Former CIA chief Porter Goss:

I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that: (a) The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists. (b) We understood what the CIA was doing. (c) We gave the CIA our bipartisan support. (d) We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities. (e) On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda. I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues.

One reaction: “It’s infuriating, but it’s entertaining, to watch the same people who spent the better part of the last eight years using lies, secrecy, deception, political maneuvering, and outright intimidation to run a global torture regime on foreign alleged terrorists, alongside a domestic illegal surveillance program on U.S. citizens, pen op-eds in major media outlets attacking Congress for not doing enough to stop them, now that their lawlessness has been publicly revealed.” Thank goodness the country’s no longer polarized.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 27th, 2009 at 3:41 am and is filed under Democrats, General, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.