Let's talk a little more about why the CIA was 'spying' on the Senate Intelligence Committee

[bigtree]

Last edited Fri Aug 1, 2014, 02:07 PM - Edit history (7)

________________________________

I think this is one of the most potentially explosive revelations since the Nixon WH was discovered spying on Democrats. In that scandal Nixon used the nation's intelligence agencies to spy on Kennedy and Muskie to try and find something to use against them to advantage his political contest. As important as those abuses of power were, and the fact that the president was directly involved, they pale in comparison to CIA Director Brennan's admissions today.

This scandal involves an attempt by the Obama/Brennan CIA to intimidate and chill an active investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee into past practices and criminal abuses by the agency which were committed by Bush administration officials.

The Bush CIA had already withheld and destroyed information about its Detention and Interrogation Program in 2005 when it deliberately destroyed tapes and information about its rendition and torture program. A civil lawsuit ACLU revealed in 2009 that 92 videotapes had been deliberately destroyed.

"The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court's order," ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said in a statement.

The defense for accused Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui had demanded the tapes which they believed would depict the waterboarding and other interrogation methods they were alleging occurred. Interrogations of al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah and another top al-Qaida leader were also said to be depicted in the videotapes.

At first the prosecution outright denied the tapes existed at all. Only after the trial did they finally admit their existence. Their excuse for destroying the evidence was that they were protecting the identities of the government interrogators.

from Wiki:

On December 6, 2007, the New York Times advised the Bush administration that they had acquired, and planned to publish, information about the destruction of tapes made of Zubaydah's interrogation, believed to show instances of waterboarding and other forms of possible torture.

Michael Hayden, the Director of Central Intelligence, sent a letter to CIA staff the next day, briefing them on the destruction of the tapes. Hayden asserted that key members of Congress had been briefed on the existence of the tapes, and the plans for their destruction. Senator Jay Rockefeller, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disputed Hayden's assertion, saying that he only learned of the tapes in November 2006, a year after their destruction.

Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and one of just four senior members of Congress who was briefed on the existence of the tapes, acknowledged being briefed. Harman responded to Hayden's assertions by saying she had objected, in writing, to the tapes' destruction. "I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman stated.

Hayden claimed that the continued existence of the tapes represented a threat to the CIA personnel involved, saying that if the tapes were leaked they might result in CIA personnel being identified and targeted for retaliation. Hayden stated that the tapes were destroyed "only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries."

fast forward to DiFi's floor speech in March:

After we read about the tapes’ destruction in the newspapers, Director Hayden briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee. He assured us that this was not destruction of evidence, as detailed records of the interrogations existed on paper in the form of CIA operational cables describing the detention conditions and the day-to-day CIA interrogations.

The CIA director stated that these cables were “a more than adequate representation” of what would have been on the destroyed tapes. Director Hayden offered at that time, during Senator Jay Rockefeller’s chairmanship of the committee, to allow Members or staff to review these sensitive CIA operational cables given that the videotapes had been destroyed.

Chairman Rockefeller sent two of his committee staffers out to the CIA on nights and weekends to review thousands of these cables, which took many months. By the time the two staffers completed their review into the CIA’s early interrogations in early 2009, I had become chairman of the committee and President Obama had been sworn into office.

The resulting staff report was chilling. The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us. As result of the staff’s initial report, I proposed, and then-Vice Chairman Bond agreed, and the committee overwhelmingly approved, that the committee conduct an expansive and full review of CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

On March 5, 2009, the committee voted 14-1 to initiate a comprehensive review of the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program. Immediately, we sent a request for documents to all relevant executive branch agencies, chiefly among them the CIA.

The committee’s preference was for the CIA to turn over all responsive documents to the committee’s office, as had been done in previous committee investigations.

Director Panetta proposed an alternative arrangement: to provide literally millions of pages of operational cables, internal emails, memos, and other documents pursuant to the committee’s document requests at a secure location in Northern Virginia. We agreed, but insisted on several conditions and protections to ensure the integrity of this congressional investigation.

Per an exchange of letters in 2009, then-Vice Chairman Bond, then-Director Panetta, and I agreed in an exchange of letters that the CIA was to provide a “stand-alone computer system” with a “network drive” “segregated from CIA networks” for the committee that would only be accessed by information technology personnel at the CIA—who would “not be permitted to” “share information from the system with other [CIA] personnel, except as otherwise authorized by the committee.”

