Why Did Tenet Create a False Record on the Day After He “Quit”?
By: emptywheel Wednesday May 27, 2009 9:11 am
William Ockham made another really important discovery:
I’d like to point to a document
http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/052708/052708_Other_3.pdf that was released a year ago (5/27/2008) as part of the ACLU’s ongoing torture FOIA. It’s a heavily redacted memo dated
June 4, 2004 from George Tenet to the National Security Advisor (Rice). By June 2004,
Tenet is on his way out as CIA director, the Abu Ghraib scandal has hit with full force, the CIA IG’s report has just been finished (but not yet briefed to Congress) and the 2004 Presidential campaign is in full swing. The CIA prison system was mostly still secret, but they had just released Khaled el-Masri in May 2004. The story of the ghost detainees in Iraq was just about to break. With that as the background, here’s the parts of the second page of the memo that aren’t redacted (all the rest except the date, sender, and addressee are redacted:
*** 3. As you know, beginning in September 2002, the Justice Department authorized CIA in its discretion, to employ on selected HVDs (Redaction ~3 lines) waterboard, (Redaction ~2 lines) CIA has reserved use of these (Redaction) techniques to elicit ongoing threat information from the most hardcore, senior terrorist figures that have been captured– men such as Khalid Sheik Muhammad, Abu Zubaydeh, (Redaction ~ 7 lines) key members of Congress have been briefed from the beginning–CIA informed the leadership of the Congressional Intelligence Committees of the existence and nature of the Program when it commenced in late 2002, in early 2003 when members of the leadership changed, and again in September 2003. Rice and Tenet both knew that most of that was not true. They knew the program commenced long before September 2002, that the DOJ memos (which were not authorizations) came in August, that the Congressional briefings were after the fact and completely inadequate from a statutory perspective. What is this memo other than an attempt to create an
after-the-fact coverup?
I'd add two details to those WO offers.
The document appears not just after Tenet was on his way out, but the day after Bush announced his resignation. And it happened around the time Tenet asked for written endorsement from Bush of the torture program. more:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/27/why-did-tenet-create-a-false-record-on-the-day-after-he-quit/
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