The CIA has a duty to protect classified information and projects that are vital to our national security. And when Congress, a venal and leak-filled institution, comes asking questions, the CIA has a duty to protect sensitive missions and information from being compromised.

The CIA saved countless lives by preventing Congress from knowing details about highly sensitive matters.

And why would the CIA have misled and/or lied to members of Congress? Let's see, I wonder if there was similar activity amongst, say, the Executive and the Judicial branches during this same time period, from 2001 until recently?

Hmm, I can't pinpoint the connection exactly...

well, this is certainly shocking news! i've suddenly lost all hope in the integrity of my government.

the cia?

tell lies to the congress?

unbelievable. even in a time of BushCo.

next thing you'll be telling me: they broke international law by grabbing up people indiscriminately and taking them to secret locations and torturing them... just like the bad guys in some cheap tawdry old movie.

hah! who could believe that?

No, Steve, Republicans aren't making a stink about this because CIA secrecy is a pillar of conservative government. Without CIA secrecy, neoconservatives, they can't lie their way into war, destabilize regimes, torture prisoners overseas, etc. It's not because they are covering their asses, it's because it's an integral part of their governing philosophy.

Get with the program.

i'm sure there faux-patriotic Americans stupid enough to believe as Al Jr. pretends to. Nonetheless, I thank him for the laugh.

just because an organization that kidnaps, drugs, rapes, and tortures those who fall into their custody doesn't mean they would LIE to congress....

that would be wrong.

Come on. I'm sure the Republicans will get called out on the Sunday talk shows.

As Winston Churchill said, "in war, truth is so important that it must be surrounded by a bodyguard of lies".

We are at war. QED.

No matter what magically realistic BS Pelosi's butt-boys like Holt toss out, Obama is still going to veto the Intell bill that would give such clowns & clownettes any info they couldn't share with their mistresses (gigilos for the Speaker).

Obama and W are on the same page here

This whole thing cracks me up. Of course the CIA lies to Congress and everybody else on a regular basis. Their interests are usually not the citizenry's interests, and are very rarely consonant with democratic principles.

One could narrow down the term C.I.A. and focus in on one name Porter Goss. Gee, isn't he a former GOP Congressman? The congress was lied too by one of there own, this maybe one of the few times the GOP willing crossed the aisle, they may even claim that these lies were actually bipartisan so therefore we should be happy.

I TOTALLY did not see that coming.

OTOH, if the report hadn't been watered down to state the obvious, another opportunity has been narrowly averted for the citizens of this great country to wake up and take back their country. Sixty some years from now, a high school student will do a report connecting the dots and be totally astonished at how perilous the 2000-08 years had become, present his/er findings to be included in the W lib-ary and get a rejection slip.

Let it be observed that from now on, releasing reports negative to GOP propaganda must be coordinated with a smear campaign to keep the base in the dark.

Why are there Republicans on an Intelligence Committee?
Oh, and Kit Bombed is an enormous asshole.

Boner needs to resign. He libeled the speaker and now there is proof that she was telling the truth. I say lock Boner up in Guantanamo. What a piece of shit he is.

The reviews are in, and Panetta disappoints with his rendition of The Dead Parrot Sketch.

Al, your logic is astoundingly circular. "We're at war" because the CIA, at Bush's direction, lied and extorted false information under torture. So now it's okay for them to lie because we're at war -- a war they created?

Look, everyone knows that a spy agency, by definition, lies a lot, including to its own side. But then don't you think it was astoundingly disingenuous to heap abuse on Speaker Pelosi for stating the truth, when Congress was under unfair attack for having "approved" activities they didn't know about? Show of hands from anyone who ever REALLY believed that she wasn't telling the truth about that?

Show of hands from anyone who ever REALLY believed that she wasn't telling the truth about that?

(Raising hand)

Given the CIA's extreme popularity with mainstream Americans, I suspect that the Democrats are going to lose this battle. Time will tell.

I don't believe a word Spoken from congress men and women who have made a life of lying to the people in this country.The CIA may use deceit to talk about what they do.BUT Our Representatives dummying up is despicable.Its not the CIA I worry about.Its the asshats that run the show that concern me. I want my country back.

Alcee Hastings is a signatory!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA(breathe)HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. HOO. &heh.

