secret flights to black sights in countries where they could be tortured).

Waterboarding isn't torture because we put soldiers through waterboarding at SERE training (to train them how to endure torture).

We tortured, but it was legal.

We tortured because we were scared after 911.

We tortured because we were in a "ticking time bomb" situation (for years).

We tortured because "enemy combatants" are not soldiers bound by the Geneva Conventions.

We only tortured 3 of the worst of the worst(283 times in a month).

We got valuable information from torture (but we can't find it).

Sensory deprivation; sleep deprivation; stress positions; sexual, religious, and physical humiliation; treats of rape; use of dogs; physical abuse; and waterboarding are not torture (Pshaw!Any woosie could go through that).

The Abu Graib scandal was the result of a few rogue "bad apples" (whom the CIA had asked to soften up their detainees the harder tactics to come).

So what if we tortured and lied about it, Nancy Pelosi knew about it too!

How many times did your teachers buy "the dog ate my homework" story? Mine never fell for it more than once. It's time to get at the whole truth and require Cheney, Bush, Addington, Bybee, Yoo, Gonzales, Rice, Rumsfeld, Hadley, and all the rest of the rats to testify under oath.

"the CIA is less than forthcoming with those who might try to limit their activities"

Please. The CIA lies whenever it wants to - the same way politicians do when it suits them, the same way businesses do. The difference is that is one of the primary functions of the CIA. They're good at it.

Disinformation is one of the things they do every day. This very magazine has reported on some of their disinformation campaigns in the past few years (Zarqawi, etc.) and that one of the primary TARGETS of this disinformation was the American public. WP also reported it, a few times. (That hasn't stopped everyone in the media, including SB from running with every lie that comes from their mouths).

And of course Pelosi is lying now. She's a piece of shit liberal hawk, isn't she. She was briefed, said as much, then said it was her aide that was briefed, etc.

What's new? Is it okay if you are a democrat now?

You mean the guys that destroyed nearly 100 video tapes of them torturing people, naw, they would never distort the truth.

Has anyone read the report on Huffington Post of the Bob Graham interview, that says it all. I am not a Pelosi admirer, but now I believe her on this one.

Let's see, what color is Boehner today? Oh, well, doesn't matter. What does matter is the issue of executive institutions being hostile and unforthcoming to legislative institutions. The jury has been in ever since the Church Committee hearings (c. 1977), and a few ex-spooks' tell all books shortly thereafter.

If the Republicans are soooooo outraged, let them demand hearings, a truth-commission, or prosecution as remedy to said outrage! I'm sure a majority of Americans in the next national poll will want to support such Republican efforts.

Let's move forward with formal processes to see whom is lying about torture and other unlawful, unAmerican activities from the past eight years.

Suspicions of untruths beg to be investigated! -Kevo

See? She should've left impeachment of W "on the table" - she wouldn't be going through this now!

John Boehner said today he finds it "hard...to imagine that our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress."

Gee John.....I can imagine a few without even going to Google:

How about lying about the number of times a prisoner was waterboarded?

How about lying about how many video tapes were made of torture sessions?

How about lying about the fact that those tapes had already been ordered destroyed?

How's that for starters John.....you orange-faced pile of c...p!

Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), for example, exclaimed, "It's outrageous that a member of Congress would call our terror-fighters liars." -- Steve Benen

It's outrageous because, of course, everyone in CIA is infused with the same divine grace as the Pope -- none of them ever, ever, lie.

I'm like JS, @17:44. Originally, I thought "well, what else would you expect her to say?". But now I think I trust Pelosi's word more than the valiant terror fighters'.

but is what Pelosi said really all that hard to believe?

Is it hard to believe that Pelosi is lying?

Is she lying?

Rep. Jane Harman at least wrote a letter objecting to the use of techniques that had been described in the briefings. The briefings couldn't have been too benign if that happened. Pelosi subsequently named Rep Sylvestre Reyes to chair the House Intelligence Committee instead of the decidedly more qualified Harman. That looks now like an even bigger mistake than it seemed at the time.

