I noted this already, but it so exceeds even the abysmal standards of the Sunday show bookers, I’m going to repeat it. To celebrate Mothers Day, the Sunday shows have brought you the Mushroom Cloud Brigade–Condi Rice, Rummy, and Dick Cheney–the three people who, on September 8, 2002 used the Sunday shows to trumpet the [...]

I don’t really have the heart to refute Michael Mukasey’s apology for torture. In it, he contradicts assertions made by torture apologists who were closer to the torture. He includes extraneous (and false) details to fluff up his case. He falsely pretends the torture described in the torture memos accurately described what happened to the [...]

Jose Rodriguez, the guy who as head of Counterterrorism Center oversaw the torture program and who as head of Clandestine Services had the videotapes that would prove torturers exceeded torture guidelines destroyed, has chosen this moment to give his first public interview. And according to Rodriguez, torture was key in finding Osama bin Laden. “Information [...]

The WaPo has an article out that’s causing quite a stir. It bemoans the fact that the CIA has lost much of its top managers since 9/11. More than 90 of the agency’s upper-level managers have left for the private sector in the past 10 years, according to data compiled by The Washington Post. In [...]

This column by Robert Grenier is stunning not because of its content–I agree with just about all of it–but because of who Grenier is. As the CIA’s Iraq Mission Manager in 2002-2004 and then head of CIA’s CounterTerrorism Center in 2004-2006, he had to have been intimately involved with many US efforts in the Middle [...]

On Friday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein had a hearing to figure out how to end the contempt suit the ACLU brought against the CIA for destroying the torture tapes. The ACLU asked that he hold the CIA in contempt. Hellerstein said that wouldn’t serve much purpose. The ACLU suggested that he could hold individuals–presumably meaning Jose [...]

Now that I’ve fetched Mr. EW from his 48 hour trip to Philadelphia from Dublin, my entire family will be in one place for the next day or so, so don’t expect much posting from me in that period. But I did want to point to this detail about the alleged terrorists arrested the other [...]

The AP has a story on Mitchell and Jessen’s torture defense. The lead of the story describes how CIA protected the torturers both by paying all of their defense costs–up to $5 million–as well as paying it directly out of CIA funds. But there’s an interesting sub-narrative. The piece describes how, in addition to just [...]

Today’s news will be dominated with Bush’s admission that Cheney was mad at him for not pardoning Libby. Bush, in an interview aired Monday on TODAY, said Cheney was angry that Bush only commuted the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted of lying during the leak investigation. [snip] ‘I can’t believe you’re going to [...]

Adam Goldman has another in his series of articles fleshing out the details of the torture that John Durham is investigating. Today’s story describes the former FBI-turned CIA guy, “Albert” threatened Rahim al-Nashiri with a drill–with the approval of Albert’s boss, “Mike.” (Though the AP story says this threat would be less than a felony [...]