Reading this sort of news every day, one could conclude that maybe the only way a country can get rid of the far right is the way the far right was excised in Germany 65 years ago - I sure would nope this isn't true, I'm just reading a history of the last year of the war, and there is a good case to be made that the period June 5, 1944 - May 8, 1945 might just be the worst 11 months in all of human history. But the way these guys hang on the way they do, their refusal to admit reality, their willingness to let the country fail if it means the destruction of their enemies - all this is very reminiscent of the way the Nazis were those 11 months.

Right now, the only thing I can think of to do is to work as hard as possible next year to get at least 5 more Senate seats and another 15-20 House seats, which might finally give the Democrats the spine to take on the dead-enders who would be left. it's that or start organizing our own militias afterwards.

Ironic, isn't it? How does it feel guys, that someone actually might have mislead "you" for once...sucks don't it...

I don't think you can say Gingrich "seriously argued that the Speaker's comments increased the risk of a terrorist attack." "Asserted," maybe. "Claimed," maybe. "Pulled out of his ass," maybe. But not "seriously argued."

neill you sir are a moron!!

"grabbing up people indiscriminately and taking them to secret locations and torturing them"

Just how many people were waterboarded sir? Can you tell me?

The ANSWER is THREE!!! THREE sir. That's it. They were the worst of the worst, and should have been shot in the head when it was over.

www.libertarianhumor.com

Anyone that argues for Pelosi is as misguided and uninformed as, well, Obama. It's amazing how the assertions she made about the CIA gradually went away because her administration knew not to try and hang one of it's own, chiefly due to the fact that she had nothing to back it up. It's also blatantly self hypocritical to try to keep blaming the last administration simply because she's liberal AND because her own on the hill are screwing up by the numbers. Take care of the present and the future first, that's your JOB...the rest will take it's own course. And to think, she's third in line...God help us.

it's that or start organizing our own militias afterwards.

TCinLA with a gun. If that doesn't scare you...

Real trolls, fake trolls; who can tell the diff? And does it matter? The comedy is equally welcome.

Where is Kit Bond's apology to Pelosi? Where is the outrage from Gingrich? Where is the MSM's coverage.

Bond's self-righteous indignation was spewing out of his condescending mealey mouth but he quickly clams up when the truth is revealed...one which he knew about before smearing Pelosi in the first place.

Damn, MO has got some real goobers for senators...McCaskill and Bond should just be referred to as the dem and the repub. (I still can't get over McCaskill calling single payer supporters "the far left"!). Bond is just a bought and bribed hypocrite for special interests.

Common sense should have told these people that of course the CIA mislead congress...the Bush administration was misleading everyone!

btw...Posted by: Jim s on July 9, 2009 at 12:20 PM

Your non sensical gibberish is wasted here...the truth is out and acts like a cross to a vampire like you...like the head of the CIA admitting they mislead congress ...just like Pelosi said they did. (If vaseline doesn't work then maybe axle grease will help you get your head out of your ass)

Strangely missing from this discussion is exactly what topic the intelligence briefings lied about. For all we know, it may have been the size of Saddam Hussein's pen*s.

Posted by: Al Jr. on July 9, 2009 at 8:34 AM |

There is a big difference between protecting sensitive operations and classified information and covering up rogue and lawless behavior.

If say the CIA had a group who were drug smuggling and part of a drug cartell protection racket and congress got wind of it and asked for a briefing...you get the picture.

Now imagine a group acting outside of the law rendering imagined enemies, torturing anyone they got a hold of trying to find information to justify invading Iraq and not to "prevent attacks" and they were asked about it by congress and denied doing it...then they are not operating within the parameters for which they were created to begin with. The "leaks" they are concerned with are those that the press might expose concerning illegal activity on their part and not anything to do with protecting America or with state secrets...that has been used as a cover to operate outside the law or their constitutional duties...as has been recently revealed.

Hell, even whistle blowers have been gagged not to reveal which congressmen (like representative Roy Blunt R-MO)were involved in selling national secrets to Pakistan (like nuclear weapons plans). Now that is a role for CIA secrecy...but only if they aren't involved in the selling out.

With the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame it seems petty to worry about Congress leaking info huh.

