Dick Cheney

Cheney: Sending Wilson To Niger Was "Amateur Hour" At The CIA

Zachary Roth | October 30, 2009, 5:28PM

Dick Cheney told FBI investigators that his response to hearing that Joe Wilson had been sent to Niger to assess whether Saddam had tried to buy yellow-cake was that it was "amateur hour" at the CIA.

That's according to a summary of the FBI's interview with Cheney, which was conducted as part of Pat Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak of Valerie Plame's name. The document was just released by the Justice Department, thanks to a lawsuit by CREW.

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Torture

ACLU Lawyer: Torture Probe Too Narrowly Focused

Zachary Roth | August 31, 2009, 4:45PM

Earlier today, Jameel Jaffer of the ACLU went on MSNBC, and made a crucial point about the decision to probe torture.

The problem, argued Jaffer, is not that we're investigating clear evidence of law-breaking -- as Dick Cheney and countless conservatives would have it. Rather, it's that the scope of the investigation, as we've noted, appears to be unduly narrow. As things stand, it focuses on CIA personnel, but ignores the Bush administration officials -- both Justice Department lawyers like John Yoo, and high-ranking policy-makers like Cheney himself -- who authorized and approved torture in the first place.

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CIA

Who Can Say What Goes On In Cheney's Head?

David Kurtz | August 25, 2009, 3:56PM

TPMmuckraker's Zachary Roth, discussing Dick Cheney, torture and those CIA documents this afternoon on MSNBC:

CIA

Interrogator Revved Power Drill In Front of Hooded Detainee -- Report Details More Abuses

Zachary Roth | August 24, 2009, 4:53PM

CIA interrogators racked an unloaded handgun close to the head of a high-value detainee, and revved a power drill while the detainee stood naked and hooded, according to the just-released CIA IG report. They also threatened to bring in the mother and family of the detainee, al Nashiri, as well as using a stiff brush to induce pain, and standing on Nashiri's shackles, causing cuts and bruises.

And interrogators threatened another detainee, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, that they would kill his children if another attack occurred in the US.

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CIA

Torture Report Recommendations Redacted

Zachary Roth | August 24, 2009, 4:28PM

A good catch by McClatchy on the CIA torture report...

The 2004 report, by CIA Inspector General John Helgerson, contains ten recommendations for action on the part of the agency. But all ten are redacted. So we still don't know what the CIA's internal watchdog urged be done about torture -- including whether it recommended prosecutions.

Of course, the report had been released previously, but in an even more redacted form.

Late Update: Helgerson has issued a statement expressing disappointment that his recommendations were redacted.

CIA

CIA Torture Report Released

Zachary Roth | August 24, 2009, 3:31PM

The long awaited 2004 CIA IG report on torture -- which according to Eric Holder helped prompt him to appoint a special prosecutor -- has now been released.

The Justice Department didn't put out an online version, but the Washington Independent has posted the first half, plans to follow up with the second.

Preliminary reports suggest that the report says interrogators threatened to kill Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's children if other attacks occurred in the U.S.

Late Update: The Indy now has the whole thing up.

Torture

Rights Group Blasts Decision To Limit Torture Probe To "Low-Level Operatives"

Zachary Roth | August 24, 2009, 3:12PM

The news that Eric Holder will appoint a prosecutor to probe Bush-era abuses hasn't satisfied some torture foes.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has issued a statement blasting the AG for apparently limiting the scope of the probe to CIA personnel who exceeded DOJ guidelines -- rather than including the DOJ lawyers who issued those guidelines, which themselves went far beyond what the law appears to allow.

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Eric Holder

WaPo: Holder To Name Torture Prosecutor

Zachary Roth | August 24, 2009, 2:56PM

The Washington Post is reporting that Eric Holder has decided to name a special prosecutor to probe -- though only up to a point -- instances of torture under the Bush administration.

According to the paper's sources, Holder will name John Durham, a career prosecutor with a reputation for independence and impartiality, who led the investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes. Read more about Durham here.

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Leon Panetta

Blackwater Tie Expains Lawmakers' Outrage Over CIA Asassinations Plan

Zachary Roth | August 24, 2009, 1:54PM

A belated point coming out of last week's news...

