Goss Harmin' Harman?

Since I've been offering one side of the Jane Harman story as the bits of intrigue trickle out in the media, I thought I'd explore the second option - that Bush-era officials at the CIA are using the Harman story as a warning shot against further investigation of their practices with torture and wiretapping, as well as pushing back against a thorn in the CIA's side:

But the former intelligence official familiar with the matter noted that (ex-CIA Director Porter) Goss has given only one on-the-record interview on these CIA controversies since leaving the CIA director job. In the December 2007 interview, he said that Congressional leaders, including Representatives Pelosi and Goss himself, Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) and Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), and later Rep. Harman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), had been briefed on CIA waterboarding back in 2002 and 2003. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," Goss told the Washington Post. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Who was the lone lawmaker the article identified as objecting to the program?

Jane Harman.

"Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the [House intelligence] committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program," the Post reported. "Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy. ‘When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy,' she said. ‘I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything.'"

There is compelling evidence that Goss approved continuing the wiretap on the Israeli agent after seeing Harman's involvement, and in fact tried to get a wiretap up on Harman herself. The internecine battles between Goss and Harman go back a ways, so it's not impossible. We learned yesterday that the wiretap in question did not come from the NSA, and so CIA may have had some direct control over it, although the proper chain of command would have been the FBI. Why was Goss so involved in this?

Of course, none of this changes the fact that Harman did, as has been confirmed by multiple sources, approach the Washington editor of the New York Times in 2004, before the Bush-Kerry election, to try and get them to spike the warrantless wiretapping story. Nor does it change the fact that Harman, a full-throated supporter of wiretapping, now has become a civil liberties champion when denouncing the surveillance of her. This must be why she's hired Lanny Davis to do spin control (and surely he can do a better job than her disastrous efforts so far).

Finally, Jon Stewart skewers this story as only he could.

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Your Government Not at Work - Jane Harman Scandal
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The 18-Minute Torture Gap: Dems Complicit?

As more information spills out about the CIA's destruction of torture tapes sometime in 2005, it is becoming clear that many people, in Congress, in the executive branch, and in the Justice Department had knowledge of the tapes, and urged the Agency not to destroy them, advice they never took.

White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday.

The chief of the agency’s clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.’s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said [...]

Top C.I.A. officials had decided in 2003 to preserve the tapes in response to warnings from White House lawyers and lawmakers that destroying the tapes would be unwise, in part because it could carry legal risks, the government officials said.

But the government officials said that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations, had reversed that decision in November 2005, at a time when Congress and the courts were inquiring deeply into the C.I.A.’s interrogation and detention program. Mr. Rodriguez could not be reached Friday for comment.

As the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee in 2003, Porter J. Goss, then a Republican congressman from Florida, was among Congressional leaders who warned the C.I.A. against destroying the tapes, the former intelligence officials said. Mr. Goss became C.I.A. director in 2004 and was serving in the post when the tapes were destroyed, but was not informed in advance about Mr. Rodriguez’s decision, the former officials said.

Who the hell is running the CIA when physical evidence can be destroyed without the Director's knowledge?

But this not only is a dark stain on the CIA, and the Administration for authorizing the techniques that are now being covered up. It is a stain on those Democrats who were informed about the existence of these tapes and said nothing in public, meekly sending letters asking for their preservation. This is a persistent pattern among squishes like Jay Rockefeller and Jane Harman.

Jay Rockefeller is constantly learning of legally dubious (at best) CIA intelligence activities, and then saying nothing about them publicly until they are leaked to the press, at which point he expresses outrage and incredulity -- but reveals nothing. Really, isn't it about time the Democrats select an effective Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one who will treat this scandal with the seriousness it deserves, and who will shed much-needed light on the CIA program of torture, cruel treatment and obstruction of evidence? ...

Jane Harman also knew of the intention to destroy the tapes, and she at least "urged" the CIA in writing not to do it. (Where were her colleagues?) But when she found out the CIA had destroyed the tapes, where was Harman's press conference? Where were the congressional hearings?