You know this would not be a big deal if not for the fact that it validates Pelosi’s claim AND that what the CIA was misleading congress about is exactly what other investigations are already revealing…that Bush/Cheney authorized torture and rendition for “political” reasons and not for protecting the country, AND the depth of wiretapping was not being done to find terrorists but to tap democratic donors and financial transactions etc.

Saying that the CIA was misleading congress would not surprise congressmen but the “content” of the misrepresentations must be overwhelming for the Director to feel the need to make such a confession. That is scary. The Cheney/Bush administration's depravity for political gain knew no bounds and is completely unjustifiable.

"...The CIA saved countless lives by preventing Congress from knowing details about highly sensitive matters. ..."-Al jr

2words: Iran Contra
4 words- The Shah of Iran

Justify your statement Al. How, who, where and when were countless lives saved. Examples please.

This is in your fantasy mind but does not exist in reality. This is about oversight of the CIA so evil power hungry men like Dick Cheney can't use them (we already know he manipulated CIA reports) for his own personal (Blackwater) gain. That's what we are finding out now...the CIA lied and withheld info from congress because it was illegal activity they were engaged in...Duh!)

To those who say that the CIA had a duty to lie to Congress, in order to protect state secrets, and classified information, I have two words:

Security Clearance.

To think that those members of Congress who sit on national security, defense, and intelligence committees do not have the necessary security clearance, is naive. Additionally, should a member of Congress release details of classified materials disclosed during said committee meetings, they would be subject to criminal prosecution.

With these two basic facts, there was no reason why the CIA should have lied to Congress.

There is a simple way to handle this: abolish the CIA.
It performs no functions, legal functions, anyway, that aren't performed already (and better) by the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Treasury, Labor, Transportation, NSA, the Atomic Energy Agency and, probably, HHS, HUD and the EPA, as well.
The CIA's SOLE reason for being is to gather intelligence from all sources (open-source and classified) available to the Federal government on assigned topics, analyse the contents of those reports and provide a detailed, composite brief of the subject to the Executive and Congress. That is what is was designed to do in 1947, that is what was charged with doing in the 1947 legislation that created it and that is what it stopped doing within a decade of its creation.
In its present incarnation, it is one of the three greatest threats to democracy in the United States; the others being the media oligarchy and right-wing terrorism.

Justify your statement Al

You realize you're talking to a parody, right?

More sauce for the goose ...

CIA and congressional officials have refused to describe the nature of the covert program, but insisted it is not connected to the CIA's use of controversial "enhanced" interrogation techniques.

Thanks Al Jr for the belly laugh. I didn't realize people SO naive still existed. And MathewRQuarreler
What in Gods name qualifies you to state what the public thinks? Your assertion that the CIA is extremely popular is proof that you too have been had by the CIA and its' tactics.The CIA just like the republicons have been telling the public what they think ever since their success in Dallas. Just think without fools like you and Jr this tactic wouldn't work. TCinLA I am of the opinion that the current crop of democratic leadership has demonstrated their unworthiness of our support. It's time for grassroots organizations to nominate people from the community to assume the leadership of this country. Big Ed you are the joke all three of them. How blind can a person be? And Doug, right on, you have restored my faith in humanity with your insight into the problem and a method with which to solve it. How much brighter the future for democracy would be if such an evil entity could be ended. Don't hold your breath because they kill people who stand in their way.

VLF

Security Clearance doesn't mean that Congress can keep their mouth shut. In 1994, Congress approved Operation Uphold Democracy, which was to invade Haiti and restore their government. Navy Seals went in the night before and once they stormed the beach they were blinded by video cameras. Luckily, no one died, but it turned out the someone on one of the committees leaked the classified information to the press.

The only way a covert operation is successful is when very few people know about it. People become liabilities, especially Congress. This war is being fought dirty by the terrorists and the only way to win is to fight back without limitation. Like General Sherman said, "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." It applied during the Civil War and it applies today.

Good afternoon. I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer. Help me! Need information about: Portable vacuum cleaners. I found only this - best cheap Vacuum cleaner. A basic vacuum cleaner is comprised of six components which are essential. Read on to know how to choose a vacuum cleaner. With best wishes :mad:, Tina from England.