Complicity

Yesterday the Washington Post revealed a secret meeting in 2002 between the CIA and top Intelligence Committee officials on Capitol Hill, including Democrats, about the secret detention policies the agency was about to put into effect.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was 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.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

There can be no doubt that this was a partisan leak designed to discredit Democratic anger over torture techniques, and to muddy the waters over the current outrage from the destruction of the torture tapes.

After studying this for a day or so, I have to say that it's too bad. I agree that speaking out over torture policy in 2002 would have been the end of any politician's career, not because I think Americans were somehow bloodthirsty at that time but because the Republican attack machine was so powerful then that they would have steamrolled any objectors. That doesn't mean you get to throw up your hands and say nothing. There are too many methods that leading Democrats could have employed to make known this debasement of American values.

The Intelligence Committees were created as a response to the discovery in the 1970s of illegal conduct by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The core function is to monitor what the intelligence community does and to "assure that such activities" are legal. It is a complete travesty for the senior Democrats on those Committees (and their apologists) to claim that they are powerless to act when learning of lawbreaking. Anyone who thinks that way should not be on the Committee. The idea that they can't do anything once learning of lawbreaking is the very opposite of the Committee's core purpose. But, of course, they were not and are not powerless to act. They simply chose not to act.

In addition to the other mechanisms for action identified here and elsewhere thus far that are available to Senators who learn of patently illegal behavior in a classified setting, key members of the Intelligence Committee could also refuse to cooperate in the enactment of legislation, block nominees, and otherwise thwart the administration's needs until there is some resolution. Such Senators could hold closed door hearings or announce publicly that they have learned of serious lawbreaking by the CIA (without specifying what the lawbreaking is) and demand that the administration agree to a classified setting to resolve those concerns (such as appointing a special counsel with security clearances or empowering a court able to investigate and adjudicate highly classified matters).

But they did none of that. They did the opposite: they continued to cooperate meekly with the administration, pass all of their demanded legislation, and keep quiet.

Pelosi is claiming that she knew very little about the actual techniques, and anyway Jane Harman knew more than she did. Harman said that she did note her opposition to the destruction to the torture tapes, but that was completely in private and seemingly classified by Harman herself. If they wanted the information out there, there were ample ways to do so.

Now the only thing that gives me pause about this is the fact that Bob Graham is saying he has no recollection of these meetings. Now, Bob Graham is legendary for writing everything down in these little binders obsessively. He's out of government and doesn't have much of a reason to lie. So that gives me a little pause.

But clearly, a lot of Democrats knew that the Bush Administration was about to torture terror suspects, and they did nothing. This is a bright line. Further, they sat out the debate when Congress attempted to actually do something about this humiliation, preferring to have the Axis of McCain fight it out. This is how we ended up with the Military Commissions Act, perhaps the worst legislation coming out of the Congress in decades.

I have to come to the conclusion that Democrats enabled these efforts, and when given the chance to force some change, sanctioned them. Which means that this line is completely accurate.

Well, I guess now I know why impeachment was “off the table.”

UPDATE: Pelosi continues to say that she wasn't informed of exactly what the techniques were, and found it hard to object to the possibility of certain techniques. And Bob Graham says he didn't know what the CIA was up to. It's very important to keep in mind that the WaPo story was almost certainly put out by Republicans.