Category Archives: CIA interrogation program
Five years after Obama was elected you still hear the left wail and cry over George W. Bush’s “trampling” of American’s rights. Interesting isn’t it? One could argue that immediately after the worst attack on American soil the surveillance of … Continue reading
-Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein
While it is true that there has been hypocrisy on the left in regards to this and other similar policy-making decisions where President Obama has embraced some of the very same policies and positions (or similar ones) that he and his fellow Democrats attacked his predecessor over (against it before they were for it), it is also true that there has been consistency as well among those who are ideologically pure; and blind to the “D” or the scarlet letter “R” next to the name. This is true of conservatives during the Bush years who did criticize the Bush administration, fearing such things as the Patriot Act and NSA wiretapping. In this they were aligned with groups like the ACLU. And now it is the ACLU who is aligned with those who fear certain actions taken by the Obama administration. Strange bedfellows?
Yesterday morning, the American Enterprise Institute held an event titled “Watching ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ with the CIA: Separating fact from fiction.”
AEI’s Marc Thiessen (author of “Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack”) will host a panel discussion with three CIA veterans who were involved in the hunt for bin Laden.
Panelists:
General Michael Hayden (ret.), Former Director CIA
John A. Rizzo, Former Chief Legal Officer at CIA
Jose Rodriguez, Former Director National Clandestine Service
Last Friday, ex-CIA officer John Kiriakou was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison by federal judge Leonie Brinkema under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. It’s the first time that a CIA officer will serve prison time for disclosing classified information to news media.
The judge rejected his claims that he acted in the interests of the nation as a whistleblower:
How accurate and realistic is the portrayal of CIA interrogation in the film? The movie, after all, opens with a statement saying “based on firsthand accounts of actual events”; then goes on to show the fictionalized brutal abuse and torture of a fictional high value terrorist, including waterboarding.
Well, one “firsthand account” not utilized as an expert consultant to the movie is Jose Rodriguez, former head of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, author of Hard Measures, and unapologetic defender of the CIA’s “torture” program….
I decided to go check out the movie for myself thanks to the ringing endorsement by Senators Feinstein, Levin, and McCain: “I thought it was terrible,” said Feinstein, one of a handful of lawmakers to see the film ahead of … Continue reading
- Former CTC chief, Cofer Black, 60 Minutes last Sunday
Lawfare Blog has a roundup of some of the latest news regarding the “GWoT”:
THE Kuala Lumpur Tribunal on War Crimes sat for five days in the courtroom at the Al-Bukhary Foundation to listen to charges against George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, David Addington, William Haynes II, Jay Byber and John Choon Yoo of the United States for the torture of detainees held in the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo detention camps.
- Air Force Captain Michael Schwartz, military counsel for the defence of Walid bin Attash
During the arraignment hearings, this comment was drowned out by white noise when the court security officer thought classified information might be mentioned. However, upon review, The Pentagon office in charge of the military commission tribunals decided nothing compromising was revealed and released a transcript on Wednesday.
Schwartz’ “big boy pants” was a snide reference to Jose Rodriguez (who proudly linked it onto his book’s Facebook wall) and his 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl in which Rodriguez said,