Why doesn't someone ask the other congresscritter at the first briefing what was said? You know, Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla). What's that? He became CIA director? Oh wow. That will really confuse things, huh?
oldswede

This just gets BETTER.

The CBS Evening News reporting that in the meeting that the CIA claims that they told Pelosi that waterboarding of Zubaygah had occurred, they now say that the word "waterboarding" was not used.

OH KAY.

As Mr. Rogers use to ask, can you say BACK PEDDLE boys and girls ? I knew you could.

Two words:

Iran Contra

Dick Cheney must be enjoying this attack on Pelosi. Shouldn't we be going after the Dickster, the one who authorized torture rather than going after someone who may or may not have been informed? And even if she were, is she not under wraps not to reveal it? Just wondering.

Rep. Jane Harman at least wrote a letter objecting to the use of techniques that had been described in the briefings. The briefings couldn't have been too benign if that happened. Pelosi subsequently named Rep Sylvestre Reyes to chair the House Intelligence Committee instead of the decidedly more qualified Harman. That looks now like an even bigger mistake than it seemed at the time. Posted by: MatthewRMarler on May 14, 2009

But remember that there was a recent kerfuffle about Harman perhaps conniving with an Israeli spy and the Bushies eavesdropping on her, perhaps even blackmailing her.

Given that Pelosi might have heard about that it makes sense she wouldn't put Harman back into the same kind of power position where the Bushies could force her to do things.

And, why would the Bushies worry about a complete briefing for Harman if they had her under their thumb.

Yea, this has all the appearances of being a Bush thing -- keeping enemies out of the picture, but informing those who are controlled, knowing they can't do a thing about it.

The CBS Evening News reporting that in the meeting that the CIA claims that they told Pelosi that waterboarding of Zubaygah had occurred, they now say that the word "waterboarding" was not used.

OH KAY. ...
Posted by: Joe Friday on May 14, 2009

It is curious though that the CIA would change their tune.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Rep. Jane Harman at least wrote a letter objecting to the use of techniques that had been described in the briefings.

Actually, the letter didn't do that. It asked if the president had approved the techniques. Steney Hoyer just declined to join the sinking SS Pelosi on the House floor today when asked by Eric Cantor if he agreed with Pelosi.

Since the Bush Administration lied to the American people every day it was in office, lying to Congress is small potatoes.

Since these were all private meetings with no notes taken (right), there is no way to prove who said what to whom when.

That's is no way to run a country.

I'm just glad she didn't complain about the CIA lying to her until now.

Me too.

The RightWing would have howled that she was revealing a classified briefing.

To be a CIA operative is to conceal or distort the truth. That is his mission. And the CIA has a long history of lying to Congressional commissions. The Rockefeller Commission, the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and on and on. The heinous atrocities--Operation Mockingbird, MK-ULTRA, ZR-RIFLE, Operation Paperclip, and more--must be forever suppressed.

Tim Fleming
www.eloquentbooks.com/MurderOfAnAmericanNazi.html
http://www.blazingtrailers.com/show.php?title=441

It really would help if folks talking about this mess kept reasonably close to the way these things are done: a briefing at the level of the Speaker of the House, much less the greater detail specifically assigned to the Chairs of the Intelligence Committees, is Secret Compartmentalized Information, usually called SCI.

SCI stuff, like the name says, is compartmentalized. That is, nobody gets the whole story.

If you're told the proverbial big picture, you're NOT told the key details. If you get key details, you do NOT get the big picture.

Am I going too fast for anybody?

Pelosi has been completely consistent in her public statements since this became a political tool for distracting folks from the simple facts that 1) the Bush administration tortured captives, 2) this torture yielded no useful information of any kind, and 3) it was illegal, despite faked documents to paper over the crimes.

The Speaker has consistently said (within the very narrow confines of what she is allowed to say about a single SCI briefing) that she was not told that the CIA was waterboarding. Check out her statements -- she's been both precise, and consistent.