It was this computer network that, notwithstanding our agreement with Director Panetta, was searched by the CIA

DiFi's committee worked out an arrangement with the Panetta CIA to obtain those documents which resulted in a unhelpful 'document dump' of hundreds of thousands of un-indexed pages. Nonetheless, these were the documents that the staffers obtained and used in their investigation, following the procedures the CIA had insisted on.

DiFi:

In addition to demanding that the documents produced for the committee be reviewed at a CIA facility, the CIA also insisted on conducting a multi-layered review of every responsive document before providing the document to the committee. This was to ensure the CIA did not mistakenly provide documents unrelated to the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program or provide documents that the president could potentially claim to be covered by executive privilege.

While we viewed this as unnecessary and raised concerns that it would delay our investigation, the CIA hired a team of outside contractors—who otherwise would not have had access to these sensitive documents—to read, multiple times, each of the 6.2 million pages of documents produced, before providing them to fully-cleared committee staff conducting the committee’s oversight work. This proved to be a slow and very expensive process.

The CIA started making documents available electronically to the committee staff at the CIA leased facility in mid-2009. The number of pages ran quickly to the thousands, tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, and then into the millions. The documents that were provided came without any index, without organizational structure. It was a true “document dump” that our committee staff had to go through and make sense of.

The committee staffers took whatever documents they thought were relevant and copied them into their own computers. At some point, they noticed that their documents were disappearing . . .

DiFi:

In May of 2010, the committee staff noticed that certain documents that had been provided for the committee’s review were no longer accessible. Staff approached the CIA personnel at the offsite location, who initially denied that documents had been removed. CIA personnel then blamed information technology personnel, who were almost all contractors, for removing the documents themselves without direction or authority. And then the CIA stated that the removal of the documents was ordered by the White House. When the committee approached the White House, the White House denied giving the CIA any such order.

After a series of meetings, I learned that on two occasions, CIA personnel electronically removed committee access to CIA documents after providing them to the committee. This included roughly 870 documents or pages of documents that were removed in February 2010, and secondly roughly another 50 were removed in mid-May 2010.

This was done without the knowledge or approval of committee members or staff, and in violation of our written agreements. Further, this type of behavior would not have been possible had the CIA allowed the committee to conduct the review of documents here in the Senate. In short, this was the exact sort of CIA interference in our investigation that we sought to avoid at the outset.

I went up to the White House to raise this issue with the then-White House Counsel, in May 2010. He recognized the severity of the situation, and the grave implications of Executive Branch personnel interfering with an official congressional investigation. The matter was resolved with a renewed commitment from the White House Counsel, and the CIA, that there would be no further unauthorized access to the committee’s network or removal of access to CIA documents already provided to the committee.

On May 17, 2010, the CIA’s then-director of congressional affairs apologized on behalf of the CIA for removing the documents. And that, as far as I was concerned, put the incident aside.

After that incident, staffers were able to uncover documents related to Panetta's internal review which appeared to provide proof of significant wrongdoing by the agency.

DiFi:

At some point in 2010, committee staff searching the documents that had been made available found draft versions of what is now called the “Internal Panetta Review.”

We believe these documents were written by CIA personnel to summarize and analyze the materials that had been provided to the committee for its review. The Panetta review documents were no more highly classified than other information we had received for our investigation—in fact, the documents appeared to be based on the same information already provided to the committee.

What was unique and interesting about the internal documents was not their classification level, but rather their analysis and acknowledgement of significant CIA wrongdoing.

To be clear, the committee staff did not “hack” into CIA computers to obtain these documents as has been suggested in the press. The documents were identified using the search tool provided by the CIA to search the documents provided to the committee.

We have no way to determine who made the Internal Panetta Review documents available to the committee. Further, we don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistle-blower.

In fact, we know that over the years—on multiple occasions—the staff have asked the CIA about documents made available for our investigation. At times, the CIA has simply been unaware that these specific documents were provided to the committee. And while this is alarming, it is also important to note that more than 6.2 million pages of documents have been provided. This is simply a massive amount of records

The staff did not rely on these Internal Panetta Review documents when drafting the final 6,300-page committee study. But it was significant that the Internal Panetta Review had documented at least some of the very same troubling matters already uncovered by the committee staff – which is not surprising, in that they were looking at the same information.

