Can anybody post a recap of the CIA hearings so far?

[Stephanie]

The threads are too big to wade through for those of us who are supposed to be working at the moment (ahem). Can some of you who are following give a summary and highlights for the cube rats? Much appreciated! :hi:

[jaxx]

1. I don't have c-span 3, so I'd like to know too.

[kevinmc]

7. CSPAN-3, plug this into your Real Player

rtsp://rx-lvl3-pa29.rbn.com/farm/pull/mtx-wes-sea02:1259/farm/pull/tx-rbn-sea76:2359/encoder/cspan/g2cspan/live/cspan3-g2.rm

[jaxx]

10. Thank you. I have it on now.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. Well they have CIA people speaking on the severity of

the security breach. Explaining that Mrs. Plame was indeed undercover.

Sorry I don't have exact quotes. It's all great stuff and there's too much to try and type down.

[kevinmc]

3. Former CIA Agents.......

say the WH has done great damage to our security, the RNC and the Republicans are Traitors. That's it in a nutshell. Also someone tried to disrupt the meeting with a fake security alarm, Sen. Durgin(sp?) would not have it and kept going.

[joemurphy]

4. Mostly they are trying to explain that outing CIA people is bad.

They've explained it in a lot of detail.

They've also slammed the Bush Administration for letting it happen without impunity.

These are all former CIA officers. Pat Lang, for example, formerly headed CIA human intelligence operations.

They've universally said that Plame's outing by Administration officials is unprecedented.

They've attacked the myth (perpetuated by Republican apologists) that Plame was not "covert".

They've said that this was totally "uninformed" and "wrong". They are unanimous that an agent can sit at a desk and still be covert.

They've slammed Bush a lot for flip-flopping on his pledge to "take care" of leakers.

They've clarified the fact that the leakers had been briefed on how to handle classified information -- that this happened before they were given access to it. The implication, of course, is that these people knew what they were doing and did it anyway.

They've stressed that Rove, in confirming to Novak that Plame was CIA and Wilson's wife, compromised the secret intelligence. His confirmation in this context was just as bad as if he were the person who originally leaked it.

Dorgan is asking if the inclusion of the "sixteen words" in the State of the Union address was really just a mistake and the fact that there is a "different viewpoint" on this and whether such is detrimental to CIA morale.

The ex-CIA agents say that there is an "intimidation factor" at work. Bolton's quashing intelligence people who gave him information he didn't like is cited as an example.

"Formerly, intelligence was collected "from the bottom up". Now the reverse is true."

Lang is talking about WH pressure on the CIA now. Says analysts were definitely pressured. Cites it in an article called "Drinking Kool-Aid".

It's over now. Generally, measured, thoughtful, and damaging to the Administration and its apologists.

[SheepyMcSheepster]

14. thanks for the summery

it's appreciated

[wryter2000]

5. I only tuned in a bit before 8:00 PDT

or 11 EDT

There's way too much detail, but mostly the substance is that this is way worse as far as national security goes that we would have thought. L. Johnson said that a damage assessment must have been done in 7/2003 and if there wasn't anything important in it, it would have been leaked.

Johnson is pissed. They all seem to feel that there's more than one outrage here. 1) the outing, 2) the failure to take immediate action against the leakers, 3) the flip-flopping now about what constitutes a reason to fire a leaker.

Johnson voted for asshole in 2000, btw.

[HeeBGBz]

6. Repukes getting a major ass kicking

Too many awesome points for my ability to outline. Hope someone else can narrow it down better.

[wryter2000]

8. Lang knocking down the talking points

Even if Wilson was mistaken in thinking Cheney sent him, that doesn't make him a liar.

Lang's seen the reports that supposedly show that SH was looking for yellowcake. He says it was one meeting loooong ago where an Iraqi delegation asked Niger if they'd be willing to sell some uranium, and Niger said, "no." That's the totality of their "evidence."

[CrispyQ]

9. Here's a link to thread #2

which has a link to thread #1.

I beleive there is also a new thread.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4166140#4166557

[CrispyQ]

11. Thread #3

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4166572

[Stephanie]

12. thank you!

Hope they repeat it tonight!

[wishlist]

13. WH failure to investigate/reprimand over leak is major system failure

CIA panel considers the leak extremely serious with longlasting global implications for national security setting a very bad precedent, especially since WH has failed to pursue or punish leakers.

CIA panel is very hard hitting describing WH and Bolton intimidating intelligence agents and analysts by trying to fire and remove or discredit people whose findings don't match desired conclusions. CIA panel brought up problem of intelligence conclusions being influenced coming from the top down instead of resulting from intelligence coming up out of the investigations of agents.