They Tortured Him Before They Had Authorization (Oxymoron?)

The Bybee memo was written after some torture was already used:

It was reported that a new series of interviews was conducted by the United States authorities prior to 17 May 2002 as part of a new strategy designed by an expert interviewer. [my emphasis]

Mohamed was subjected to sleep deprivation, the British Government tells us, more than 75 days before the Bybee Two memo authorized such treatment.

And that abuse was inflicted by “an expert interviewer” implementing “a new strategy.”

That “expert interviewer” and that “new strategy” almost certainly were associated with Mitchell and Jessen, who were at that moment pitching using their “new strategy” with Abu Zubaydah.

So, this is not just proof that the US was engaging in torture before they got their CYA memo authorizing such torture. But it was proof that they were using Mohamed, in addition to Abu Zubaydah, as guinea pigs to test out that torture.

This proves the entire myth told to explain the torture memos (and Abu Zubaydah’s treatment) to be a lie.

Updated with link to Jim White’s diary.

Yoo And Bybee: Just Poor Judgment

NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

Torture Killed Them

An amazing article by Scott Horton in Harper's about Bush's torture regime:

4. “He Could Not Cry out”


The fate of a fourth prisoner, a forty-two-year-old Saudi Arabian named Shaker Aamer, may be related to that of the three prisoners who died on June 9. Aamer is married to a British woman and was in the process of becoming a British subject when he was captured in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, in 2001. United States authorities insist that he carried a gun and served Osama bin Laden as an interpreter. Aamer denies this. At Guantánamo, Aamer’s fluency in English soon allowed him to play an important role in camp politics. According to both Aamer’s attorney and press accounts furnished by Army Colonel Michael Bumgarner, the Camp America commander, Aamer cooperated closely with Bumgarner in efforts to bring a 2005 hunger strike to an end. He persuaded several prisoners to break their strike for a while, but the settlement collapsed and soon afterward Aamer was sent to solitary confinement. Then, on the night of June 9, 2006, Aamer says he was the victim of an act of striking brutality.

He described the events in detail to his lawyer, Zachary Katznelson, who was permitted to speak to him several weeks later. Katznelson recorded every detail of Aamer’s account and filed an affidavit with the federal district court in Washington, setting it out:

On June 9th, 2006, [Aamer] was beaten for two and a half hours straight. Seven naval military police participated in his beating. Mr. Aamer stated he had refused to provide a retina scan and fingerprints. He reported to me that he was strapped to a chair, fully restrained at the head, arms and legs. The MPs inflicted so much pain, Mr. Aamer said he thought he was going to die. The MPs pressed on pressure points all over his body: his temples, just under his jawline, in the hollow beneath his ears. They choked him. They bent his nose repeatedly so hard to the side he thought it would break. They pinched his thighs and feet constantly. They gouged his eyes. They held his eyes open and shined a mag-lite in them for minutes on end, generating intense heat. They bent his fingers until he screamed. When he screamed, they cut off his airway, then put a mask on him so he could not cry out.

The treatment Aamer describes is noteworthy because it produces excruciating pain without leaving lasting marks. Still, the fact that Aamer had his airway cut off and a mask put over his face “so he could not cry out” is alarming. This is the same technique that appears to have been used on the three deceased prisoners.

Tuesday Cartoon Fun: Big Dick Edition

Monday Cartoon Fun: Spineless Edition

Sunday Cartoon Fun: Redacted Edition

Dianne Feinstein: Torture Works!

If you live in California, Dianne Feinstein is one of your senators. If you live in California, Dianne Feinstein DOES NOT HAVE TO BE one of your senators! This is her this morning talking about the CIA/torture investigation started, however timidly, by Eric Holder:

“However, I think the timing of this is not very good,” Feinstein said.

She said the intelligence committee was already well along in conducting a bipartisan “total look” at the interrogation and detention techniques used on so-called high value detainees.

“And candidly, I wish that the attorney general had waited,” she said.

“Every day something kind of dribbles out into the public arena. Very often it has mistakes. Very often it’s half a story. I think we need to get the whole story together and tell it in an appropriate way,” she said.

“A lot of things are being said — ‘Well, you know, torturing people is something that we did, but on the other hand, it produced all kinds of incredible information,’” she said.

“It did produce some information, but there is a great discrepancy, and I think a good deal of error out there in what people are saying it did produce,” she added.

