Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s office has released a new statement on what he was and wasn’t told by the CIA about torture.
Says Rockefeller, referring to the CIA document released last week:
We are not in a position to vouch for the accuracy of the document. We can tell you that in the particular entry stating that Senator Rockefeller was briefed on February 4th of 2003 with an asterisk also noting him as later individually briefed — that is not correct, or at least is not being reported correctly by people reading the document. The Democratic staff director attended a briefing on Feb. 4, but Senator Rockefeller was not present and was not later briefed individually by anyone in the intelligence community. He was first personally briefed by the intelligence community on Sept 4th, 2003.
As we noted last week, the document mentions a February 2003 briefing, at which, it said, lawmakers were told that we had waterboarded Abu Zubaydah. An asterisk indicated that Rockefeller hadn’t been at the briefing, but had been individually briefed later, presumably on the same details.
But Rockefeller’s new statement — unlike the one his office gave us last week — suggests that the individual briefing never took place, and that he wasn’t briefed at all for another seven months.
The Senate Intelligence committee’s investigation of torture, which was begun under Rockefeller’s chairmanship, is ongoing.