She makes excellent points about the way in which, over time, the CIA and successive administrations have gutted the ability of the Congress to exert real oversight, focusing in this case on the way in which the ‘gang of eight’ exception, intended for rare and urgent situations, has swallowed the rule that the full committees be briefed. In this case, even the gang of eight rule was flouted.

I’d bet anything that Perry Bacon, Jr. couldn’t answer the most basic quiz about the two intelligence committees’ structure and functioning, and that he hasn’t even read the above op ed: that’s what makes him so perfect for the crowd that now runs the Post.

Here is how the Gang of Four/Eight etc. get briefed. This is who they can talk to about the briefing. here is what they can document w.r.t. the briefing. here is how they can question the policy aspects of the briefing. here is how they can call into question the behaviours highlighted in the briefing. here is how they can inform their leadership about the meat of the briefing.

Here is what they cannot do. Here is how their abilities to shine a light on their briefings have changed over the years.

Between the Member Briefings Report and Graham’s Notes, why not postulate that Bush Spied on Congress using a CTC-controlled OCA and the Congressional Staffs?

That way, Panetta’s Chart would be correct – Graham was briefed by Moskowitz, of CTC, performing his secret function in OCA.

In other words, as part of his Militarized Response to 911, Bush not only treated the Domestic US as an integral part of the ‘battlefield’, but he also considered the ‘enemy’ to be Ideological – iow, it was possible, if not probable in Bush’s mind, that US Citizens could ‘give aid and comfort to the enemy’ through ‘wrong thinking.’

Therefore, Everyone – including, and maybe especially, Congress – went under Full-Spectrum Surveillance through Bush’s Program.

What that may have meant in terms of Activities in Bush’s Program would likely have been Many Compartmentalized Elements – Data-Mining, listening-in to foreign conversations, Harsh Interrogations, Media Management (OTR Club), etc – and for High Value Targets, like Congress, actual People-on-the-Ground Operations.

So, working out of Cheney’s Shadow NSC, Bush Secretly ordered Loyalists into Compartments inside CIA at CTC, who then ‘ran an Op’ to take control – mainly through sexual compromise – of OCA and the Congressional Staffs – thereby ‘taking charge’ of the Administrative Processes that actually run Congress on a day-to-day basis.

This would have the effect of making the staffs the ‘handlers’ and ‘watchers’ of the various Congressional Members – putting people like Pelosi and Graham, Daschle and Leahy, and everyone else, in glass jars and manipulating – in secret – everything that got done – like Specter’s staff surreptitiously ‘inserting’ that clause into the Patriot Act, for instance.

In other words, Bush the UE may have run a Covert Op to Spy On and Take Control of Congress in the name of his Unlimited Power – because Congress, just like US, might contain the Ideological Enemy – which, to Bush, was certainly anyone who might try and put a check or balance on him.

So, Panetta may be saying that the information in the Member Briefings Report is from the CIA – it’s just from a secret compartment inside the CIA that he can’t talk about – inside CTC – that was Directly Controlled – including their records – by Bush and Cheney through the Shadow NSC.

And, he may be saying to Congress – I’ll leave it up to you, Congress, to do the Investigation I can’t do – open-up a Militarized, Presidentially Controlled Compartment inside the CIA/NSC – and determine for yourself the Report’s ‘accuracy’ – and the True Nature of the Briefings for yourselves.

If any of this speculation is true, then I would expect Cheney’s Fourth Branch to be staffed by thousands and thousands of Bureaucratic Spies – and Tightly Coupled to AIPAC/Israel/Wall Street Lobbyists – All to Control US and push the Neocon Agenda.

But, I’m just speculating…

Rochester, N.Y.: Perry, Leon Panetta has to defend the CIA (if he didn’t, there’d be a revolt – they were already unhappy enough that he was appointed as director), so I am not surprised he did. Given that he wasn’t at the agency when they supposedly told Congress what they were doing, how can he be sure what he’s being told actually occurred? Also, Nancy Pelosi isn’t the only Congress person saying she was misled – Bob Graham has said that too. Frankly, there is guilt on both sides of the aisle – the Republicans enacted cruel interrogation policies and the Democrats let them do it.

Perry Bacon Jr.: I think Panetta didn’t have to give as strong of a comment as he did, directly contradicting Pelosi. He could have said the records are inconclusive or something else, although yes, her comments did box him into the need for a response.

Fremont, Calif.: I’m no lawyer, nor do I play one on television (or on the internet) but I don’t see Panetta and Pelosi’s statements as mutually exclusive. Pelosi says she was misled by the CIA and Panetta says the CIA did not lie to Congress. While most in the media are saying one statement contradicts the other, that’s not exactly true, is it?

Perry Bacon Jr.: Maybe there is some way these comments are not mutually exclusive, I know Tim Kaine said that on television yesterday. I don’t exactly see how: it would seem Pelosi has said the CIa told her waterboarding was not being used, Panetta says the records show she was briefing on waterboarding.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..03258.html

the intelligence olympics

http://turcopolier.typepad.com…..mpics.html

I follow you, as Schultz’s overall ‘tone’ is fairly out of my personal comfort zone.
But I’m interested (among other things) in media shifts.

To set up some of the interviews that the longer interview times allowed by ‘new media’ (ie, the Toobz) allow is almost certainly requiring more IQ points and more focus and better narrative sense that many in the field of communications have had to use up to this point.

I don’t know whether Maddow could have surged the way she has back when limited to 2 minute segments. But give someone with her ’smarts’ and desire for excellence a 10 or 12 minute slot, and she is remarkable.

And Schultz has clearly been taking cues from her style, in the sense of having to summarize a whole lot of information, introduce key concepts, then bring in the guest.

The Olbermann interview with Landay** of McClatchy tonight shows the same pattern: set it up with solid background and DotA, DotB, DotC, then bring in the guest and actually allow that guest to complete a cogent thought or sentence.

Granted, I didn’t watch teevee news for something like… 20+ years, until it arrived on the Toobz. But even watching old clips of news reports, I suspect we are seeing something new. It could easily be manipulated, but so far allows for far better… ’storytelling’. But the extended time formats require much smarter hosts and producers, is my hunch.

(The other guy who can really set up an interview is Mike Barnacle, but he doesn’t get much time to host interviews at MSNBC. Yet he’s often the one to ask the ‘uncomfortable question’.)

** I always mix his name up with that old Dallas Cowboys coach, “Landry”; the reporter, I see is Landay… (sigh; bad with names…)