The CIA inspector general’s report, parts of which were released last week, detailed the use of simulated drowning, mock executions, and threats of rapes of detainee family members in the course of the interrogations at secret CIA sites overseas.

[emphasis mine]

So, she thinks torture works. How else to parse her bolded statements? And then she says she wants to "get the whole story together and tell it in an appropriate way." Really? Please, Di, how you would appropriately tell me that my government tortured prisoners in my name?

Write your representatives, senators, friends and acquaintances and tell them enough lies. Enough obfuscation. Enough "[G]et[ting] the whole story together" and just give us the god-damned information!

The Torture Debate: Minotaurs?

Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?

I Am Officially Disappointed

Chris Hedges writes:

Nader Was Right: Liberals Are Going Nowhere With Obama

The American empire has not altered under Barack Obama. It kills as brutally and indiscriminately in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as it did under George W. Bush. It steals from the U.S. treasury to enrich the corporate elite as rapaciously. It will not give us universal health care, abolish the Bush secrecy laws, end torture or “extraordinary rendition,” restore habeas corpus or halt the warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens. It will not push through significant environmental reform, regulate Wall Street or end our relationship with private contractors that provide mercenary armies to fight our imperial wars and produce useless and costly weapons systems.

You should read the rest.

Sanchez Wants A Truth Commission

Gen. Ricardo Sanchez calls for war crimes truth commission.

Sitting on a panel moderated by Rachel Maddow last night, retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq from 2003-2004, called for a truth commission to investigate Bush-era interrogation and torture tactics. The Huffington Post’s Jack Hidary reports:

The General described the failures at all levels of civilian and military command that led to the abuses in Iraq, “and that is why I support the formation of a truth commission.”

The General went on to say that, “during my time in Iraq there was not one instance of actionable intelligence that came out of these interrogation techniques.”

I interviewed General Sanchez after the event and asked him to elaborate on why he felt the US needed such a commission. … “If we do not find out what happened,” continued the General, “then we are doomed to repeat it.”

Sanchez described the interrogation program as “a personal failure on the part of many.” Indeed, Sanchez himself wrote and signed a 2003 memo that included specific interrogation tactics approved for use despite noting that they may violate the Geneva Conventions. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sanchez denied signing off on these interrogation methods.

Taibbi On Obama's Only Term

I am afraid Obama is heading toward becoming a one-termer. I am not alone...

Instead, Obama is on his way to doing exactly the wrong thing. He’s going to make a show of closing the base, but retain the underlying idea by keeping some of the prisoners in indefinite legal purgatory. In some ways this is worse than what Bush did, because Bush at least took a clear stand — he was nuts and thought this was the right thing to do. No matter how you look at Obama’s decision, it’s weighed somewhere along the line by political calculation. Either he thinks indefinite decision is right and he’s bowing to public appeals by closing the base, or else he thinks it’s wrong and is bowing to opposition outcry by maintaining the old policy.

It’s one thing to change your mind or play both sides of the fence on matters that don’t involve human lives, on theoretical/hypothetical campaign issues, but another thing to do it with actual incarcerated human beings as the key variable in the political equation.

The Zubaydah Waterboard Transcript

The following is a transcript of notes taken at the interrogation of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. It was released by the C.I.A. at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of enhanced interrogation techniques approved by the president.

1. Ha! Is this waterboard supposed to scare me? You think I don’t know that you are constrained by U.S. and international law from ever actually …

2. Hey! What the [redacted]?!

3. No, seriously. What the [redacted]?!

4. You’re Americans! Who do you think you are? Us?

5. You can’t do this! Show me the authorization for you to do this!

6. Wow. O.K., technically, you can do this. Although the quality of the legal work in these memos is shoddy at …

7. Enough! I beg of you! Stop the torture!

8. O.K., fine. Then stop the “enhanced technique!”

9. Please! For the love of God, I can’t take any more of this harsh treatment which does not rise to the level of torture!

10. Could you loosen my left medieval iron shackle? It’s digging in.

11. You’re not even doing it right! You have to tilt the head forward so that the victim’s throat is …

12. Fine! Fine! Do it your way! But don’t blame me if I don’t experience the unspeakable horror of my own imminent death.

