A month ago, I wrote a post noting that CIA had never finished its Memos for the Record of several key Congressional briefings. But as I’ve been reviewing old Vaughn Indices to get a better sense of what we received yesterday, I’ve seen some details that raise new questions about CIA’s use of Congressional briefings. [...]

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that the CIA Memorandum for the Record from their February 4, 2003 briefing of Pat Roberts revealed that Bob Graham, Roberts’ predecessor as Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had attempted to institute some oversight over the CIA’s interrogation program in November 2002. After CIA discouraged the idea [...]

Practically the first thing Pat Roberts did after he became Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee was to back down off nascent efforts Bob Graham had made as SSCI Chair to exercise real oversight over the torture program. That’s one of the most important details revealed in the Memo for the Record [big PDF] of [...]

David Corn reports that the SSCI has included its torture briefings in its investigation on torture–and wonders whether that might get Cheney in trouble. I’m guessing that Cheney’s briefing of SSCI may be the least of the investigation.

The CIA and SSCI disagree about key details on Senate torture briefings. So why isn’t Pat Roberts clarifying the issue?

Porter Goss and Crazy Pete Hoekstra want to claim (and some commentators are buying that claim) that Democrats are complicit in torture and that’s why Obama isn’t supporting a truth commission. But a review of the known briefing shows that they’re not as complicit as Republicans.

The reaction of members of Congress to news that the torture tapes were destroyed mystifies me. Crazy Pete Hoekstra’s on the same side as the Democrats. Porter Goss has a phalange of spokespeople but is apparently in hiding. Jello Jay Rockefeller seems to have taken cues from the CIA. For once, Jane Harman looks like she did the right thing! And I’m thinking of putting out an APB for Pat Roberts, who seems to have left the country.