Why is Pelosi being skewered over 'what did she know and when did she know it"? Even if she did know, it was probably Top Secret and it’s not like she could do much about it.
Is she just today’s handy target?
Yes.
Glass house, rocks. The CIA feels confident enough to throw the rocks back.
The CIA’s memo that they briefed people like Graham is a lie. There is no reason to believe that the CIA, which broke the law by torturing, would not fabricate evidence to indicate that they informed government officials fully. But if the CIA believes that Pelosi broke the law by being informed of the torture, I say prosecute her if she broke the law. If the government can torture, cause deaths during that torture (murder), lie about it, destroy evidence, cover up evidence and manufacture evidence obscuring it and the war the torture was designed to justify, then it is not a government of liberty, but a government of lies.
If you want to stop Congress from opening an investigation into criminal activity, what better way to do it then by implicating the Speaker of the House in that criminal activity?
I would guess they picked her for Name recognition.
Allegedly, this occurred in 2002 when she was the ranking democrat on the Intelligence Committee. See News Article.
So, to be sure, below is a brief review of what the Intelligence Committee is capable of.
This is a brief overview of the Intelligence Committeeand what they do.
Here’s a full list of their Rules of Procedure. Legalese read, but here’s a few sections to note:
Rule 6 - Investigation Procedures - can initiate investigations.
Rule 7 - Subpoena Power (CIA members and documents)
Rule 9 - Procedures for handling classified or committee sensitive information
Rule 9.4 - Each member shall have access at all times to any information received from all sources.
Rule 9.6 - Access to classified information limited to member with security clearance and need-to-know basis, as determined by the committee.
The procedures mention access to “classified” information. I never saw it defined. I’m assuming that includes any level of classified information (as the poster above noted it was likely top secret)
In general, a person may have access to classified information provided that:
(1) A favorable determination of eligibility for access has been made by an agency head (ie, security clearance)
(2) The person has signed an approved nondisclosure agreement; and
(3) The person has a need-to-know the information.
Levels of classification (Most to least classified): Top Secret, Secret, Confidential
So, if I’m reading all this together correctly, the committee has access to classified information; they may determine security clearance and need-to-know on their own. I don’t think they’d be required to sign a non-disclosure agreement, b/c they are already bound by their rules of procedure against that (and they are the Intelligence Committee). But that’s a guess. Even if they signed a non-disclosure agreement, it just means she can’t disclose what she “knows” until it’s no longer classified information. It’s no longer classified today (ie, it’s public knowledge the US waterboarded) so the agreement would no longer bound her re: waterboarding.
What does it all mean? If she knew of a possibility the CIA was waterboarding, then she had a slew of powers to know more. It’s way to early to tell what she knew.
Her best defense if she knew? Deny knowing, b/c she’d have to explain why she didn’t do anything about it.
If someone has time, they should double check my reading of the procedures to make sure I didn’t take things out of context or overlook anything. I made interpretations of the rules I listed to make them easy to read and may not have interpreted them correctly.
The CIA briefed Congress on what they were doing. There isn’t going to be an investigation because there’s nothing to investigate. It’s political fodder that will blow up in their collective faces.
Disregard all of this (as it applies to Pelosi). This applies to the SENATE Intelligence Committee. Pelosi was on the HOUSE intelligence committee.
So yea, this points more towards name recoginition; I’ll check the House Intelligence Committee and see how it’s different.
A lot of that, yeah, “name recognition”. Pelosi is the Dem the Pubbies love to hate, and most love to point at, in the continuing belief that her status as one of them San Francisco (tofu-eating, Volvo-driving trail mix munching limosine…) liberals makes her vulnerable. Mightily they have labored for that name-recognition. Wasn’t it last year or so they advanced her to the Axis of Liberal, starting whispering darkly about the doom that would befall us when the Whore of Berkeley emptied her Cup of Obamanations on the Beast of Gay Marriage (ten heads, seven horns, totally fabulous…)
She’s supposed to be an easy mark, and I could see why they think so, because I can’t stand her and couldn’t tell you why to save my soul. Not that it needs any. But still…
I know just how you feel.