13. Is that a video camera?

14. It is! You’re filming this?

15. Wait—am I being Punk’d? Ashton? Really, Ashton …

16. Are you going to post this on the Web? Because I can hook you up with the guy who does our online work.

17. You’re wasting your time! I already told those F.B.I. guys everything I know!

18. I’m telling you, I don’t know anything else!

19. I don’t know anything!

20. I don’t know anything!

21. I don’t know anything!

22. Would you tell that bald guy in the corner to stop grinning?

23. Still don’t know anything.

24. Reply hazy, try again.

25. Ask again later.

26. Better not tell you now.

27. Cannot predict now.

28. Concentrate and ask again.

29. Nothing.

30. Nada.

31. Drawing a blank.

32. Honestly, I’d love to help, but …

33. Nothing is springing immediately to mind.

34. Thirty-fourth time’s a charm?

35. I get it. Waterboard me once, shame on you. Waterboard me 35 times, shame on …

36. For the last time, I don’t know anything!

37. O.K.! O.K.! I do know things! Lots of things! Like Osama Bin Laden … loves … yogurt.

38. Actually, he’s a vegan! He takes a lot of ribbing for it from the guys …

39. No good? O.K., listen. There is a ticking time bomb in Grand Central Station! If you hurry you can stop it!

40. How should I know where? Just listen until you hear the ticking!

41. Well, you put me on the spot! Give me a few minutes, I’ll come up with something more plausible.

42. O.K., fine. Fine. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. What do you want to know?

43. Never mind. I’ll guess. You want to know about … a plot.

44. An operation!

45. A conspiracy?

46. An intrigue!

47. An infiltration!

48. A dust-up! A brouhaha! A kerfuffle!

49. For the love of God, give me a hint!

50. A finger? Why is the bald guy holding up a …

51. One finger … one finger … First word! First word! Three syllables!

52. Two syllables! Sorry—my vision is a little blurry. First syllable … frown! Frowning!

53. Angry?

54. Unhappy.

55. Disconsolate.

56. Morose.

57. Sad! Sad? Yes! Second syllable … ear!

58. Crap! Sounds like! Sounds like! Sounds like … oink?

59. Pig? Sounds like pig?

60. Eating pig! Pork!

61. Sausage!

62. Bacon!

63. Chitterlings!

64. Prosciutto?

65. Ham! Ham! Sounds like ham! Sad Ham! Sad ham?

66. SADDAM! Saddam Hussein! It’s Saddam Hussein! So what about him?

67. O.K. … nine fingers. Ten fingers.

68. Eleven! Nine. Eleven … Twenty?

69. Wait. I got it! Nine-eleven! You want me to implicate Saddam Hussein in the attacks of 9/11? But that’s ridiculous. Osama and Saddam never so much as …

70. You know, now that you mention it, I think I may remember a telegram …

71. Phone conversation …

72. Email exchanges …

73. Series of coffees?

74. Lunch on the verandah of the Basra Palace!

75. Fantasy football league!

76. They were lovers! Saddam and Osama were lovers!

77. O.K.! Enough! I’ll tell you everything! The truth is, Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden were engaged in a high-level operational relationship to coordinate the transfer of conventional weapons …

78. Chemical weapons …

79. Biological weapons …

80. Nuclear weapons? You expect anyone to believe …

81. But Saddam didn’t have any …

82. … nuclear weapons to terrorists who intended to use them to destroy a major American city and were saved by the brave actions of your American president, George Bush! We good?

83. Bastards.

h/t NYO

White House Counsel Gonzalez Signed Off On Torture?

Tail wags dog; Gonzales approved torture before OLC memos

The timelines have never matched up; the OLC memos were written subsequent to the onset of the reported harsh interrogations of Abu Zubaydah. The obvious question then is with what "legal" (using the term for the sake of argument) justification was waterboarding used on Abu Zubaydah?

New evidence suggests then counsel to the president, Alberto Gonzales, allegedly approved the use of torture well before any hack OLC opinions that justified its use.

An anonymous source told NPR that in April and May of 2002 CIA contractor James Mitchell sought approval on a daily basis for so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” via top-secret cables to the CIA’s counterterrorism center. The CIA forwarded those cables to the White House, according to National Public Radio, and Gonzales would approve the technique, thus granting a legal basis for Mitchell’s actions – in theory at least.