That does not mean that Harman was not told. It would make sense if the Intelligence Committees WERE told more information, with more detail, than the Speaker -- but this kind of compare and contrast is precisely why SCI briefings are compartmentalized as well as secret. As a rule, the higher ranking official (the Speaker) would have gotten a big picture briefing, along the lines of 'we are using sophisticated interrogation techniques and we have legal authority to enhance procedures that have been used against our own military'; while the Chair and Ranking Member of the Intelligence Committee would have been told 'we are using SERE techniques such as waterboarding'.

The watchword for all of this is Need to Know. Those briefing the Speaker -- who would necessarily have regarded her as politically hostile to the Administration -- would have understood that she did not Need to Know about waterboarding.

So they wouldn't have told her. How come this is so hard for folks gabbing about it to understand? It's Classified Information 101.

As a rule, the higher ranking official (the Speaker) would have gotten a big picture briefing, along the lines of 'we are using sophisticated interrogation techniques and we have legal authority to enhance procedures that have been used against our own military'; while the Chair and Ranking Member of the Intelligence Committee would have been told 'we are using SERE techniques such as waterboarding'.

That is a bunch of BS. If she didn't know, it would be because she was intellectually incurious or wanted to maintain plausible deniability.

It's Classified Information 101.

Bzzzzt! Try again

theamericanist at 7:46: useful information clearly stated without a lot of extraneous shit. and you almost managed to suppress your giant inner asshole while sharing it. but not quite.

Bzzzzt! Try again

you have some alternate information you'd like to present? we're all ears.

The idea that the junior has access to information that the more senior doesn't *because* the more senior is more senior flies in the face of both common sense and reality. If Harmon was told, Pelosi should have been told. Compartmentalization would be no reason not to.

And did you know that Pelosi and Harmon both do *not* have security clearances?

flies in the face of both common sense and reality.

do you have something more concrete than that? because you may be right, but "this is incorrect because i feel it must be" is not an impressive argument. if you can make a detailed case about who gets what info, do so.

"if she didn't know, it would be because she was intellectually incurious or wanted to maintain plausible deniability...."

LOL -- you're new to this whole secret policy thing, huh?

First, it's the BRIEFER who knows, not the person being briefed. Classified briefings aren't open-ended, they're compartmentalized. Can't ask about something the questioner doesn't know exists; can't get a true answer from a guy who doesn't know. (Which is sorta the point about torture.)

Second, the briefer is trained NOT to provide any information beyond the clearance level of the briefing. That's another function of the compartmentalized nature of SCI. Keeping it SCI is done in two ways -- the briefer can simply refer questions to somebody else, but by far the most effective method is for the briefer to simply not know anything beyond the compartmentalized briefing material itself.

LOL -- ya with me, there, Red? Cross this line, and you will be less ignorant.

Third, the relations between Congress (full of folks who make public speeches, talk to the press, win elections and such horrific stuff) and the un-elected folks who classify information and provide secret briefings, have a notorious and surprisingly well-documented history. There are just two guys at the top of the pyramid -- the President and the Veep -- who win elections, and they set policy for all those appointees below 'em. It's not about open sharing of information, nor complete answers to direct questions. These are two rival branches of government, ferociously competitive about lots of stuff even when they are controlled by the same party.

The watchword has always been that if you want to keep it a secret, don't tell Congress -- even the ones on your side. No less a Cold Warrior than Barry Goldwater (chair of the Intelligence Committee at the time) had something like a war for years with William Casey, Reagan's CIA chief. Goldwater bitched about PRECISELY your notion that 'ya just gotta ask', saying that CIA director Casey wouldn't tell Goldwater if the Senator's coat was on fire without a direct, specific question and two followups with increasing levels of classification and a trip to Langley to make threats about cherisehd projects in the CIA budget. When one of these hit the fan, Goldwater apparently told off Reagan himself -- in blistering language -- cuz Casey mined a harbor in Nicaragua without warning Congress. that infuriated Goldwater because mining a harbor is that quaint thing, an act of war defined in law -- and such stuff is, so Mr. Conservative noted to Reagan in the Oval Office, a prerogative of the Congress.

LOL --and it was Goldwater who got Reagan his START in politics. You figure that Bush was going to volunteer information to Nancy Pelosi?

