When Fully Briefed Does Not Mean Fully Briefed

We're in day two of the latest scandal on officially sanctioned CIA torture, and tensions are rising between the White House and Congress. Democrats on the Intelligence Committee are demanding to see the secret memos, and are going on about the Administration's methods to evade oversight. The White House responded by saying that the relevant people were fully briefed.

PERINO: I believe that the members that have been briefed are satisfied that the policy of the United States and the practices do not constitute torture.

QUESTION: But, Dana, what have they been briefed on? If they haven’t actually seen, like the 2005 legal opinions, they’ve just been briefed in general. You’re selecting what…

PERINO: What I can tell you, and I have been assured they have been fully briefed.

QUESTION: Fully briefed on the actual memos?

PERINO: Yes.

Except John Rockefeller is not fully satisfied, nor has he been fully briefed.

The Administration can’t have it both ways. I’m tired of these games. They can’t say that Congress has been fully briefed while refusing to turn over key documents used to justify the legality of the program.

The reality is, the Administration refused to disclose the program to the full Committee for five years, and they have refused to turn over key legal documents since day one. As I have said from the beginning, Congress has a constitutional responsibility to determine whether the program is the best means for obtaining reliable information, whether it is fully supported by the law, and whether it is in the best interest of the United States.

Of course, the question is, Sen. Rockefeller, what are you going to do about it? The Administration line is that they do not torture and that they follow US law. This is a tautological argument, since they are explicitly redefining the US law that they follow. So what are you going to do to ensure that Congress can at least judge what they are doing and restore the rule of actual law, not law as the President sees fit?

This is spilling into the new Attorney General nomination, and it should.

Meanwhile, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., demanded a copy of a third Justice Department memo justifying military interrogations of terror suspects held outside the United States.

In a letter to Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey, Levin wrote that two years ago he requested — and was denied — the March 14, 2003, legal opinion. Levin asked if Mukasey would agree to release the opinion if the Senate confirms him as attorney general, and cited what he described as a history of the Justice Department stonewalling Congress.

"Such failures and the repeated refusal of DoJ to provide Congress with such documents has prevented the Congress from fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities to conduct oversight," Levin wrote.

There simply shouldn't be any move forward on the Mukasey nomination without the documents themselves, not just a promise to turn them over. The evasion of responsibility should end. Today.