Seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency on Friday urged President Obama to reverse Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to hold a criminal investigation of CIA interrogators who used enhanced techniques on detainees.

The directors, whose tenures span back as far as 35 years, wrote a letter to the president saying the cases have already been investigated by the CIA and career prosecutors, and to reconsider those decisions makes it difficult for agents to believe they can safely follow legal guidance.

“Attorney General Holder’s decision to re-open the criminal investigation creates an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy for those whose cases the Department of Justice had previously declined to prosecute,” they wrote.

“Those men and women who undertake difficult intelligence assignments in the aftermath of an attack such as September 11 must believe there is permanence in the legal rules that govern their actions,” the seven added.

The letter was signed by former directors Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet, John Deutch, R. James Woolsey, William Webster and James R. Schlesinger.

You can read the full text of the letter here.

President Obama would do well to heed the of advice messieurs  Hayden, Goss, Tenet, Deutch, Woolsey, Webster and Schlesinger… There is no good that can come from opening this can worms.

The President has already banned the use of the interrogation techniques in question and previously declared the CIA personnel who used them after September 11 would not be charged. By allowing Attorney General Holder to continue this ill-advised investigation the President will undermine the ability of CIA officers to to do their jobs effectively. More over there is no guarantee the investigation will remain narrowly focused. There is the very real risk that this investigation may ultimately undermine the ability of this president and his successors to obtain candid legal advice, as lawyers fear they may in turn by scapegoated by a future administration.

President Obama should stand by his commitment to the CIA and end this investigation before it poisons this country for years to come by criminalizing policy differences.

CIA Director Leon Panetta’s emergency testimony to Congress about an illegal assassination program has set off a crisis at the spy agency. The Daily Beast’s Joseph Finder exclusively reports that:

• The secret assassination ‘program’ wasn’t much more than a PowerPoint presentation, a task force and a collection of schemes—it never got off the ground
• Panetta’s three immediate predecessors—George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden—have spoken to him, and that he now sees that no laws were broken.
• Panetta has frantically tried to rectify his gaffe, but now faces increased Congressional oversight.

CIA Director Leon Panetta stunned Washington earlier this summer by disclosing, in an emergency closed-door briefing to Congress, that for the last eight years, the agency he now runs illegally concealed a secret terrorist-assassination program. The reaction was predictably explosive. The House intelligence-oversight committee launched a major investigation. Here was official confirmation, from the very top, that the CIA in the Bush years had been flagrantly and systematically violating the National Security Act of 1947.

But according to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level officials from the Bush administration, the real story is at once more innocent—Panetta was mistaken; no law was broken—and far more troubling: an inexperienced CIA director, unfamiliar with how his vast, complicated agency works, unable to trust senior officials within his own agency, and desperate to keep his hands clean, screwed up.

The only question is whether Panetta is an idiot who is unqualified to lead the CIA or a political hack who fabricated a secret, illegal spy program to cover Speaker Pelosi’s backside.

H/T: Gabriel Malor at AoSHQ.

Related

• Panetta Revealed – Commentary

As political spectacles go, one would be hard pressed to find anything as ridiculous as the Washington Romper Room now starring Congressional Democrats and the CIA. If only the consequences weren’t potentially so damaging for national security.

The latest episode comes courtesy of Silvestre Reyes, Chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. In a letter leaked to the press on Wednesday, he claims the agency “misled” Congress about its activities after 9/11. Recall that this all started when Speaker Nancy Pelosi insisted the CIA failed to brief her in 2002 about aggressive interrogations during her time on Intelligence earlier this decade. CIA Director Leon Panetta in May said the agency didn’t, as policy or practice, “mislead Congress.” Briefing notes from the time showed Mrs. Pelosi was told and didn’t object to waterboarding. The CIA this week felt compelled to issue another denial in response to the Reyes letter.

