Finding cover on torture.

I'd be really curious who provided the "backbone" for the WaPo story today reporting that the four leaders of the Congressional intel committees were briefed on waterboarding.

"Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

The way it works, as we learned with Rockefeller and the NSA spying, is that these intel committee members can't speak about what they hear in the briefings, not even to other committee members, which later leaves them open to characterizations like the one above.

From the description of the briefing they were given, "a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk," waterboarding was probably mentioned in passing, probably no more than a bullet point in an overwhelming presentation.

With the knowledge on the CIA/military side that waterboarding tread very close to the line of torture, I can't imagine that this "virtual tour" worked to highlight that practice.

But, here it is, being served up as cover.