“I can’t believe the CIA would have settled for a piece of paper from the counsel to the president,” (a) former government official told NPR. “If that were true,” says the former official, “then the whole legal and policy review process from April through August would have been a complete charade.” (Link)

This is what will continue to happen in the absence of any investigation of the Bush Administration interrogation policies. The slow drip of damning evidence that the program was, indeed, a lawless sham.

h/t Jay McDonough

Thursday Cartoon Fun: Pelosi / Torture Edition

Obama = Bush (Except for the 2-term thing)

Obama Considering Continuing Bush Policy of Indefinite Detentions Without Trial
Published May 14, 2009

The Obama administration has already adopted extreme executive privilege arguments that dwarfed the arguments of George Bush. It has moved to kill dozens of citizens lawsuits to uncover criminal acts of the government. This week, it refused (despite a court ruling) to release embarrassing photos of detainee abuse. Now, in the continue morphing with the prior Administration, Barack Obama is considering a continuation of the Bush policy of indefinitely detaining suspects without trial.

Members of Congress are being consulted on the idea. Given the lack of principles motivating democratic leaders in past instances of unlawful surveillance and torture, it is not expected to received to hit much problem in Congress.

The result is that we close the Gitmo facility to recreate it on U.S. soil. The proposal reflects the concern that, if forced to comply with federal law, we could not justify the continued detention of these individuals. If Obama is worried that some added pictures of detainee abuses will be used to recruit new volunteers for Al Qaeda, what does he think his replication of Gitmo will do for recruiters?

As I mentioned last night on Rachel Maddow, the Obama Administration has become the greatest bait and switch in history. No torture prosecution. No abuse photos. No citizen lawsuit on privacy. Absolute executive privilege claims. It is not surprising that civil libertarians feel that we have succeeded in merely upgrading to Bush 1.2 (with the added ability to pronounce multisyllabic terms).

For the full story, click here.

"Shoot quail with your friends--and your friends"

This is a guest post exclusive to The Washington Note by Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, who is former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell. Lawrence Wilkerson is also Pamela Harriman Visiting Professor at the College of William & Mary.

Last night I was on Rachel Maddow's show on MSNBC at the top of the hour. But before I came on, through the earpiece I listened to the five minutes that Rachel sketched as a lead-in. Most of it was videotape from the last few days of former Vice President Dick Cheney extolling the virtues of harsh interrogation, torture, and his leadership. I had heard some of it earlier of course but not all of it and not in such a tightly-packed package.

Let's just say that five minutes of the Sith Lord was stunningly inaccurate.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

So, when I got home last night, I thought long and hard about what I knew at this point in my investigations with respect to the former VP's office. Here it is.

First, more Americans were killed by terrorists on Cheney's watch than on any other leader's watch in US history. So his constant claim that no Americans were killed in the "seven and a half months" after 9/11 of his vice presidency takes on a new texture when one considers that fact. And it is a fact.

There was absolutely no policy priority attributed to al-Qa'ida by the Cheney-Bush administration in the months before 9/11. Counterterrorism czar Dick Clarke's position was downgraded, al-Qa'ida was put in the background so as to emphasize Iraq, and the policy priorities were lowering taxes, abrogating the ABM Treaty and building ballistic missile defenses.

Second, the fact no attack has occurred on U.S. soil since 9/11--much touted by Cheney--is due almost entirely to the nation's having deployed over 200,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and not to "the Cheney method of interrogation."

Those troops have kept al-Qa'ida at bay, killed many of them, and certainly "fixed" them, as we say in military jargon. Plus, sadly enough, those 200,000 troops present a far more lucrative and close proximity target for al-Qa'ida than the United States homeland. Testimony to that fact is clear: almost 5,000 American troops have died, more Americans than died on 9/11. Of course, they are the type of Americans for whom Cheney hasn't much use as he declared rather dramatically when he achieved no less than five draft deferments during the Vietnam War.

Third--and here comes the blistering fact--when Cheney claims that if President Obama stops "the Cheney method of interrogation and torture", the nation will be in danger, he is perverting the facts once again. But in a very ironic way.

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

Less important but still busting my chops as a Republican, is the damage that the Sith Lord Cheney is doing to my political party.

He and Rush Limbaugh seem to be its leaders now. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and all other Republicans of note seem to be either so enamored of Cheney-Limbaugh (or fearful of them?) or, on the other hand, so appalled by them, that the cat has their tongues. And meanwhile fewer Americans identify as Republicans than at any time since WWII. We're at 21% and falling--right in line with the number of cranks, reprobates, and loonies in the country.