Mr. Panetta must feel burned. After the Pelosi blow-up, he has tried to repair relations with his own party’s Congressional leaders, and last month he reached out to the Intelligence Committee. On June 24, in a classified hearing, Mr. Panetta produced so-called new information about CIA counterterrorism efforts in the months after the attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center. We’re told that he informed the Members that the agency had considered, then abandoned, a major covert antiterror program. (Our sources wouldn’t say what it was.) Bush-era CIA officials didn’t tell Congress because it never got off the ground. But this is the “at least one case” Mr. Reyes claims his committee was “lied to” about in the Bush years.

Huh??? What??? Let me see if I understand this right… After the events of 9-11 the CIA considered, then abandoned, a major covert anti-terror program and because they never told Congress they had considered a program that they never actually implemented they’re now  branded as liars???

I’d be rolling on the floor laughing at the sheer idiocy of this if wasn’t so serious… Congressional Democrats are once again undermining national security for political gain. One has to wonder what effect all this political finger pointing is having on the moral of rank and file CIA employees who are doing humanly possible to prevent future attacks on this country.

Related

• CIA chief urged to ‘correct’ record – Washington Times

The last time the CIA and Nancy Pelosi were in the news together, the House Speaker was accusing the agency of lying about its briefings to Congress on the interrogation of al Qaeda detainees. This week, the Speaker’s fellow Democrats are set to block public disclosure of what Ms. Pelosi was really told and when.

Democrats recently marked up the 2010 intelligence bill, and Republican Pete Hoekstra offered an amendment in committee to require the CIA to make public an unclassified version of its records on Congressional briefings. It also would have required the CIA to disclose the information gleaned from those interrogations.

Democrats have spent years demanding a “truth commission” into interrogations, so you’d think such public disclosure would be welcome. Ah, that was when a different guy was in the White House and before Mrs. Pelosi had made her own veracity an issue. Suddenly, she’s all for secrecy. And sure enough, Intelligence Committee Democrats lined up to protect their leader and defeated the Hoekstra amendment on a party line vote. This follows Democratic rejection of a resolution by Utah Republican Rob Bishop to initiate a bipartisan investigation of Mrs. Pelosi’s accusation.

I’d laugh but this isn’t funny. Democrats aren’t interested in the truth or giving we the people access to the facts on interrogations, they’re interested solely in creating controversy for political gain. The longer  they can continue to tar and feather the Bush Administration over interrogations, the economy and anything else they can think of… the longer they can avoid having to accept responsibility for their own actions or inaction’s over the last eight years.

Those CIA officers chosen to brief the Congress, and especially the intelligence committees, are very senior, experienced officers, who well know the reputation and future of the CIA, as well as their own jobs, are on the line should they be perceived as not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Such restrictions, however, do not apply to members of the Congress when they then appear before the public.

Ouch!

Am I crazy or did he just call the CIA liars?

H/T: Hot Air.

There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I’m gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress.

Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing “the enhanced techniques that had been employed.” Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.

My advice—indeed, my direction—to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country.

We are an Agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is—even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.

The bottom line here is this no longer a partisan issue… Republicans are calling her a liar and now, by implication, so is the White House. Speaker Pelosi has painted Democrats into a corner and she very well end up being sacrificed for the good of the party.

Related

• Analysis: Democrats’ risky focus on torture – Examiner.com
• Panetta Defends CIA Briefing – Wall Street Journal
• Pelosi admits waterboard briefing – Washington Times
• Speaker’s Comments Raise Detainee Debate to New Level – Washington Post
• Pelosi’s Fancy Footwork – Dana Milbank
• Gingrich: Pelosi ‘Lied,’ ‘Despicable,’ ‘Dishonest,’ ‘Vicious,’ ‘Trivial’ – The Note, ABC News.
• The CIA Replies: It is Pelosi Who is Lying – NewMajority.com
• Video: Kit Bond says CIA doesn’t brief on rejected techniques – Hot Air

MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell: “Speaker Pelosi came out today and essentially when asked if the CIA is lying, she said, ‘they mislead us all the time.’ Do you agree with that? Does the CIA mislead Congress all the time?”

