Ex-CIA Official: Agency Brass Lied to Congress About Interrogations
by Jason Leopold,
t r u t h o u t | Report
"A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that 'CIA people had lied' in that briefing, as one of her
friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies
authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading."
Last month, former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey sharply criticized President
Obama's decision to release four "torture" memos, writing in an op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal that the
"disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage, and is perfectly packaged for media consumption."
Buried in their column was the claim that the methods the CIA used against "high-value" detainees, such as
waterboarding, beatings and stress positions "were disclosed repeatedly in more than 30 congressional briefings and
hearings beginning in 2002, and open to all members of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress beginning
in September 2006."
"Any protestation of ignorance of those details, particularly by members of those committees, is pretense," the former
Bush officials wrote.
Several prominent Republicans, including Rep. John Boehner, (R- Ohio) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan), the ranking
Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, have echoed Hayden's claims in an attempt to show
Democrats were complicit because they did not protest when they were briefed about the "enhanced interrogation" program
and the techniques CIA interrogators intended to use.
"It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from
both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002," Hoekstra wrote in an op-ed also published
in The Wall Street Journal last month. "We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11
terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and
funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses."
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had been the ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee, vehemently
denied that she was told the CIA planned on waterboarding detainees or intended to use other brutal techniques to try
and extract information from "war on terror" prisoners.
"My colleague [Porter Goss], the chairman of the committee, has said 'if they say that it's legal you have to know they
are going to use them,'" Pelosi said last month. "Well, his experience is that he was a member of the CIA, later went on
to head the CIA and maybe his experience is that if they tell you one thing they may mean something else. My experience
is that they did not tell us they were using that. Flat out. And any - any contention to the contrary is simply not
true.
"They told us they had opinions from the [Justice Department's] Office of Legal Counsel that they could, but not that
they were using enhanced techniques, and that if and when they were used, they would brief Congress at that time. As a
member of Intelligence, I thought I was being briefed. I realized that was not true when I became ranking member."
On Thursday, Pelosi held a news conference and accused the CIA of lying to Congress.
The CIA "mislead us all the time," Pelosi said. "They misrepresented every step of the way, and they don't want that
focus on them, so they try to turn the focus on us."
Questions about what the Democrats knew about the CIA's torture program were raised two years ago when it was revealed
that the CIA had destroyed 92 interrogation videotapes in November 2005 and that the agency had informed Democratic
lawmakers about its plans.
Following that disclosure, Representative Harman's office released a February 2003 letter she wrote to the CIA advising
the agency against destroying the videotapes. The CIA declassified Harman's letter at the congresswoman's request.
"You discussed the fact that there is videotape of [high-level al-Qaeda operative] Abu Zubaydah following his capture
that will be destroyed after the Inspector General finishes his inquiry," Harman wrote. "I would urge the Agency to
reconsider that plan. Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law,
the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the
future. The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the Agency."
Harman's letter raised concerns about the CIA's use of so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" and questioned
whether President Bush had authorized the methods. In her letter, she advised the agency against destroying the
videotapes out of concern the footage CIA agents captured "would be the best proof that the written record is accurate,
if such record is called into question in the future."
Still, claims that Democrats were fully briefed on the Bush administration's torture program have been leveled as
recently as last December by Vice President Dick Cheney and in books by former Bush officials such as John Yoo, the
former deputy assistant attorney general at the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), who helped draft one of the four memos
released last week.
But the veracity of those assertions have been called into question by former CIA official Mary O. McCarthy, who said
senior agency officials lied to members of Congress during an intelligence briefing in 2005 when they said the agency
did not violate treaties that bar, cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment of detainees during interrogations, according
to a May 14, 2006, front-page story in The Washington Post.
"A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that 'CIA people had lied' in that briefing, as one of her
friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies
authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading," The Washington Post reported.
"In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official
failed to provide a full account of the CIA's detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence
committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (California), the senior Democrat," The Washington
Post reported.
"McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA's general counsel had worked to secure a secret Justice
Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the agency's creation of "ghost detainees" - prisoners removed from Iraq for
secret interrogations without notice to the International Committee of the Red Cross - because the Geneva Conventions
prohibit such practices."
In 2004, McCarthy was tapped by the CIA's Inspector General John Helgerson to assist him with internal investigations
about the agency's interrogation methods. The report Helgerson prepared remains classified, but the ACLU filed a Freedom
of Information Act lawsuit to have it released publicly.
"McCarthy was not an ideologue, her friends say, but at some point fell into a camp of CIA officers who felt that the
Bush administration's venture into Iraq had dangerously diverted US counterterrorism policy. After seeing - in e-mails,
cable traffic, interview transcripts and field reports - some of the secret fruits of the Iraq intervention, McCarthy
became disenchanted, three of her friends say," the Post reported.
In May 2005, just a few months after the CIA briefed Congress on interrogation methods, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, ranking
Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, requested "to see over a hundred documents referred to in [Helgerson's]
report on detention inside the black prison sites," New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer wrote in her book, "The Dark Side."
"Among the items Rockefeller specifically sought was a legal analysis of the CIA's interrogation videotapes.
"Rockefeller wanted to know if the intelligence agency's top lawyer believed that the waterboarding of [alleged
al-Qaeda operative Abu] Zubaydah and [alleged 9/11 mastermind] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as captured on the secret
videotapes, was entirely legal. The CIA refused to provide the requested documents to Rockefeller.