Last month, when Leon Panetta provoked congressional outrage by revealing the existence of a secret CIA program to kill top al Qaeda leaders, we had the feeling that there was more to the story than we'd so far learned. After all, in the aftermath of 9/11, the Bush administration had openly and uncontroversially targeting Bin Laden and his top deputies.

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CIA

Panetta Spins Forthcoming Torture Report: We Were Told It Was Legal

Zachary Roth | August 24, 2009, 11:23AM

With the Obama administration set later today to release an internal CIA report on torture, director Leon Panetta is preemptively defending his agency, claiming that CIA personnel simply followed the legal guidelines they were given.

In a message to agency employees -- but in fact intended for the reporters to whom it was sent moments ago -- Panetta called the information contained in the 2004 report "old news." He pointed out that the CIA referred cases of abuse to DOJ for prosecution. And he noted: "The Agency sought and received multiple written assurances that its methods were lawful."

Panetta's preemptive message may signal that the report contains even more damaging information than anticipated about Bush-era abuses.

Meanwhile, ABCNews.com is reporting that Panetta last month was involved in a "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House over DOJ plans to probe whether CIA officers broke the law in carrying out the harsh interrogation techniques.

[Late Update: Greg Sargent adds that in addition to the report itself...

The CIA today will release the two documents Dick Cheney requested this spring that he claims will prove torture worked.

I've also confirmed that the CIA will release a declassified version of the chapter in the CIA Inspector General's 2004 report that's widely expected to conclude that there's no proof torture foiled any attacks.

That jibes with Panetta's statement in his message that "the CIA materials include the 2004 report from our Office of Inspector General and two papers--one from 2004 and the other from 2005--that discuss the value of intelligence acquired from high-level detainees."]

The full message from Panetta follows...

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DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility

NYT: DOJ Report Recommends Reopening Prisoner Abuse Cases -- Holder Now "All But Certain" To Probe Torture

Zachary Roth | August 24, 2009, 9:16AM

President Obama's desire to look forward, not back, is turning out to be easier said than done.

Last week, Newsweek reported that the long awaited CIA report on torture, set to be released today, reveals that agency interrogators staged mock executions of detainees.

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Leon Panetta

Congress To Probe Secret CIA Program

Zachary Roth | July 17, 2009, 3:31PM

Rep. Silvestre Reyes, who chairs the House Intelligence committee, has announced an investigation into the secret CIA program that Leon Panetta recently ended, and which Dick Cheney reportedly ordered kept secret from Congress.

From Reyes's statement:

After careful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, I am announcing an official Committee investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1974.

This investigation will focus on the core issues of how the congressional intelligence committees and Congress are kept fully and currently informed. To this end, the investigation will examine several issues, including the program discussed during Director Panetta's June 24th notification and whether there was any official decision or direction to withold (sic) information from the Committee.

CIA

Report: CIA Assassin Program Could Operate Anywhere -- Even Inside U.S.

Zachary Roth | July 16, 2009, 11:31AM

Since the news broke (sub. req.) at the start of the week that CIA director Leon Panetta had pulled the plug on a secret program to assassinate or capture al Qaeda leaders, we've been raising questions about one key aspect of the story. In particular, what was it about the program that was so shocking that Dick Cheney reportedly ordered it kept secret from Congress, Panetta quashed it as soon as he heard about it, and Congressional Democrats risked being painted as soft on terror by shrieking about being kept in the dark?

We may have gotten a good piece of the answer here: The Washington Post reports today on how the program had been revived and then put on hold several times since 2001. But it also says, referring to the "presidential finding" with which President Bush authorized the program in 2001:

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CIA

CIA Gets Extension Until Aug 24 On Torture Report

Zachary Roth | July 15, 2009, 12:31PM

The Obama administration's request to delay releasing a key report on torture has reportedly been granted.

According to Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent, a judge has said the CIA can have until August 24 to release the declassified version of a 2004 inspector general's report on the Bush administration's interrogations program. The report's release has already been delayed several times.