You get done with some pretty strong net fu, post a really cogent set of cites, and bask in the impending kudos and plaudits, your eye wanders idly over your post and then you see the word, that one word that means you screwed not just the pooch, but the whole dog pound, and you rush back to expunge and the hamsters have just had their nightly meth, spinning the wheels at warp four, so the edit window closes in forty-four seconds…
Yeah. Been there.
Yup. Pretty much! “I must’ve put a decimal point in the wrong place or something. Shit, I always do that. I always mess up some mundane detail.” [Office Space]
You gotta own up to it, though.
Anyways, the HOUSE intelligence committee has different procedures. I can’t find them though, but the CRS report link states on pg. 2 that they are covered by the Operations Security Program for the House and they process security clearances for the staff. So that implies…something. I dunno, I’m tired of reading legal crap.
Great post elucidator, classic.
Well, no, not really, unless some smug asshole busts you for it, then you gotta pretend to be a good sport. Thats the part that really kills me.
Because she said she didn’t know about the torture when in fact she might have. I haven’t followed every twist and turn in this story, but that’s what it comes down to.
If I have to choose between believing the CIA or believing Pelosi, I believe I’ll choose to believe Joe Isuzu.
Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?
“We may have tortured prisoners to death, but you knew we were torturing prisoners to death and didn’t stop us. That makes you just as bad as us. And if you help us cover up that we tortured prisoners to death we’ll help you cover up that you knew we tortured prisoners to death.”
I can’t figure out which way Pelosi is swinging on this one. Maybe she’s being perfectly forthright, and maybe she’s completely talking out of her ass. I’m sure we’ll find out sooner or later. But here’s what’s cracking me up about the whole affair: people are aghast that the CIA is being accused of lying … as though the CIA is a bastion of overt actions and perfect transparancy. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if the CIA, under Republican direction, kept Democrat opposition in the dark on some things. I don’t know if they did, but I wouldn’t be shocked.
Seems more the latter. Even the Washington Post is referring to her “shifting accounts of what she knew.” It started out as a position of complete ignorance, now it seems she did know it was occurring, but it was from an aide who had been briefed, not from a direct briefing. Why that makes an ounce of difference, I have no idea. The question remains a fair one: if the interrogation techniques are the outrage she says they are, why why she silent and inactive when she became aware of them? She is now dodging the central question by (badly) diverting the question to whether the CIA memos and minutes are lies–again, while finally acknowledging she did know (again, who gives a shit how she became aware of it as it relates to the central question?).
That’s why. Because she originally said she didn’t know (not that she knew but couldn’t do anything about it). She’s a person of extreme importance who has routinely taken a partisan and contentious position, now caught stepping on her metaphorical dick (she doesn’t have a literal one, right?). Ultimately it just takes the wind out of the party’s moral outrage, though clearly it doesn’t invalidate any argument for or against the interrogation techniques. It just shows that Pelosi, on this issue at least, is a typical opportunistic politician whose principles are tied to polls and political gain. Both sides of the aisle are lousy with such creatures. She fucked up and should have just admitted she knew and applied whatever spin she liked to that now-admitted fact.
Yes, the attacks on Pelosi do rather require an admission that we tortured people, don’t they?
I’d be willing to trade Pelosi’s position in the senate for Bush, Cheney and Condoleezza behind bars. Is that really what the pubbies want here?, because it sure looks like that’s what they’re pushing.
Because
That’s all there is to it, from what I can tell. Like most of the Congressional Democrats, she became outraged over the actions of the previous administration only when it was politically convenient to do so. No great surprise, but it’s another reminder of that party’s failures from 2000 to 2008. And it’s another screwup for Pelosi, although she wasn’t a leader at that point.
I think that misses the point. The strategy is to position it thusly: If these interrogation techniques (which we believe are not torture) were the illegal and moral violations you claim them to be, how do you reconcile this with your complete lack of action or comment when you became aware of them?
That is insurmountable, politically. What answer would satisfy either side of the debate among your constituents? How can you argue for the illegality if you were complicit? It splashes the entire opposition, given her prominence. It becomes an issue you want to go away–that is, if you want to get elected again. That’s the political reality.