"But the Democratic senator's mention of the videotapes undoubtedly sent a shiver through the Agency, as did a second
request he made for these documents to [former CIA Director Porter] Goss in September 2005."
The May 2005, request from Rockefeller took place during the same month that Steven Bradbury, the former head of the
OLC, wrote three legal opinions reinstating the torture techniques his predecessor, Jack Goldsmith, had withdrawn.
Bradbury's memos, released last Thursday, included several footnotes to Helgerson's report, one of which stated that
the CIA used waterboarding "with far greater frequency than initially indicated" and used "large volumes of water" as
opposed to the smaller amount the CIA said it intended to use. In fact, Bradbury's memos, while authorizing brutal
techniques, also disputed the conclusions of Helgerson's still classified report that the interrogation techniques
violated the Convention Against Torture.
According to a November 9, 2005, story in The New York Times published the same month, 92 interrogation videotapes were
destroyed. Helgerson's report "raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to
legal liability."
"They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and
degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who
are not citizens of the United States," the Times reported. "The officials who described the report said it discussed
particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being
held by the agency in secret locations around the world."
Mayer reported that Helgerson's report "known as a 'special review,' was tens of thousands of pages long and as thick
as two Manhattan phone books. It contained information, according to one source, that was simply 'sickening.'"
"The behavior it described, another knowledgeable source said, raised concerns not just about the detainees but also
about the Americans who had inflicted the abuse, one of whom seemed to have become frighteningly dehumanized. The source
said, 'You couldn't read the documents without wondering, 'Why didn't someone say, "Stop!'""
Mayer wrote that Vice President Dick Cheney stopped Helgerson from fully completing his investigation. That proves,
Mayer contends, that as early as 2004 "the Vice President's office was fully aware that there were allegations of
serious wrongdoing in The [interrogation] Program."
"Helgerson was summoned repeatedly to meet privately with Vice President Cheney" before his investigation was "stopped
in its tracks." Mayer said that Cheney's interaction with Helgerson was "highly unusual."
As a result, McCarthy "worried that neither Helgerson nor the [CIA's] Congressional overseers would fully examine what
happened or why," according to the Post report.
McCarthy told a friend, according to the Post's account, "She had the impression that this stuff has been pretty well
buried. In McCarthy's view and that of many colleagues, friends say, torture was not only wrong but also misguided,
because it rarely produced useful results."
In April 2006, ten days before she was due to retire, McCarthy was fired from the CIA for allegedly leaking classified
information to the media, a CIA spokeswoman told reporters at the time.
In October 2007, Hayden ordered an investigation into Helgerson's office, focusing on internal complaints that the
inspector general was on "a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs."
The CIA said McCarthy had spoken with numerous journalists, including The Washington Post's Dana Priest, who, in
November 2005, exposed the CIA's secret prison sites, where, in 2002, the CIA videotaped its agents interrogating a
so-called high-level detainee, Abu Zubaydah.
Following news reports of her dismissal from the CIA, McCarthy, through her attorney Ty Cobb, vehemently denied leaking
classified information to the media. McCarthy, who is now in private practice as an attorney, did not return calls for
comment.
The CIA said she failed a polygraph test after the agency launched an internal investigation in late 2005. The agency
said the investigation was an attempt to find out who provided The Washington Post and The New York Times with
information about its covert activities, including domestic surveillance, and it promptly fired her.
After Hayden launched an investigation into Helgerson's work, The Washington Post reported, citing unnamed sources,
that in 2002, Pelosi, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Florida), Rep. Jane Harman (D-California), and a handful of Republican
lawmakers, were "given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had
devised to try to make the prisoners talk."
"Among the techniques described [to the lawmakers], said two officials present, was water-boarding, a practice that
years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill," the Post reported. "But on
that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two US
officials said."
The Post story also made identical claims that Hayden and Mukasey leveled in their Wall Street Journal column: that
Pelosi and other Democratic leaders were privately briefed at least 30 times. Those briefings, according to the Post,
"included descriptions of [waterboarding] and other harsh interrogations methods."
But Graham disputed claims that he and other members of Congress were briefed about the interrogation program.
"Speaking for myself as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee from mid-2001 to the end of 2002, I was not
briefed on these interrogation techniques," Graham told National Public Radio on Thursday . "[I] am frankly very
frustrated that there are these allegations made that everybody knew about it. I think the policy of the Bush
administration was to try to bring as many people into the net when they were going to engage in some questionable
activity in order to give them cover. In this case, I was not in the net."
A declassified narrative released on Wednesday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence said, about the politics
of the Bush administration's torture program, Intelligence Committee chairs in both Houses were briefed about the
interrogation program in 2002 and 2003. What they were told, however, remains a mystery.
In an interview with Newsweek last month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who now chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee and
has launched a "review" and "study" of the CIA's interrogation methods, said, "I now know we were not fully and
completely briefed on the CIA program."
Feinstein was reacting to a secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that was leaked, which
described, in shocking detail, the techniques used to interrogate 14 "high-value" detainees.
Interestingly, the magazine quoted an unnamed "US Official" who disputed the charge, and claimed, in language nearly
identical to what Hayden wrote in The Wall Street Journal and what was leaked to The Washington Post, "that members of
Congress received more than 30 briefings over the life of the CIA program and that Congressional intel panels had seen
the Red Cross report."
Whether that unnamed official was Hayden is unknown. A representative for the former CIA chief did not return calls for
comment.
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Jason Leopold is editor in chief of The Public Record, www.pubrecord.org.