I've read Carl Hulse's report on the apparent Panetta/Pelosi tango da morte and wonder whether the administration + Congress isn't setting a trap.
Obama clearly doesn't like to go straight at things. "Leads by second thought," they're saying now. Whatever he has in mind, it's clear it doesn't want to be the guy to initiate the investigation and prosecution of his predecessors (bad history there).
Nor does he want to offend the military and release the torture photos (some of which are already available and have been available for about three years). Nor would he like to be tarred by the "national security party" for harassing the CIA and possibly up-ending it completely. When in doubt, let Congress do the nasty part while the White House stands on its dignity, and please dear god don't let a massive Congressional investigation get in the way of the health care reform package.
Parts of Hulse's report suggest to me that may be what's taking place. I went looking for this because, much as I dislike Nancy Pelosi, I'm pretty damn sure she's not stupid and above all not looking to end her career. So what's going on here? Is there maybe a little bit of collaboration between Panetta and Pelosi and President O? I think it's possible.
Was this a rebuttal or not really a rebuttal? Mr. Panetta, a former Democratic congressman from California and a longtime associate of Ms. Pelosi, issued a statement that said the agency’s “contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that C.I.A. officers briefed truthfully,” a rebuttal of Ms. Pelosi’s claim on Thursday that intelligence officials had lied to her.
Could a Congressional investigation be the real goal? Lawmakers and senior government officials say the public furor could also give momentum to the push for an inquiry into the Bush administration’s interrogation policies as well as into what senior members of Congress knew about the treatment of detainees. In his statement, Mr. Panetta said it would ultimately be “up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.”
That would certainly take the investigative initiative away from a reluctant White House and give it to an ambitious, angry Pelosi -- a Pelosi who must be out for blood by now. And the Republicans, of course, have plenty to worry about even without Pelosi: Should any investigation determine that the C.I.A. misled members of Congress, the result could be severely damaging to the agency and to the Republican leaders who have relentlessly pressed the issue against Ms. Pelosi.
So the Republicans, whether they've fallen into a trap or not, are facing a nasty backfire and we haven't even mentioned their Bob Graham problem. Graham has a good reputation, isn't a liar, is no longer in the business, and is well-known for keeping copious notes and aides memoires: Bob Graham, a former Democratic senator from Florida,
who as the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee underwent a
briefing similar to Ms. Pelosi’s about three weeks after hers, sides
with the speaker. He said he recalled a “bland” session. “I do not have any recollection that day of there being a discussion of something that would have been as neon as waterboarding or other torture techniques,” Mr. Graham said.
Could the CIA have deliberately given Pelosi and Graham different versions? In that case they had to have been lying to one of them. In any event, as Hulse points out, the CIA isn't going to get out of this mess easily, maybe not even intact: The furor surrounding Ms. Pelosi’s claim that she was misled has
obscured one undisputed fact about the briefings. The Sept. 4, 2002,
session, the first given to anyone in Congress on the so-called
enhanced interrogation methods, came weeks after the C.I.A. had started
to use the methods. Even if Ms. Pelosi had taken action, it is doubtful
it would have averted the firestorm about torture that was to come.
And, of course, what struck me about the Panetta statement from the get-go is that, as a civilian and a newbie team manager, he's smart to proclaim that he believes his guys are being truthful. He can always raise his hands in noble horror and disbelief later as the details come out. Maybe that's why he didn't say something forceful like, "It's clear that no CIA officer lied to Speaker Pelosi." Nope. He said, "Contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that
C.I.A. officers briefed truthfully."
That "indicate" leaves an awful lot of room for later revelations that (as we all suspect) the agency was indeed in Cheney's pocket and its officers were lying their little CIA heads off while taking a gratuitous swipe at a powerful (and loathed) Democrat.