.

So, in effect, the internal Panetta review actually corroborated the committee's own findings, rather than representing the only info available. In 2012, the Intelligence Committee approved a 6,300-page study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program and sent the report to the executive branch.

The Brennan CIA responded that they agreed with some of the report but disagreed with other parts of it. Most importantly, the parts they disagreed with were actually confirmed by the Panetta review.

DiFi:

As CIA Director Brennan has stated, the CIA officially agrees with some of our study. But, as has been reported, the CIA disagrees and disputes important parts of it. And this is important: Some of these important parts that the CIA now disputes in our committee study are clearly acknowledged in the CIA’s own Internal Panetta Review.

To say the least, this is puzzling. How can the CIA’s official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own Internal Review?

The intelligence committee took draft copies of the documents and locked them away in their own senate facilities - in their own computer system. This was understandable, given the revelations in 2009 that key evidence had been deliberately destroyed by the agency.

The documents disappeared from their computers.

DiFi:

Unlike the official response, these Panetta Review documents were in agreement with the committee’s findings. That’s what makes them so significant and important to protect.

When the Internal Panetta Review documents disappeared from the committee’s computer system, this suggested once again that the CIA had removed documents already provided to the committee, in violation of CIA agreements and White House assurances that the CIA would cease such activities.

As I have detailed, the CIA has previously withheld and destroyed information about its Detention and Interrogation Program, including its decision in 2005 to destroy interrogation videotapes over the objections of the Bush White House and the Director of National Intelligence. Based on the information described above, there was a need to preserve and protect the Internal Panetta Review in the committee’s own secure spaces.

DiFi wrote to the agency requesting complete copies of the Panetta review. Sen. Udall also requested the documents in a committee hearing. The CIA denied the request, claiming that it was incomplete and 'deliberative.'

That's when the CIA went into full protection mode and insisted they be allowed to conduct a search of the committee's computers.

DiFi:

In late 2013, I requested in writing that the CIA provide a final and complete version of the Internal Panetta Review to the committee, as opposed to the partial document the committee currently possesses.

In December, during an open committee hearing, Senator Mark Udall echoed this request. In early January 2014, the CIA informed the committee it would not provide the Internal Panetta Review to the committee, citing the deliberative nature of the document.

Shortly thereafter, on January 15, 2014, CIA Director Brennan requested an emergency meeting to inform me and Vice Chairman Chambliss that without prior notification or approval, CIA personnel had conducted a “search”—that was John Brennan’s word—of the committee computers at the offsite facility. This search involved not only a search of documents provided to the committee by the CIA, but also a search of the ”stand alone” and “walled-off” committee network drive containing the committee’s own internal work product and communications.

According to Brennan, the computer search was conducted in response to indications that some members of the committee staff might already have had access to the Internal Panetta Review. The CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the Internal Review, or how we obtained it.

Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee’s computers. The CIA has still not asked the committee any questions about how the committee acquired the Panetta Review. In place of asking any questions, the CIA’s unauthorized search of the committee computers was followed by an allegation—which we have now seen repeated anonymously in the press—that the committee staff had somehow obtained the document through unauthorized or criminal means, perhaps to include hacking into the CIA’s computer network.

After searching their computers Brennan began to claim that the Panetta documents were obtained improperly and declared that he was going to conduct an investigation into committee staffer procedures and activities.

DiFi:

Director Brennan stated that the CIA’s search had determined that the committee staff had copies of the Internal Panetta Review on the committee’s “staff shared drive” and had accessed them numerous times. He indicated at the meeting that he was going to order further “forensic” investigation of the committee network to learn more about activities of the committee’s oversight staff.

Two days after the meeting, on January 17, I wrote a letter to Director Brennan objecting to any further CIA investigation due to the separation of powers constitutional issues that the search raised. I followed this with a second letter on January 23 to the director, asking 12 specific questions about the CIA’s actions—questions that the CIA has refused to answer.

