Are you surprised?
The Democratic chairmen of the Intelligence and Foreign Relations committees are at odds over whether a special counsel should investigate the circumstances that led to the deletion of videotapes showing the interrogation of suspected terrorists.
While Sen. Joe Biden (Del.), chairman of the Foreign Relations panel, says it is necessary to put in place a special counsel to investigate, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (W.Va.), who chairs the Intelligence Committee, said there is no need for such a move and that a congressional probe would be sufficient at this stage.
Let’s see…one of them is running for president and the Iowa caucuses are coming up in under four weeks. The other one was briefed about the rough tactics of the CIA in 2002.
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).
Only Jane Harman filed any kind of official protest. It’s only natural that Jay Rockefeller will want to control the direction of any investigation over the destruction of tapes. And the House Intel committee has an issue of its own. In August, the chairman, Silvestre Reyes, honored the person who ostensibly ordered the destruction of the tapes. Here are two views on that from inside the intelligence community.
“This looks like he was tossed under a giant bus,” one former intelligence official told me. “How likely is it that he took this decision on his own, especially when he’s not in the videotapes and wouldn’t be affected directly? Not very likely.”
This person said that the fact that the tapes were made in the first place was hugely revealing. “It shows that by 2002, everyone at the agency thought they could be Jack Bauer, that the president thought this sort of thing was fine,” he said. “This is like making a snuff film. It’s incredible that they felt they could put it on tape.”
On the other hand, another former agency official told me he thought Rodriguez could have–and should have–taken the decision on his own. This person said:
When this idea first came up, it generated a heated discussion. The most experienced officers were to the man, against any effort to tape the interrogations. The object of having an intelligence service is to do things secretly. You don’t tape things unless there is a sound operational reason to do so. Jose was right to order the tapes destroyed. They should not have been made. That said, the day they arrived and were viewed by the leadership, they should have been destroyed that day, not two years later. The tapes would have shocked the conscience of the public, and should not have been made. Nothing good would come of it.
I agree that it was incredibly stupid to torture people on tape. It was also incredibly stupid to torture people…period. If Rockefeller wants to investigate this, he should recuse himself from the investigation. He should assign someone from his committee to chair the investigation. The Intelligence Committee doesn’t have subcommittees, but I am sure that Ron Wyden, Russ Feingold, or Sheldon Whitehouse would be willing to take on the task.
Perhaps Reid should create a special committee for the purpose, including members of the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. Here’s a hypothetical list:
Chairman: Sheldon Whitehouse (Judiciary, Intelligence)
Ron Wyden (Intelligence)
Diane Feinstein (Judiciary, Intelligence)
Russ Feingold (Judiciary, Intelligence)
Joe Biden (Chairman Foreign Relations, Judiciary)
Let the Republicans pick four people (or perhaps even an equal five) and let’s get on with it. After all, even Huckabee says we need to kick some ass.
Surging GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee also criticized the destruction of the tapes.
“When we start destroying documents, what are we destroying them for? Are we doing it for security purposes or to cover somebody’s rear end?” the former Arkansas governor said on Fox News Sunday. “If we’re covering somebody’s rear end, we need to expose their rear end and kick their rear end for doing something that’s against the best interest of the United States and the responsibility and the respectability of this country.”
Now..do something. And don’t screw it up like you did with Ollie North.