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CIA Briefing Document Lists Goss As Congressman -- Even Though He Was CIA Director At The Time
Another day, another indication that the CIA briefings document that Republicans are currently trying to bludgeon Nancy Pelosi with is deeply flawed and unreliable.
The Associated Press yesterday spotted *(see late update below) two clear new errors in the document -- including one real howler we're kicking ourselves for not spotting ourselves:
1)
The CIA chart states that a Senate staffer, Chris Mellon, attended a briefing on July 15, 2004. However, Mellon told The Associated Press that he left the Senate in April 2004 and did not attend the briefing.On Wednesday, CIA spokesman George Little said the CIA has reviewed its record and agrees that Mellon was erroneously listed as having attended the 2004 briefing.
And even more embarrassingly, 2)
The CIA chart also shows former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss attended a March 8, 2005, briefing as a member of Congress. However, Goss was at that time the director of the CIA. He took that job in November 2004.
These are hardly the first pieces of evidence that the document is unreliable. Four Democratic lawmakers, including Pelosi, are now on record differing with the document's version of what happened. And as Greg Sargent reports today, Goss himself, who attended that 2002 Pelosi briefing is refusing to say that the CIA informed him and Pelosi that waterboarding had already been used -- the key issue in dispute.
In addition, as we reported earlier this week, the document refers frequently to "enhanced interrogation techniques" or EITs, as a subject of discussion, even though, as we reported earlier this week, that appears not to have come into widespread public use until 2004.
And CIA director Leon Panetta released a letter with the document saying it might not be accurate. He has subsequently declined to stand by it.
We're starting to wonder: given the number of errors it contains, why did CIA feel comfortable releasing this document in the first place?
*Late Update: It looks like a William Ockham, commenting on a post by Marcy Wheeler at Firedoglake, and then Wheeler herself, pointed out the Goss point long before the AP did. Apologies for not crediting them initially.
Josh
Zachary
Please tell me the plan to fly a remotely controled airplane over Iraq before the start of the war so Iraq could shoot it down to have a reason to attack wasn't concocted by the CIA! With the release of memos that don't mean or show squat the CIA administrators are beginning to look like Dumb, Dumber and Dumbest.If they couldn't convince Cheney Iraq wasn'r persuing 'yellowcake' in Niger, there was no meeting in Prague between Atta and Iraq Intelligence or there were no WMD in Iraq, why do they think we should believe them? Cheney didn't!
May 21, 2009 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
The more I read about this the more inclined I find myself to believe those conspiracy theories about Sept 11 being an "inside job" planned and executed by Cheney et al in order to have a politically acceptable excuse to invade Iraq.
I used to dimiss them and place them in the "looney" category but, given all we've learnt in the last few weeks, would ANYONE be surprised if in a couple of years we find out that was indeed the case?
If the case for war was fabricated and the evidence manipulated, why couldn't the attacks be staged in order to gain popular support for an unpopular administration (whose legitimacy was still being questioned) and give it unlimited powers?
May 21, 2009 3:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excuse me, but the AP didn't spot either of those errors. Obey's office alerted folks to the first. AP picked the second one up from Keith Olbermann, who credited Marcy Wheeler, who got it from me.
I've been pointing out that little error for two weeks:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/07/pelosis-advisory-on-abu-zubaydah-and-torture/#comment-155023
May 21, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I guess "spotted" means "finally got around to publishing a story about".
Why the errors?
1) conspiracy theory A: slapdash frame-up attempt
2) conspiracy theory B: intentional errors to self-discredit the document
3) general incompetence and/or lousy record-keeping of largely irrelevant calendar info
4) document is based on forward calendars for regularly scheduled briefings, calendars created maybe 6 months in advance and then annotated casually.
#4 explains the two "spotted" errors because in both cases the discrepancies involved people who left Congress unexpectedly. So the master calendar used to generate the memo was missing a couple of annotations.
Using the Razor, #4 is the best choice.
This doesn't mean that the document is not being used abusively by Repos to get air time.
May 21, 2009 2:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
"...why did CIA feel comfortable releasing this document in the first place?"
Just more attempts at covering their butts and not just with Congress.
The public is not happy with them, either.
They look bad. They're feeling heat for from doing EITs via an ok from some "authority" rather than waiting for an official legal opinion from the DOJ.
Not only that, they've got to come up with a fall-guy or two and all of that is not in place, yet.
May 21, 2009 1:31 PM | Reply | Permalink