Rockefeller, indeed, is trying to change his story and claim that he didn't know about the tapes until a couple days ago. Of course, Intelligence Committee members are in a tough spot, forbidden from revealing state secrets while charged with official oversight. However, they are not powerless:

There are countless mechanisms available to a U.S. Senator or Representative to do something about illegal behavior they discover. Anyone -- not just someone in such a position -- has mechanisms available to them under whistleblower laws to intiate proceedings to investigate illegal government conduct. Why couldn't they have done that?

They could have also communicated much more aggressively within the government that unless the illegal behavior stopped, they would invoke those mechanisms. Why couldn't they have done that?

They could also commence closed door investigations to exert oversight over these illegal intelligence activities. The whole point of the SECRET SELECT INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEES is to enable Congress to exercise oversight even over the most secretive governmental conduct, precisely in order to prevent illegal behavior of this sort.

After the fact, Democrats are calling for an inquiry into the tapes' destruction. But they should have been adjudicating this all year long, on a bipartisan basis, inside the government, to provide a check on this potential obstruction of justice. That they didn't reflects the fact that they are disinterested in rocking the boat and doing their jobs.

Destruction Terror And Mayhem

I love a news story that allows me to use an LL Cool J lyric. But this is very serious stuff.

The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. The tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks, several officials said.

In a statement to employees on Thursday, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, said that the decision to destroy the tapes was made “within the C.I.A.” and that they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value.

The destruction of the tapes raises questions about whether agency officials withheld information from Congress, the courts and the Sept. 11 commission about aspects of the program.

Ya think?

It's interesting to note when this is coming up. A Senate committee has passed legislation that would limit CIA interrogators to all techniques not approved in the Army Field Manual. This would ban several of the procedures that would presumably have been on those tapes. Of course, they're ALREADY illegal, banned by international law, the Geneva Conventions, and a host of federal statutes. The tapes are essentially evidence of a crime, and worse, evidence of the results of the Cheney Administration's extreme theories of executive power. We are seeing these theories being heavily scrutinized in national and international courts. In London and American prosecutor stated that the US has the right to kidnap British citizens on foreign soil, and not just terror suspects but those accused of garden variety crimes. In the Supreme Court this week arguments were heard on behalf of dozens of detainees at Guantanamo, who have still not been given the right to habeas corpus and the ability to challenge their detentions in court. Here's the story of one of those unfortunate detainees, destined to a life in prison until the German chancellor stepped in.

Just months after U.S. Army troops whisked a German man from Pakistan to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002, his American captors concluded that he was not a terrorist.

"USA considers Murat Kurnaz's innocence to be proven," a German intelligence officer wrote that year in a memo to his colleagues. "He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks."

But the 19-year-old student was not freed. Instead, over the next four years, two U.S. military tribunals that were responsible for determining whether Guantanamo Bay detainees were enemy fighters declared him a dangerous al-Qaeda ally who should remain in prison.

The disparity between the tribunal's judgments and the intelligence community's consensus view that Kurnaz is innocent is detailed in newly released military and court documents that track his fate. His attorneys, who sued the Pentagon to gain access to the documents, say that they reflect policies that result in mistreatment of the hundreds of foreigners who have been locked up for years at the controversial prison.

These are all part of the same dysfunction. Kangaroo courts. Extraordinary rendition. Detention without charges. Torture. Indefinite imprisonment. And now, as these practices become gradually discredited, the evidence is buried. And we don't even know who authorized it. From the NY Times report:

Two former intelligence officials said that Porter J. Goss, the director of the agency at the time, was not told that the tapes would be destroyed and was angered to learn that they had been.

Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined to comment on the matter.

In his statement, General Hayden said leaders of Congressional oversight committees had been fully briefed about the existence of the tapes and told in advance of the decision to destroy them. But the two top members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2005 said Thursday that they had not been notified in advance of the decision to destroy the tapes.

You can try to blot out the evidence, but blotting out the stain on the American character will be impossible. Of everything we've lost over the past seven years, this is by far the worst.

There ought to be jail cells ready and waiting for every one of these guys on January 20, 2009.