Some of the questions in my letter related to the full scope of the CIA’s search of our computer network. Other questions related to who had authorized and conducted the search, and what legal basis the CIA claimed gave it authority to conduct the search. Again, the CIA has not provided answers to any of my questions.

My letter also laid out my concern about the legal and constitutional implications of the CIA’s actions. Based on what Director Brennan has informed us, I have grave concerns that the CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution, including the Speech and Debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.

I have asked for an apology and a recognition that this CIA search of computers used by its oversight committee was inappropriate. I received neither.

Besides the constitutional implications, the CIA’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.

Not only did the search and removal of documents from the committee computers indicate an attempt to cover-up the corroborating information contained in the Panetta internal review, the attempt to smear committee staffers with criminal charges for obtaining the documents (through the procedures and search tools that the CIA had actually provided them) was an interference and an attempt to intimidate the committee from conducting a thorough investigation of the agency's activities.

Moreover, there was a conflict of interest, in that the acting general counsel attempting to criminalize the efforts of the committee staffers was a lawyer in the very division which carried out the interrogation procedures in question.

DiFi:

As I mentioned before, our staff involved in this matter have the appropriate clearances, handled this sensitive material according to established procedures and practice to protect classified information, and were provided access to the Panetta Review by the CIA itself. As a result, there is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that Senate staff may have committed a crime. I view the acting general counsel’s referral as a potential effort to intimidate this staff—and I am not taking it lightly.

I should note that for most, if not all, of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, the now acting general counsel was a lawyer in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center—the unit within which the CIA managed and carried out this program. From mid-2004 until the official termination of the detention and interrogation program in January 2009, he was the unit’s chief lawyer. He is mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study.

And now this individual is sending a crimes report to the Department of Justice on the actions of congressional staff—the same congressional staff who researched and drafted a report that details how CIA officers—including the acting general counsel himself—provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice about the program.

Mr. President, let me say this. All Senators rely on their staff to be their eyes and ears and to carry out our duties. The staff members of the Intelligence Committee are dedicated professionals who are motivated to do what is best for our nation.

The staff members who have been working on this study and this report have devoted years of their lives to it—wading through the horrible details of a CIA program that never, never, never should have existed. They have worked long hours and produced a report unprecedented in its comprehensive attention to detail in the history of the Senate.

They are now being threatened with legal jeopardy, just as the final revisions to the report are being made so that parts of it can be declassified and released to the American people . . .

Brennan's admissions today have already answered the question of whether the chilling activities occurred. The question remains of why the agency head would go to such extreme and unconstitutional lengths to stifle the Panetta internal review and the Senate committee investigator's efforts to present the documents as part of their report.

Evidently, the CIA felt those documents were damning enough to attempt to withhold and conceal them. It still begs the question of why this administration would go so far to conceal and obfuscate the misdeeds of the previous one. What was their stake in working to muddle the record and discredit the investigators? What are they hiding?



watch DiFi, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee on the Senate floor, outlining charges that the Central Intelligence Agency spied on Senate staffers:

related:

CIA admits it broke into Senate computers; senators call for spy chief’s ouster

Sen. Udall(D)- CIA IG Report Raises Grave Concerns About Constitutional Separation of Powers

[MannyGoldstein]

1. This is arguably worse than Watergate

But nothing will be done. The President has no problem with flagrantly lying to Congress, and Congress is either too meek or too bought off to fight it.

[bemildred]

5. No question.

That report must be dynamite.

[MannyGoldstein]

12. Well, I *am* a middle-aged white man

So can I pick both? With a soupçon of misogynism, presumably because of Michelle's not knowing her place or some such thing?

Hail Freedonia!

(Dear jury: I'm just kidding about Michelle, I think she's fine.)

[MannyGoldstein]

16. Hey! To whoever hid Rufus T. Firefly's post:

Last edited Fri Aug 1, 2014, 08:14 PM - Edit history (1)

Just above: http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5320351

IT WAS SARCASM

The name should have given it away, do a search! And feel very guilty!

[bigtree]

17. I agree with you

. . . can mods reverse that lock?

I do wish we could stick to the point and leave the DU squabble out of it.

[HooptieWagon]

20. Ignorant jury.

That was quite obviously sarcasm.

