Our Enemy the State, the Continuing Story
So, Loyal Readers: Who among you does not think tonight that if Jason Bourne fought his way at last, bleeding and exhausted, into Nancy Pelosi’s office and slapped the Treadstone folder down on the desk in front of her, that she wouldn’t immediately call the guards and hand the file back to the “proper authorities?”
See also: Steven Berg some months ago.
Comment by Thoreau —
December 10, 2007 @ 12:34 am
Fvck it. I was going to make either Donna Edwards or Mark Pera the recipient of my donation and endorsement. (See here for background.) But now I’m endorsing Cindy Sheehan.
I’ll donate the money and put up the post in the next few days.
Comment by Bruce Baugh —
December 10, 2007 @ 12:46 am
Well, dammit. I have to admit: the fact of actual detailed briefings on this stuff came as a surprise to me. It sure does explain the rush to take impeachment off the table, though.
Comment by Avram —
December 10, 2007 @ 1:27 am
I read Ross Thomas’s Missionary Stew last year (on your recommendation). I was amused to see that this 1983 book anticipated the Contra half of the Iran-Contra affair, but considered it enough of a scandal to bring down a sitting administration.
And I recently read a summary of the 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor, built around the notion that a US plan to invade a middle-eastern country for its oil is such a shocking secret that one segment of the CIA is willing to kill another to keep it quiet.
Comment by ajay —
December 10, 2007 @ 6:05 am
Avram: you might like “The Siege”, a film which predicts that, in the wake of a destructive terrorist attack on New York, the government would resort to kidnapping and torturing innocent people who happened to be the wrong ethnicity (Arab), but which veers into fantasy by showing the FBI actually caring, and trying to stop them doing it.
Comment by Dave Woycechowsky —
December 10, 2007 @ 7:32 am
I’d like to see the rest of the Abu Gharib photos.
Comment by Jim Henley —
December 10, 2007 @ 8:00 am
Perv.
Comment by Gary Farber —
December 10, 2007 @ 4:33 pm
I think it’s entirely possible, Jim, and I’ll believe it entirely as soon as I see something resembling evidence, rather than simply the anonymous word of “said two officials present.”
Because somehow the credibility of anonymous “officials” doesn’t go as far with me as it once did, such as when I was 7.
But, sure, it could be true: I sure wouldn’t know via independent sources, after all.
Comment by Donald Johnson —
December 10, 2007 @ 5:31 pm
Has Nancy Pelosi denied the story?
“Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi’s position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage — they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice — and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.”
Not much of a denial there. Later in the story Harman claims to have protested.
Comment by ajay —
December 10, 2007 @ 8:01 pm
“A congressional source”. Wonder which side they came from?
Comment by Jim Henley —
December 10, 2007 @ 8:53 pm
Don’t care, ajay. What’s revealing is the pattern of non-denials and equivocal acknowledgements. Harman admits she was briefed, and claims she wrote a double-secret complaint about it. Pelosi says it doesn’t count because so far as she knew, they hadn’t actually started torturing anyone yet, they just explained how they were ABOUT to start. She does not describe herself trying to stop them. To the best of my knowledge, Rockefeller has still said nothing, when he could easily issue a denial – if the story were untrue.
There are an awful lot of senior Democratic leaders not barking.
Comment by mds —
December 11, 2007 @ 10:47 am
Yeah, I’m suddenly consumed with outrage over the Congressional Democratic leadership. Oh, wait, no, my outrage meter burned out months ago; at this point I’m not even surprised.
Comment by mds —
December 11, 2007 @ 10:58 am
And that’s the worst part of all of this. Even if it is being spun by “anonymous officials” loyal to the administration, it’s actually plausible, isn’t it? There could have been full-throated denials from senior Dems, and we’d still suspect this was true, because of their proven track record of craven or amoral capitulation. See, e.g., Steny Hoyer’s latest morally bankrupt sell-out.