So your notion that the Bush CIA would have briefed the Speaker of the House -- from the other party! -- on the illegal use of torture isn't naive, it's nuts.

The more interesting question is the effect that classifying what our elected representatives are told about important policies has on our 'debate' about 'em.

A Reagan technique was to offer classified briefings for political opponents, so they would then have a club to beat 'em with: it's hard to publicly oppose a secret policy that you have been officially briefed on, cuz then discussing it publicly would itself be a felony (and an automatic expulsion from your committees, possibly from the Congress itself).

Classified briefings are a way to co-opt opponents, which is why some critics of Republican administration policies have refused to go to 'em: there was little useful information, and it freed them to debate very publicly what they could pointedly note they had NOT been told as any kind of official secret. (I know of no Democratic examples, so it's not a partisan point: but if anybody DOES know, speak up.)

What Cheney, et al, are doing now is a refinement of that technique: they know that Pelosi is honor-bound (quaint concept) not to reveal precisely what she was told, nor how, which is why she consistently notes only that she was not told that waterboarding was used.

She MAY have asked, yanno, and been told that her briefer didn't know, or that somebody would get back to her:a not implausible Bush response to the direct question: 'Is it the Bush administration policy to torture prisoners?' might have been not just 'it's not torture' but also -- well, that depends on the definition of what" is", is.

But even revealing THAT q&a would be a violation of the agreement between the Executive and Legislative branches on sharing secret information -- and the CIA, among other agencies, would have a legal obligation to curtail future briefings on quite possibly more important subjects.

That's why it'd be useful if folks (like Ray) who offer up opinions on such subjects would take some time to actually understand how they work -- fuck the snark, this stuff could well be a LOT more important than we know.

That's why it'd be useful if folks (like Ray) who offer up opinions on such subjects

but i didn't offer up an opinion on "such subject." how'd you manage to miss that?

would take some time to actually understand how they work

everything i've said here is an attempt to find out how they work. i think you will discover that if you slow down and read for comprehension, not for condescension.

i don't know anything about the dissemination of classified info, but i want to. red state mike doesn't know anything either and he doesn't want to. jury's still out on you, but i'm taking in what you say.

fuck the snark, this stuff could well be a LOT more important than we know.

it's extremely important. we do know that. you just have to decide whether the effective dissemination of info on this very important subject outweighs your need to feel superior to everyone around you and to unsubtly and adolescently make sure everyone knows you feel that sense of superiority.

so far, the answer's no. who's not serious here?

let me put it a different way for theamericanist:

refraining from treating your entire audience with contempt is not an optional nicety of communication. it's integral to the effective practice of same.

people who routinely preemptively bluster automatically turn off listeners. the blusterers also tend to be hoping to distract from some weakness in their argument. these are lessons we learn on the playground.

if you still haven't internalized those basic lessons, you've cast significant doubt on the soundness of your information and on your judgment in general.

you severely hurt your own arguments and credibility with this shit. knock it off and stick to the information you want to present.

A Reagan technique was to offer classified briefings for political opponents, so they would then have a club to beat 'em with: it's hard to publicly oppose a secret policy that you have been officially briefed on, cuz then discussing it publicly would itself be a felony (and an automatic expulsion from your committees, possibly from the Congress itself).

This is one major problem: I have no idea why Congress defers to the executive branch on their own security clearances. This seems to be a separation of powers problem. Congress should have its own system (preferably that tracks the executive branch's), and their own management and enforcement of them. They shouldn't be at the President's mercy for access to information within their oversight.

The intelligence community, and more specifically individual IC agencies, have always used classification and compartmentalization as weapons. Mostly it's used between IC agencies as a good way to keep each other in the dark. The CIA and DIA were in a pretty public battle for decades. The whole system is a mess, but there are too many entrenched interests. The Director of National Intelligence is the latest attempt to fix this: who knows whether he'll end up helping.

LOL -- oh, fuck you, Ray. If you really want to learn something, STFU about how sensitive you are.

There are a couple extra points worth noting.

