King on Holder: 'You wonder which side they’re on'
A "furious" Rep. Peter King, the hawkish, maverick Long Island Republican, blasted a "disgraceful" Eric Holder for opening an investigation of CIA interrogators and chided his own party for what he described as a weak response to the move in an interview just now with POLITICO.
"It’s bulls***. It’s disgraceful. You wonder which side they’re on," he said of the attorney general's move, which he described as a "declaration of war against the CIA, and against common sense."
"It’s a total breach of faith, and either the president is intentionally caving to the left wing of his party or he’s lost control of his administration," said King, the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security and a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
King, channeling both the sense of outrage and of political opportunity felt in parts of the GOP, defended in detail the interrogation practices — threats to kill a detainee's family, and or to kill a detainee with a power drill — detailed in a CIA inspector general report released yesterday.
"You're talking about threatening to kill a guy, threatening to attack his family, threatening to use an electric drill on him — but never doing it," King said. "You have that on the one hand — and on the other you have the [interrogator's] attempt to prevent thousands of Americans from being killed."
"When Holder was talking about being 'shocked' [before the report's release], I thought they were going to have cutting guys' fingers off or something — or that they actually used the power drill," he said.
Pressed on whether interrogators had actually broken the law, King said he didn't think the Geneva Convention "applies to terrorists," and that the line between permitted and outlawed interrogation policies in the Bush years was "a distinction without a difference."
"Why is it OK to waterboard someone, which causes physical pain, but not threaten someone and not cause pain?" he asked, warning of a "chilling" effect on future CIA behavior.
"You will have thousands of lives that will be lost, and the blood will be on Eric Holder's hands," he said.
King faulted his own party leaders for an insufficient response to yesterday's announcement.
"They’ve declared war on the CIA. We should resist and fight back as hard as we can," he said. "It should be a scorched earth policy. ... This isn't just another policy. This goes to the heart of our national defense. We should do whatever we have to do."
By Ben Smith
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Cheney, Republicans Blast Interrogation Probe
Former vice president, top Republican senators criticize decision to begin a new criminal probe of past interrogation tactics. Cheney said, "the people involved deserve our gratitude.
WASHINGTON -- Top Republican senators said on Monday they were troubled by Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to begin a new criminal probe of past interrogation tactics used by the CIA during President George W. Bush's war on terror, and expressed concern it could hamper U.S. intelligence efforts.
A newly declassified version of a CIA report revealed Monday that CIA interrogators once allegedly threatened to kill the Sept. 11 attack mastermind's children and suggested another would be forced to watch his mother sexually assaulted.
The fresh crop of damaging revelations only intensified the long-running political fight about the secret interrogation program -- whether it protected the United States then, and whether spilling its secrets now will weaken the nation's future security.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney refuted Holder's decision, saying it "serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this administration's ability to be responsible for our nation's security."
Cheney told The Weekly Standard, a conservative journal, "The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by Al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions."
Holder said Monday he had chosen a veteran prosecutor, John Durham, to open a preliminary investigation to determine whether any CIA officers or contractors should face criminal charges for crossing the line on rough but permissible tactics. Durham already is investigating the destruction of CIA interrogation videos.
At the same time, President Barack Obama ordered changes in future interrogations, bringing in other agencies besides the CIA under the direction of the FBI and to be supervised by his own national security adviser. The administration pledged that questioning would be controlled by the Army Field Manual, with strict rules, and said the White House would keep its hands off the professional investigators doing the work.
Despite the announcement of the criminal probe, White House aides declared anew that Obama "wants to look forward, not back" at Bush-era tactics.
White House officials said they plan to continue the controversial practice of rendition of suspects to foreign countries, though they said that in future cases there would be greater safeguards to ensure such suspects are not tortured.
Monday's five-year-old report by the CIA's inspector general, newly declassified and released under a federal court's orders, described severe tactics used by interrogators on terror suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Seeking information about possible further attacks, interrogators threatened one detainee with a gun and a power drill, choked another and tried to frighten still another with a mock execution of another prisoner.
And other once-secret documents released late Monday show that parts of the CIA's tough treatment program continued even after Bush's September 2006 transfer of agency prisoners to the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden, appointed by Bush in 2006, expressed dismay at the prospect of prosecutions for CIA officers. He noted that career prosecutors already had reviewed and declined to prosecute the alleged abuses.
Obama has said interrogators would not face charges if they followed legal guidelines, but the report by the CIA's inspector general said they went too far -- even beyond what was authorized under Bush era Justice Department legal memos that have since been withdrawn and discredited. The report also suggested some questioners knew they were crossing a line.
"Ten years from now we're going to be sorry we're doing this (but) it has to be done," one unidentified CIA officer was quoted as saying, predicting the questioners would someday have to appear in court to answer for such tactics.
The report concluded the CIA used "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane" practices in questioning "high-value" terror suspects.
In one instance cited in the new documents, Abd al-Nashiri, the man accused of being behind the 2000 USS Cole bombing, was hooded, handcuffed and threatened with an unloaded gun and a power drill. The unidentified interrogator also threatened al-Nashiri's mother and family, implying they would be sexually abused in front of him, according to the report.
The interrogator denied making a direct threat.
Another interrogator told Sept. 11 attack mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, "if anything else happens in the United States, 'We're going to kill your children,"' one veteran officer said in the report.
Death threats violate anti-torture laws.
Investigators credited the detention-and-interrogation program for developing intelligence that prevented multiple attacks against Americans.
"In this regard, there is no doubt that the program has been effective," investigators wrote, backing an argument by former Cheney and others that the program saved lives.
But the inspector general said it was unclear whether so-called enhanced interrogation tactics contributed to that success. Those tactics included waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique that the Obama administration says was torture. Measuring the success of such interrogation is "a more subjective process and not without some concern," the report said.
The report described at least one mock execution, which would also violate U.S. anti-torture laws. To terrify one detainee, interrogators pretended to execute the prisoner in a nearby room. A senior officer said it was a transparent ruse that yielded no benefit.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Even though President Obama publically said that he wanted to move forward, not dwell on the past or prosecute anyone from the last administration, many are wondering if Holder’s announcement today, as the Obama’s are vacationing in Liberalville USA, Martha’s Vineyard, at their $35,000 a day estate could be a ploy to try to divert attention away from the disastrous Healthcare debacle and his dropping poll numbers.
Others have suggested that Team Obama and its umbrella of liberals might think twice about prosecuting past administrations, like a Banana Republic, because if present policies continue, they may find themselves in a similar place…
Team Obama has added more words to their “no use” and “replace with” lists to aid their propaganda campaigns.
Many people have also noted that perhaps President Obama owes it to the American People to read the Healthcare Bill(s) instead of vacationing and playing golf with the President of Swiss Bank, a donator to Obama’s campaign and banker to the rich and powerful.
Posted: Knowledge Creates Power - Cross Posted: Daily Thought Pad