[MannyGoldstein]

21. And ironically...

only the second time (IIRC) that a jury hid a post for calling me something nasty.

Hell... Maybe they hid it *because* it was only sarcasm!

[markpkessinger]

30. LOL! n/t

[AngryAmish]

50. I had a jury vote to lock a post where I called myself an asshole.

The jury voted 5 -1 not to lock.

[MrMickeysMom]

61. That one person must be hilarious to be around...

They could never argue with themselves, obviously!

[bemildred]

25. This is the internet, shoulda had a sarcasm smiley. nt

[rhett o rick]

44. Ah comeon Manny. The Jury results was also SARCASM.

And this post is SARCASM. "You can't handle the SARCASM." Al Pacino in "A Few Good Men on a Dog Day Afternoon"

[grasswire]

45. link to that post?

I missed it.

[MannyGoldstein]

46. Just above...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5320351

[MinM]

62. Watergate .. helped preserve—not reform—the system

To those arguing this is worse than Watergate .. It's actually par for the course as Larry Chin explains:

Watergate was not, as the stereotypical myth and breathless legends go, a great moment for democracy in which a corrupt president was brought down, and a great "investigation" reformed Washington. It was an inside coup d'état, and a limited hangout, that saved Nixon and his cabal from true exposure and jail time, and helped preserve—not reform—the system that made his crimes possible. Felt must be judged against this context.

Watergate gave the naïve public a false sense of security—the fallacy that "they" (Washington) were "cleaning up"—and ushered in a new era of corruption. Gerald Ford, J. Edgar Hoover's right hand man on the Warren Commission, became president. Ford pardoned Nixon, and selected Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president. The CIA learned how to do a better job covering up their activities and controlling information. America's corporate media, long infiltrated and controlled by government operatives, would be increasingly corrupted and corporatized, and made into the voices of the White House. The Washington Post, never a paragon of investigative reporting, became even worse with time. Bob Woodward became a buddy stenographer for the Bush presidents...

Exemplified by successful and continuous Bush administration crimes and cover-up, Watergate was a valuable lesson to government criminals. The American public, meanwhile, has learned nothing.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/060305Chin/060305chin.html

[KoKo]

58. Indeed...but, Watergate was so long ago..a new generation

has to relearn that Government can go Rogue.

I always felt that Pardoning Nixon was a huge mistake. Just like the Wall Street Bailouts allowed the criminals to walk away....Nixon should have been made an example of...instead he got a partial rehab. I don't know if jail time would have been too traumatic for the average citizen...but, we can see the results of not being held fully accountable as time has passed.

But, it was not to be and torture and lying are now being added to the "too big to prosecute" ...let's just move on and try to do better.

[sabrina 1]

59. Far, far worse than Watergate. And this is just what they know, what has been covered up

by destroying evidence, may never be known.

Spying on the Senate, I would have thought that would come under the 'all enemies, both foreign and DOMESTIC' part of the oaths of office all military personnel and elected officials take. Who, other than an enemy, would have ANY reason to spy on the US Senate??

[JaneyVee]

2. why the agency head would go to such extreme and unconstitutional lengths to stifle investigation?

Because the CIA has become a rogue organization, above the law and all powerful.

[bigtree]

6. of course

. . . I'm talking about a deeper 'why' - a material 'why.'

What, specifically, are they covering up, what are they hiding or trying to obfuscate? Also, who is protecting whom, and specifically, why?

[HooptieWagon]

23. Obviously some people face prosecution.

And in a broader sense, the institution will be greatly weakened... even non-criminal acts will no longer be secret, there will be greater oversight, etc.
But my question is still why is Obama mixing himself into the scandal? He had nothing to do with torture, etc. Why is he trying to cover it up?

[Demeter]

51. Prosecution? By whom? White Shoe Eric Holder?

[JDPriestly]

13. Precisely. The CIA is a dark government within our government.

I suspect that the same can be said of the NSA.

These "rogue" agencies are not created pursuant to the Constitution, and could easily be legislated out of existence. Clean the slate and start over again.

We need intelligence, but we do not need intelligence agencies that appear to answer only to themselves.

Where is President Obama in this dispute? Can't he stick up for the Constitution and for the people and get his rogue agencies under control?

Maybe not. Maybe it is just too late.

This is depressing.

