Sgt. Schultz doesn't live here anymore
Despite the White House's denials that they knew nothing of the CIA's destruction of the torture/interrogation tapes, the top four lawyers representing the President, the Vice President, and the NSC were all involved.
It must be said that we don't know for a fact what these folks were arguing, but, "One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes."
At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials......
Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.
It must be said that we don't know for a fact what these folks were arguing, but, "One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes."
posted by mikevotes at
7:17 AM
4 Comments:
i notice that the white House response has not been to deny the validity of the story, but rather to say that there are no official statements to confirm the anonymous source's statements. There's a big difference.
Simply saying "I've never admitted to lying about this" sounds considerably less compelling than a straight denial that you've lied about something.
By
Todd Dugdale , at 2:58 PM
Well, they don't want to outright lie, but they have to give the appearance of that position.
They want to kill the story before the full detail comes out.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I wonder if these tapes made the rounds at the White House in kind of a "torture porn" kind of way.
By
mikevotes, at 3:43 PM
Clearly it's the White House who's the bad guys in all this: from torturing people in the first place, to denying it in the second place.
But if high-level Democrats KNEW about it, YEARS AGO -- why did they say nothing? They should have been yelling it from the rooftops or, at the very least, leaking it to the news outlets.
This administration operates like the mafia: you tell on me, I tell on you. if we stay silent, we all keep our jobs and make money. what's it gonna be?
By
r8r, at 4:50 PM
It's really tough on the folks on the Congressional intel committees. They are not allowed to talk about what they're briefed on. They're not allowed to tell their staff or any other congressmen.
The most they can do is write a classified letter of objection which doesn't become public until the story breaks open.
It's not really oversight. They have no recourse.
(And there are some legitimate questions how the members on these committees handle contracts. That was Brent Wilkes' genius is that he did bad contracts and bribery hidden in the black budget where nobody could say a word.)
By
mikevotes, at 5:48 PM
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