Senator Joe Lieberman: “No, on that specific point, I totally disagree. You have to have confidence in the CIA. And over the 20 years I’ve been here, I’ve been briefed constantly by the CIA and I’d say that they’ve told me the truth, as they see it.”

H/T: Weekly Standard via Hot Air.

Nancy Pelosi is playing a dangerous game of chicken with the CIA. It seems pretty clear from what’s been reported that’s she’s lying about what she knew and when knew it. It also fairly obvious that the agency isn’t going to willingly be made the Democrats whipping boy.

Ed Morrissey asks the million dollar question:

And if the CIA really had lied to her in the briefings, why didn’t Pelosi start out with that explanation?  In fact, why didn’t she mention that in 2005 when both the EITs and the briefings were made public?  Coming four years later, this explanation lacks any kind of credibility.

William Jacobson analyzes the situation and concludes:

Here’s my prediction of what will happen if Democrats push the investigation to the bitter end causing damage to national security, a political death match with the CIA, and Democrat-on-Democrat finger pointing:

Steny Hoyer, Speaker; Jane Harman, Majority Leader; Nancy Pelosi, Chair of the House sub-committee on fresh water fisheries; Republicans, unexpected gains in 2010 mid-term elections.

The Democrats wished hard for an investigation into waterboarding and other interrogation methods. They may have wished too hard, because they are about to get what they wished for, with no way out.

I can’t say a disagree, I suspect by now many Democrats regret opening what has turned out to be a can hissing venomous snakes that threaten to bite them rather than their intended target.

President Barack Obama has reinvigorated the critics of George W. Bush’s antiterror policies by opening the door to prosecuting or sanctioning those who crafted interrogation policy in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. These critics — including the president — are laboring under numerous misconceptions. Many of them have no experience with or understanding of military or CIA interrogation, the purpose of which is to gain actionable intelligence to safeguard our country. The recently released memos by lawyers in the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel were written to assist interrogators in that critical mission. The memos cannot be fairly evaluated without that mission in mind.

Military and CIA interrogators are trained to use creative means of deception, and to play on detainee emotions and fears. This can be a nasty business. People unfamiliar with it, therefore, might even view a perfectly legitimate interrogation of a prisoner of war that is in full compliance with the Geneva Conventions as abhorrent by its very nature.

But military interrogation is not akin to a friendly chat across a conference table — nor is it designed to gather evidence in a criminal trial, as an FBI interview might be. There is a fundamental distinction between law enforcement and military interrogations that we ignore at our peril.

Second-guessers can also fail to appreciate the increased importance of interrogation (and human intelligence in general) in the post 9/11 world. We face an enemy that wears no uniform, blends in with civilian populations, and operates in the shadows. This has made eliciting information from captured terrorists vital to the effort of finding other terrorists. As interrogation has become more important, drawing out useful information has become more difficult — because hardened terrorists are often trained to resist traditional U.S. interrogation methods.

I suspect by now Barack Obama regrets opening the can worms opened by the release of the EIT memos, it has turned into a veritable can of snakes and nothing good can come from it.

Related

• 58% Say Release of CIA Memos Endangers National Security – Rasmussen Reports
• Ted Olson: “Torture” probes will never end – Byron York, Washington Examiner
• Security Before Politics – Porter J. Goss, Washington Post
• Past, President and Future – Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal

From the Wall Street Journal:

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama’s victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

Pres. Obama would do well to back-off of the dangerous precedent he set on Tuesday, he has already banned the use of the interrogation techniques in question and declared the CIA personnel who used them will not be charged. Investigating and attempting to criminalize the actions of Bush administration lawyers who advised the CIA will only undermine the ability of this president and his successors to obtain candid advice, as lawyers fear they may in turn by scapegoated by a future administration.

Realted

• Congress Knew About the Interrogations – Wall Street Journal
• Torture Cases Would Face Legal Hurdles- Wall Street Journal
• Top legislators knew of interrogations – Washington Times
• Congress Debates Fresh Investigation Of Interrogations – Washington Post