When the report is published, we need to read it pretty carefully.

[Psephos]

31. The rot is not confined to intelligence agencies.

The spooks may have better tools than some of the others. But the same set of power-accumulating and power-protecting instincts drives them all.

[MrMickeysMom]

60. "When the report is published, we need to read it pretty carefully"…

… and hope that it has not been redacted. Wouldn't be good to be redacted. Then, we'd have every reason to be even more depressed.

[jwirr]

48. IMO the CIA has always been building its own little world separate from the goals of the people of

the USA. They had this non-religious view of a City on the Hill that would enrich the rich and eventually control the world. I know the rethugs have their own plan but the one the CIA created started soon after WWII ended and has been progressing throughout the world ever since separate from the other leaders we elected. The Shadow Government if you will. They are the ones who installed foreign leaders such as the Shah of Iran and others to do their bidding. That they would now think that they ruled the world and could thus spy on the very people who were supposed to have oversight of their agency does not surprise me.

[choie]

3. Wow Bigtree

That was a brilliant, thorough, thought provoking post. Kudos to you! You are spot on!

[HooptieWagon]

4. We know the CIA committed serious crimes in the torture program,

... and committed further crimes on multiple occasions to cover them up. No doubt in an attempt to avoid criminal prosecution.
However, the question remains: Why is Obama protecting them?

[bigtree]

7. we're going to get a chance to see the committee report

A long-awaited Senate report won’t use the word ‘torture’ to describe the CIA’s interrogations. But it will show abuse that is horrific, systematic, and widespread.

“The American people will be profoundly disturbed about what will be revealed in this report,” Sen. Ron Wyden, a member of the committee who has been vocal in his criticism of the CIA told The Daily Beast . . .

The CIA is taking the pending release of the report very seriously. John Brennan, the agency’s director, held a special town hall meeting at headquarters Thursday in part to prepare the workforce for the report’s release, according to current and former intelligence officers. Meanwhile, the agency has allowed some former senior CIA officers this week to view the report before its release to the public.

Behind the scenes, a group of former senior officials who are targeted in the investigation, led by former CIA Director George Tenet, have been “quietly engineered a counterattack against the Senate committee’s voluminous report,” according to The New York Times.

They know that an entire coalition of human rights groups, anti-torture groups, and pro-transparency organizations have been preparing for this day for years, waiting for the huge tranche of information that the report will reveal to hopefully validate their contention that the CIA went too far and sacrificed too much for too little.

read: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/31/cia-torture-report-won-t-call-interrogations-torture-but-it-will-show-horrors.html

[hedda_foil]

8. I'm not seeing any inference that Obama knew of the ongoing machinations of the CIA.

In fact, I think there are pretty strong implications of agency overreach independent of the White House. Panetta might have been determined to find out wtf had been going on before either Obama or Panetta was in office. Panetta obviously slow walked the release of information, but at least he did order a seemingly comprehensive review of the situation. Then Panetta was replaced by Brennan, who did everything short of destroying everyone's hard drives to keep this info from the committee and the public.

That isn't to say that Obama didn't know anything about what was going on,but that the CIA seemed to be bound and determined to hide their lawless behavior from the committee of oversight and, potentially, from the president.

[bigtree]

10. in DiFi's Senate speech in March

DiFi:

"In May of 2010, the committee staff noticed that certain documents that had been provided for the committee’s review were no longer accessible. Staff approached the CIA personnel at the offsite location, who initially denied that documents had been removed. CIA personnel then blamed information technology personnel, who were almost all contractors, for removing the documents themselves without direction or authority. And then the CIA stated that the removal of the documents was ordered by the White House. When the committee approached the White House, the White House denied giving the CIA any such order."

. . .not proof, certainly, but there is a question hanging out there of WH collusion and complicity.

[HooptieWagon]

19. Exactly.

Panetta was uncovering the illegal goings on, and Obama replaced him with Brennan... who drew the curtain shut, obstructed the Senate investigation, and lied his ass off. He's obviously carrying out Obama's orders.

[TwilightGardener]

27. Leon Panetta had an investigation into his own leak of classified info (while

head of CIA) slow-rolled until he left the Pentagon--Pentagon staffers admitted to it. I don't consider him trustworthy either. Plus, there was a CIA director in between Brennan and Panetta...what does Petraeus know about any of this?