First, it's not true that the statutes and practices controlling how classified information is discussed with Congress (or, for that matter, within the Executive branch) assume that anybody higher up has access to everything further down the line.

This is only partly a function of "compartmentalization". It's even more basic: Need to Know. Ya wanna know what time it is, you don't need to know how to build a watch. A top secret briefing might tell you "it's eastern standard time", an SCI briefing might tell you "it's morning"; but nobody with responsibility for secret work is going to tell you "it's 10 am EDT but this Rolex is six years old, loses a minute a decade and was set five minutes ahead..." unless you're the President and you want to spend five years chasing down something that's literally none of your business: even the President just needs to know what time it is, and that the watch is accurate (or at least, that it's not attached to a bomb).

For one thing, almost nobody is going to know all that much detail about a compartmentalized operation. It'd take forever to find the guy who built the watch. Finding stuff like that out is a DISTRIBUTED task, a function of many individuals in a free society sharing information. But that's not how secrets work.

Think of it in terms of something that isn't policy: Congress doesn't need to know precisely what the alloys are, nor how the wings are designed, for some new fighter jet. Those are the product of millions if not billions of extremely high-tech secret research, which would essentially be given away not only to our enemies, but to our commercial competitors, if they were made public. Even hinting at 'em is worth a lot, so such technical details are properly kept secret -- like the Coca Cola formula, if you like.

The metallurgist has to know, of course. But he's not going to know about the plane's avionics. The folks who design the GPS and ballistics won't know about the metallurgy.

And all Congress will be told is that the thing flies really fast, is really manueverable, extraordinarily cost-efficient, and unbelieveably deadly to our enemies -- so it is VITAL for our national security-- AND it will be built in 411 Congressional districts and all 50 states.

Same basic dynamic applies to policies, except where it doesn't matter to the public that much what the best alloys are for the skin of a fighter jet's wing (just that they're good, and maybe even cost-efficient), it DOES matter if we're trying to support this government, or overthrow that one, or just maybe we've suspended the ban on waterboarding (or assassinations?) that sorta thing.

That's where compartmentalization comes in: the surest way to keep a secret is not to tell anybody. Surest way to keep a COMPLEX secret, is to make sure that nobody knows all the parts. Most folks have no Need to Know what time it is, which is why most of the debate is about whether it is morning in America, rather than why we need 250 new fighter jets or which governments we're supporting -- or knocking off, much less how we're doing it.

Eric misses the point: Congress has only limited capacity to compel the Executive branch to tell 'em stuff. There is the Constitutional side of this, executive privilege and whatnot; and there is the national security aspect (I can think of a few dozen members of Congress whom I would not want to know the nuke codes); but mostly it is a function of having rival branches of government that COMPETE.

So the simplest explication of what we know from the public spat about this one, is that the highest ranking folks in Congress were told that the Bush administration was using sophisticated interrogation techniques, perhaps even enhanced versions of how our own military is trained, all within the parameters of carefully-researched legal authority. Bland as hell, given what it was.

Pelosi may well have believed not only that she wasn't told we WERE waterboarding, she may be right that she was deliberately misled to think she was being told that we were NOT doing it -- when we were.

But the whole point of the briefing would have been to keep such stuff vague. You don't do that by provoking direct questions, much less by answering them clearly.

The history of Executive-Legislative relations on such matters (see Goldwater-Casey) suggests that such a briefing would have been calculated NOT to make any reasonable person think of questions like "give me some examples". But as noted, even if Pelosi had asked "are we talking torture, like waterboarding?", it is unlikely that the briefer would have been authorized (or even able) to answer, while the question itself would be classified, under the terms of the briefing.

Folks specifically assigned to know more -- like Harman at the time -- would have been told more about specifics, less on the big picture. There would have been a strategy directing this, not just the law: the Intelligence committees would likely have been told (and Pelosi might have eventually gotten an answer, IF she'd asked, which I'm inclined to doubt) that these were SERE techniques, including waterboarding. Hell, there may even be rules limiting the circumstances under which Harman could tell Pelosi: SCI really does mean "compartmentalized".