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CIA

CIA Vet: Agency Doesn't Need Secret Program To Target al Qaeda

Zachary Roth | July 13, 2009, 3:57PM

Earlier today, we raised a few questions about the notion that the secret CIA program that Dick Cheney reportedly withheld from Congress concerned an effort to kill or capture al Qaeda leaders. And now a top counter-terror expert is doing the same.

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we've been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization.

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Barack Obama

Holder May Investigate Torture -- But Several Probes Are Already Underway

Zachary Roth | July 13, 2009, 2:34PM

The pendulum appears to have swung back in the other direction on the issue of criminal investigations into Bush-era torture. It had looked for a while like President Obama's stated desire to look forward not back had carried the day. But now it appears that Attorney General Eric Holder -- independent of his boss's political concerns, which is how things should work -- is leaning back towards initiating a probe. The news was first reported over the weekend by Newsweek, then picked up today by the New York Times and Washington Post.

But whatever Holder ultimately decides, there are already several ongoing government efforts to investigate torture, which figure to substantially fill out our still patchwork understanding of the issue. So as we wait for official word from the Justice Department on a criminal inquiry, it's worth being clear about what those efforts are, and how they relate to each other.

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Dick Cheney

New Info Brings More Questions On Secret CIA Program

Zachary Roth | July 13, 2009, 12:13PM

We've gotten some more information in recent days about that secret CIA program that the agency withheld key information from Congress about, and that CIA director Leon Panetta promptly shut down when he learned about it last month. But the new reports only raise more questions.

On Saturday, the New York Times reported that the CIA withheld information about the secret program "on direct orders" from then-Vice President Dick Cheney. The Times did not identify the program, but noted that, according to intelligence and congressional officials, it involved neither the CIA's interrogation program nor its domestic intelligence (e.g. warrantless wiretapping and surveillance) activities.

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CIA

White House Slipped In Key Passage To CIA Threat Assessment, Justifiying Surveillance

Zachary Roth | July 10, 2009, 4:06PM

Perhaps the key passage -- or at least the most interesting one -- from the just released inspectors general report on warrantless wiretapping is this one:

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Barack Obama

CIA Again Delays Release Of Key Torture Report

Zachary Roth | July 2, 2009, 5:49PM

The release of the long-awaited CIA inspector general report on torture has been postponed once again.

The ACLU, which is suing to have the report released, just announced that the government is asking for yet another postponement on the date of the report's release -- this time, until August 31. The CIA had earlier said it would release the report June 19. That was then pushed back to June 26, and then again to July 1.

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Barack Obama

More Obama Secrecy -- This Time On Cheney's Plame Interview

Zachary Roth | July 2, 2009, 2:46PM

Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised at this point. But the latest example of the Obama administration mimicking the Bushies in opting for secrecy over openness feels like one of the most infuriating yet.

The Justice Department is declining to release Dick Cheney's interview with federal investigators looking into the Valerie Plame leak, arguing -- as it did under President Bush -- that doing so would discourage future high-level officials from cooperating with criminal investigations.

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CIA

Ex-CIA Officer Charged With Sexual Assault

Rachel Slajda | July 1, 2009, 12:11PM

The CIA's former station chief in Algeria has been indicted on sexual assault charges, the Washington Post reports.

Andrew Warren, who was the CIA's top officer in the North African country, was charged with drugging and assaulting a Muslim woman in his official residence in February 2008. The charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Warren had been sent back to America when the investigation was announced in January. At the time, the Justice Department was looking into assault allegations from two women. When they investigated his home, they found tapes of him engaged in sex acts, one with an apparently semi-conscious woman. The CIA says he has been fired.

Warren has said sex with both women was consensual.

Here are the details of the allegations:

The woman who made the 2008 allegation told investigators that she had known Warren for several months and that he invited her to his residence on Feb. 17 and gave her a tour. She said that after drinking two apple martinis, she suddenly felt paralyzed, though she could speak and see, authorities wrote in court documents.

The woman was then sexually assaulted, she told authorities. An investigator with the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service wrote in court papers that the woman's symptoms were consistent with being drugged.