[PoliticAverse]

33. So, "What did the President know, and when did he know it"? n/t

[RufusTFirefly]

9. It speaks volumes that they even managed to piss off notorious CIA suck up, DiFi

I'd say her threshold is normally pretty high.

[LeftyMom]

14. They must have bounced a check to her husband. nt

[catchnrelease]

18. Bingo! n/t

[NBachers]

22. Yeah, DiFi's tone in this report really came through to me. Where are the arrest warrants?

[DeSwiss]

15. ''...the Obama/Brennan CIA...''

- Thank you for saying the plain TRUTH.

That's becoming harder and harder to do around these parts......

K&R

[center][/center]

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

24. Great post Bigtree. K&R

Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity. Lord Acton

[snot]

26. "It still begs the question . . . "

"It still begs the question of why this administration would go so far to conceal and obfuscate the misdeeds of the previous one. What was their stake in working to muddle the record and discredit the investigators? What are they hiding?"

[TT_Progress]

28. Ultimately the "why" is less important than the fact they did it and

thought they could.

[blkmusclmachine]

29. Stinks to high heaven. But ... MUST. LOOK. FORWARD. Amiright?!?!

[ReRe]

32. K&R

Lord! That sure kept me busy for a while. (And you too, bigtree. Thanks for compiling it all for us.)

Yeah, it must be bad when DiFi, Brennan's numero uno cheerleader (at his confirmation hearing) is speaking negatively of him now.

What we have here is another one of those Constitutional crisis's, for the umpteenth time. Can't wait to read this big report when it finally comes out. (Seems like they've been "next-weeking" it for a while now.)

[Scuba]

34. Kick.

[bigtree]

35. kick

[bigtree]

36. kick

[bigtree]

37. kick

[nenagh]

38. Bookmarking to read later...

many thanks..bigtree...

[Uncle Joe]

39. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, bigtree.

[bigtree]

40. thanks for kicking Joe - updating video in op

. . . of DiFi's Senate speech in March. (full speech in video- outlined and excerpted in op)

[Uncle Joe]

41. Thanks for the video, bigtree.

I will view it later this evening.

[bigtree]

42. Pres. Obama takes his first stab at explaining away the Bush-era tortures

National Journal:

Obama addressed post-9/11 America in remarks about the Central Intelligence Agency. "We tortured some folks," he said. "We did some things that were contrary to our values. I understand why it happened. I think it's important when we look back to recall how afraid people were after the Twin Towers fell, and the Pentagon had been hit, and a plane in Pennsylvania had fallen and people did not know whether more attacks were imminent and there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this."

He continued: "A lot of those folks were working hard and under enormous pressure, and are real patriots. But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong." The president also said that he has "full confidence" in CIA Director John Brennan, despite the agency admitting this week that it had hacked Senate computers.

What about Brennan's attempts to intimidate and discredit the investigators of that report he's explaining away?

[malaise]

43. Negroponte thinks this should have been kept secret

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025322354

[Scootaloo]

47. I'm torn.

On the one hand, this is a huge fucking crisis. Seriously, this is SUCH an abuse that I think it nudges up near my threshold for when the death penalty might be called for (not quite there, yet)

However, had the NSA not been spying on the Senate, DiFi would still be defending to the last breath their absolute right to spy on the rest of us without warrant.

[Aerows]

49. I can sum it up in one sentence.

"We are above the law."

[mike_c]

52. DU at it's best....

Rec'd.

[quadrature]

53. Two more years of this ...just wonderful

another select-committee.
missing hard drives
missing emails
Brennan takes the fifth

[tularetom]

54. Feinstein is shocked, shocked that spying is going on in the Senate

Of course she knew the rest of us were being spied on and didn't give a shit about it.

By what he said today, Obama has put himself right in the middle of this entire mess. If indeed the coverup is worse than the crime, he could wind up being the scapegoat for all the Bush era war crimes.

[Utopian Leftist]

56. That irony would simply be staggering . . .

Obama going down for Bush/Cheney crimes. I can't even fathom that.

[historylovr]

55. K & R

Excellent work, bigtree, putting this all together.

[woo me with science]

57. K&R