It's unlikely that the various rationalizations we've heard in the public debate over this were officially debated in secret, but it is almost impossible that there were any ones raised we haven't heard (like the amazing al-Qaeda plan that got foiled, shazzam!): this isn't about a sifting of opinion in a free exchange based on facts, because that's not how secrets are kept.

But it's easier to understand if you don't get distracted into the substance of it, and just recognize that Congress and the Executive are RIVALS -- assume that nobody in the CIA ever wants to tell Congress anything, and you won't be far off.

Much like Casey under Reagan, the basic strategy would have been to tell Congress as little as possible without provoking 'em into making trouble or resisting what the Administration wanted to do -- EVEN IF, as was true for Goldwater with Reagan, they wanted to do the same things.

The thing is -- this whole flap is a transparent attempt to distract from the accountability of the Bush administration for torture, by claiming that Congress was "an accomplice". It's bullshit.

But beyond that, there are LAWS which control what secrets the Congress is told, in what circumstances, and there are consequences when those are violated. That's why this uninformed argument (Red, f'r instance, but also Ray) about what Pelosi "must" have known, or been "incurious" about it, is so pernicious.

It doesn't simply distract from what we already know, forcing Pelosi et.al, to discuss what they knew and when, is practically calculated to keep our elected representatives from finding out what they NEED to know in the future, by breaking the rules for the hard-fought gains in forced disclosure that we've barely kept.

the CIA are now "terror fighters" as opposed to the behind closed doors spy agency they have always been....lols.

newsflash Sen. Bond...NOT James Bond.... terrorism has existed since the Crusades.
hey look, chocolate is the new vanilla! Conservative is the new stupid! wait that's not new.

This is one major problem: I have no idea why Congress defers to the executive branch on their own security clearances.
Posted by: ericblair

Elected officials don't have clearances. Obama does not have a security clearance. He did not sign an NDA. Neither did Pelosi.

Dayum, Mike -- you're worse than stoopid.

Of course the President has a legal right to any national security secret information in possession of the US government, regardless of classification. That you don't know this, marks you as ignorant. (The President does NOT, however, automatically have access to all law enforcement information. He can't really legally snoop around in the IRS files.)

But Mike, that you'd think it was somehow okay for the nation's highest elected official, chief law enforcement officer and commander in chief of the armed forces to be subject to rules like an NDA, marks you as something considerably lower than ignorant.

Who are those rules FOR, dude? On behalf of what authority could anybody deny a President access to classified national security information?

LOL -- this is tinfoil hat territory: I'm sorry, President Obama, but you're not cleared for the Area 51 files....

Access to classified information by US Representatives and Senators is governed by the rules of the House and Senate, not by the Executive branch. Since most of that information is, so to speak, held in trust by the Executive rather than by the Legislative, access to it is a combination of law and mutual agreement between rival branches of government.

But, as a working proposition, yeah: winning election to national office as President or Vice President, or as a US Senator or Representative, eliminates the requirement to have a formal clearance. If somebody is good enough for the state of Oklahoma or Ohio, then that's good enough for the FBI and the CIA... unless their colleagues in the House or Senate aren't persuaded.

Psst... Mike: you might want to read the document that starts "We, the People..." and think about why it starts with those words.

But, as a working proposition, yeah: winning election to national office as President or Vice President, or as a US Senator or Representative, eliminates the requirement to have a formal clearance.
Posted by: theAmericanist

Thank you for agreeing with me.

"Obama does not have a security clearance." -- Red

"the President has a legal right to any national security secret information in possession of the US government, regardless of classification." - me

Who is agreeing with whom?

"Obama does not have a security clearance." -- Red

"the President has a legal right to any national security secret information in possession of the US government, regardless of classification." - me

Who is agreeing with whom?
Posted by: theAmericanist

A security clearance is the very particular thing that you earn by going through a painstaking investigation process (more than a year for a top secret), and by signing a bunch of legal documents promising to keep your mouth shut, many of which hover over you for the rest of your life. Elected officials don't have one, and are therefore not held to the standards of one. Their staffers do and are held to them. That's one reason why you can go after staffers for leaks.

True dat.