Barack Obama

CIA Stance On Torture Tape Docs Suggests Obama's New Open Government Era Won't Materialize

Zachary Roth | June 9, 2009, 1:49PM

It's looking more and more like Barack Obama's pledge to usher in a new era of openness in government may well go unfulfilled.

Yesterday, administration lawyers cited national security concerns to argue that Bush-era documents detailing the videotaped interrogations of detainees should not be released. And in the wake of that news, open-government advocates are reluctantly acknowledging that, despite Obama's campaign promises, his approach to secrecy on issues of national security will likely not depart significantly from that of George Bush.

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CIA

Panetta: Too Dangerous To Release Torture Tape Docs

Zachary Roth | June 9, 2009, 9:58AM

Do we have yet another case of the Obama administration mimicking its predecessor's notorious penchant for government secrecy?

The CIA argued yesterday that Bush-era documents detailing the videotaped interrogations of detainees should not be released, citing national security concerns, reports the Washington Post.

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Dick Cheney

Cheney's Campaign To Keep Lawmakers In Line On Torture

Zachary Roth | June 3, 2009, 12:11PM

The Washington Post reports today that, during 2005, Dick Cheney sat in on several of those CIA torture briefings, in an effort to persuade wavering lawmakers to keep backing the torture program.

The news doesn't really come as a shock -- indeed, some close observers had already guessed that the then-veep was involved in the briefings. But it does add to the picture of Cheney embarking during the middle years of the Bush administration on a focused, stealthy campaign to make sure the US didn't give up what he saw as its right to torture.

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CIA

Source: CIA Dissembles In Briefings

Zachary Roth | May 26, 2009, 6:32PM

Yet more evidence that the CIA may not have been totally up front with Nancy Pelosi during that contested torture briefing from 2002...

A former "deep-cover" CIA operative tells CQ's Jeff Stein that agency briefers often hide facts or shade the truth. "They mumble, they dissemble, and there's a lot of 'on the one hand... '" said the operative, who has written harsh critiques of the CIA, under the pen-name Ishmael Jones.

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Alberto Gonzales

Report: Gonzo, Then At White House, Signed Off On CIA Torture In 2002

Zachary Roth | May 22, 2009, 1:22PM

For a while now, it's been clear that, as former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified earlier this month, Abu Zubaydah was tortured well before the Justice Department issued its first opinion approving enhanced interrogation techniques in August 2002.

So we've been wondering about the procedure by which that treatment was authorized. And it looks like a crucial new report from NPR may have offered an answer.

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CIA

House Rejects Effort to Probe Pelosi On CIA Claim

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 5:05PM

That GOP effort to get a congressional investigation into Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA lied to her about torture? Looks like it didn't get too far.

The Associated Press reports that the House voted by 252-172 to block the measure, which was sponsored by Rep. Rob Bishop of Utah. Two GOPers, Ron Paul of Texas and Walter Jones of North Carolina, joined Democrats in voting against it.

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CIA

How Cheney Turned A Right-Wing Meme Mainstream

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 2:21PM

It looks like we've figured out what Dick Cheney meant when he said President Obama has "reserved unto himself" the right to order enhanced interrogation techniques.

In February the Wall Street Journal reported (sub. req.) :

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Dick Cheney

Was Cheney Talking About Obama's Executive Order?

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 12:52PM

We asked earlier about what Dick Cheney might have been referring to when he said President Obama had reserved the right to order enhanced interrogation when he deems it appropriate.

Could Cheney have been referring to this passage from Obama's executive order on interrogations?

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CIA

CIA Briefing Document Lists Goss As Congressman -- Even Though He Was CIA Director At The Time

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 10:27AM

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:

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Arlen Specter

Specter: "CIA Has A Very Bad Record When It Comes To ... Honesty"

Zachary Roth | May 20, 2009, 3:36PM

Support for Nancy Pelosi -- and for our point that questioning the CIA's honesty isn't really too radical a position -- has come from a perhaps unlikely new source.

The Hill reports that Arlen Specter, the new Democrat who as a Republican chaired the Senate intelligence committee, told a luncheon audience at the American Law Institute: "The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to -- I was about to say candid, that's too mild -- to honesty."

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