I’m hesitant to jump to conclusions, but I think there are a few lawmakers, including some Democratic leaders, who might want to comment on torture-policy briefings they received way back in 2002.
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.
The WaPo report is more than a little disconcerting. Leading lawmakers — including Democrats Nancy Pelosi, Jane Harman, Bob Graham, and John Rockefeller — from both parties received “about 30” private CIA briefings, some of which included descriptions of waterboarding “and other harsh interrogation methods.”
Not only did these lawmakers generally fail to raise objections, officials at the briefings “described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support.”
“In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic,” said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. “But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, ‘We don’t care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.’ “
If lawmakers could perhaps elaborate now on what they knew, and when, it’d be very helpful — because it sounds as if they raised concerns about waterboarding after it made headlines in 2005, not before.
I found this response from Jane Harman particularly interesting.
Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the 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. 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.”
This has been coming up quite a bit lately. This week, we also learned that Harman received at least some information about the CIA torture tapes, which were subsequently destroyed. But, Harman argues, she wasn’t “free to disclose anything.”
Matt Ygleasis raised a very good point this week in response to this argument.
What members who find themselves in the position Harman says she’s in — and the position that Dick Durbin, Carl Levin, and others found themselves in regarding the 2002 NIE — need to realize is that on some level acquiescence in these kind of abuses winds up legitimizing them. A member who believes he or she is in possession of evidence of crimes being committed and covered-up through illegitimate classification ought to seriously consider civil disobedience: calling a press conference, stating the facts, and accepting responsibility for the consequences. The White House could, of course, then turn around and seek to prosecute a member for violating classification laws, and the member could argue justification and we’d have it out. That’s a tough call to make, clearly. But our political leaders have responsibilities to the country and to the Constitution….
It’s a point I wish more Dems had kept in mind.