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Pelosi and CIA Clash Over Contents of Key Briefing - WSJ.com - 0 views

  • he top congressional Democrat on Thursday accused the Central Intelligence Agency of deceiving her about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists.
  • The accusation pits House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against the CIA in a war of words over whether she was specifically told in September 2002 that waterboarding was being used on detainees. Republicans accuse her of being hypocritical for criticizing Bush-era interrogation techniques, and say she should have spoken out against them when she was first briefed if she opposed their use.
  • At a contentious news conference Thursday, Mrs. Pelosi said that during the 2002 briefing, "we were told that waterboarding was not being used." Mrs. Pelosi acknowledged that as the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, she was briefed on Sept. 4, 2002, about waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning that critics, including President Barack Obama, call torture. But she said CIA officials told her and other lawmakers only that the Justice Department had concluded the procedure was legal.
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  • A CIA report released last week said that at the briefing, officials described the use of interrogation techniques on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaydah, who had been waterboarded 83 times the month before.
  • "It is not the policy of this Agency to mislead the United States Congress," CIA spokesman George Little said. CIA officials on Thursday stood by their description of the briefing. CIA Director Leon Panetta has said it would be up to Congress to determine whether notes made by agency personnel at the time they briefed lawmakers were accurate.
  • When Mrs. Pelosi's successor on the committee, Rep. Jane Harman (D., Calif.), learned in a February 2003 briefing that waterboarding was being used, she wrote a letter to the administration objecting. But Democrats said it had no effect.
  • while some prominent Democrats, including Mrs. Pelosi and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D., Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, favor a "truth commission" to investigate the Bush-era harsh interrogations, Mr. Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) do not.
  • Ms. Pelosi's fellow Democrats took the unusual step of lashing out at the CIA. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D., Texas) said the CIA briefing Ms. Pelosi received was "inaccurate and incomplete" because she wasn't told that waterboarding was already being employed.
  • At the same time, the CIA has denied a request by former Vice President Dick Cheney to declassify documents that he said would show the harsh interrogations were effective. The agency isn't permitted to declassify documents that are the subject of pending lawsuits, it said.
  • Human-rights groups have brought a lawsuit demanding release of the documents. Those groups said Thursday that their lawsuit shouldn't stand in the way of making the information public.
Argos Media

US government to drop espionage charges against Aipac officials | World news | guardian... - 0 views

  • The US government is to drop espionage charges against two officials of America's most powerful pro-Israel lobby group accused of spying for the Jewish state because court rulings had made the case unwinnable and the trial would disclose classified information.
  • The two accused, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, worked for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), which drives fundraising for some US members of Congress. They were accused of providing defence secrets to the chief political officer at the Israeli embassy in Washington, Naor Gilon, about US policy toward Iran and al-Qaida in league with a former Pentagon analyst who has since been jailed for 12 years.
  • Dana Boente, who was prosecuting the case in Virginia, said that the case was dropped because pre-trial court rulings had complicated the government's case by requiring a higher level of proof of intent to spy. The court said the prosecution would have to prove not only that the accused pair had passed classified information but that they intended to harm the US in doing so.
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  • A former Pentagon analyst, Lawrence Franklin, has already pleaded guilty to disclosing classified information to Rosen and Weissman.
  • The case has been further complicated by a scandal revealed last month by a political publication, Congressional Quarterly, around a member of Congress, Jane Harman, who was secretly taped telling an Israeli agent that she would pressure the justice department to reduce spying charges against the two former Aipac officials.In return, the Israeli agent offered to get a wealthy donor who helps funds election campaigns for Nancy Pelosi, the then-minority leader in the House of Representatives, to pressure Pelosi to appoint Harman to a senior position on the congressional intelligence committee.Aware of the sensitivity of the position she has put herself in, Harman finished the discussion with the Israeli spy by saying: "This conversation doesn't exist."
  • Congressional Quarterly obtained a transcript of the tape recorded by the National Security Agency. An FBI probe of Harman was dropped after the intervention of President Bush's attorney general, Alberto Gonzales.
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US to release pictures of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan | World news | guardia... - 0 views

  • The Obama administration is set to intensify the torture debate by releasing scores of new pictures showing abuse of prisoners held by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.The pictures were taken between 2001 and 2006 at detention centres other than Iraq's infamous Abu Ghraib prison, confirming that abuse was much more widespread than the US has so far been prepared to admit.
  • The Bush administration had repeatedly blocked through legal channels appeals from human rights groups for release of the pictures, which are held by the Army Criminal Investigation Division. But the Obama administration late yesterday lifted all legal obstacles and the pictures are to be published by 28 May.
  • The justice department has initially agreed to the release of 21 images of abuse at detention centres in Iraq and Afghanistan other than at Abu Ghraib and 23 other pictures. It added "the government is also processing for release a substantial number of other images". Up to 2,000 could be released.
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  • The pictures are similar to those from Abu Ghraib that in 2004 created shock around the world, caused a backlash in the Middle East and eventually led to jail sentences for the US military personnel involved.A US official said the pictures were not as bad as Abu Ghraib but "not good" either. The Abu Ghraib pictures showed Iraqi prisoners hooded, naked, posed in sexually embarrassing positions and being harassed by dogs.
  • Obama has consistently said he does not want to rake over history, fearing that it will deflect attention from his heavy domestic and foreign policy programme. But this week he opened the way for the prosecution of senior figures in the Bush administration and the establishment of a congressional inquiry.Amid the uproar this created, he has since been backing off. Both he and the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, have signalled their unwillingness to hold a truth commission, but the Democratic leader in the House, Nancy Pelosi, appears ready to push ahead. With so much clamour for an investigation, it is almost certain that Congress will hold one, with or without the backing of the White House.
  • The release of the pictures has been sought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a human rights organisation whose legal action forced publication of the Bush administration memos under freedom of information.
  • The pictures will increase pressure for pardons for military personnel who were punished for abuses at Abu Ghraib. Their lawyers are arguing that the Bush administration portrayed it as an isolated incident, whereas in fact it was widespread and approved at the highest levels."This will constitute visual proof that, unlike the Bush administration's claim, the abuse was not confined to Abu Ghraib and was not aberrational," said Amrit Singh, a lawyer for the ACLU.
  • The Bush administration, in blocking release of the pictures, had argued that they would create outrage but also that they would contravene the Geneva conventions obligation not to show pictures of prisoners.
  • About a quarter of a million petitions were delivered to the attorney-general, Eric Holder, yesterday calling for prosecution of Bush administration officials responsible for approving waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods.
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