When will we hear from those in my party who give a damn about their country and about the party of Lincoln?

When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends--and your friends.

Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you've done--to the country and to its Republican Party.

-- Lawrence Wilkerson

h/t The Washington Note

"I'm Not Sure We Need Anymore..."

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is tentatively standing by President Obama's decision to withhold photos of U.S. personnel reportedly torturing detainees.

"We've had quite a few pictures. I'm not sure we need anymore," he said in response to a question from the Huffington Post in the hallway off the Senate floor.

"I haven't seen the pictures," he added.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the senate intelligence committee, isn't sure if she's seen the photos. If they are the unreleased photos from Abu Ghraib, then she has seen them, she said, and doesn't think they need to be released.

"I don't know what the point of releasing them would be, other than to have an enormous cataclysmic reaction. We saw the Abu Ghraib photographs," she said.

Her committee is currently investigating Bush administration torture. As part of the inquiry, she said, the panel should have access to the photos. "I think the intelligence committee should obtain these photographs," she said.

Guess what, assholes? We the people, who hired you, would like to see the pictures, and we want you to prosecute the torturers.

We also would have liked it if you passed credit card reforms today, but I guess you think you will get elected even if you won't do the will of the people. I have lost hope.

Taibbi On Coming Clean About Torture

Matt Taibbi explains why we need to publicly and politically address the torturers. What will the world think if we don't?

It’s the same thing with this torture business. There are a lot of people in this country who genuinely believe that torture opponents are “not upset” about things like 9/11 or the beheading of American hostages. The idea that “no one complains when Americans are murdered” is crazy — of course we “complained,” and of course we’d all like to round up those machete-wielding monsters and shoot them into space — but these people really believe this, they really believe that torture opponents are secretly unimpressed/untroubled by Islamic terrorism, at least as compared to American “enhanced interrogation.” For them to believe that, they must really believe that such people are traitors, nursing a secret agenda (an agenda perhaps unknown even to themselves, their America-hatred being ingrained so deep) against their own country. Which is really an amazing thing for large numbers of Americans to believe about another large group of Americans, when you think about it.

The reason it’s possible is that it’s been drilled into their heads to instinctively perceive opposition to their point of view as support for their enemies. They’ve lost the ability to distinguish between real, honest-to-God enemies (al Qaeda, Kim Jong-Il) and people they simply disagree with or dislike (Boston liberals, the French, gays, the ACLU, etc).

Pelosi Knew Too II

Johnathan Turley makes a very important point about Pelosi: she was briefed on the possible use of torture, and said NOTHING!

As noted earlier, this argument completely abandons any semblance of oversight responsibility. It amounts to arguing “if you can’t believe the Bush White House on international law, who can you believe?” What is particularly striking is that Pelosi is using precisely the same argument that she rejected from Jane Harman on the unlawful surveillance program. Harman insisted that, while she was the critical oversight authority in Congress, she had no knowledge of the law in the area and specifically FISA. She just had to accept the Bush Administration’s insistence that it was legal and did not even have the ability to ask for general information on the law in the area. Now, Pelosi is saying that she just had to accept that a torture program was lawful because the White House said it was. The primary oversight responsibility of these members is to be sure that the Executive Branch is complying with the laws written by Congress. It makes a mockery of the system for Pelosi and Harman to simply take their word for it. The federal law gives Pelosi and Harman the obligation to serve as a check on executive authority, but they believe that this role compels them to accept whatever they are told on the legality of the program. They are simply informed and have not obligations or responsibilities — even when they are given a description of torture.

Pelosi Knew Too

Intelligence Report: Pelosi Briefed on Use of Interrogation Tactics in Sept. ’02

May 07, 2009 6:02 PM

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence’s office and obtained by ABC News.

The report, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Capitol Hill officials Wednesday, appears to contradict Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics. Instead, she has said, she was told only that the Bush administration had legal opinions that would have supported the use of such techniques.

The report details a Sept. 4, 2002 meeting between intelligence officials and Pelosi, then-House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss, and two aides. At the time, Pelosi was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.

The meeting is described as a “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed.”

EITs stand for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a classification of special interrogation tactics that includes waterboarding.

Pelosi, D-Calif., sharply disputed suggestions last month that she had been told about waterboarding having taken place.

“In that or any other briefing . . . we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used," Pelosi said at a news conference in April. "What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel . . . opinions that they could be used, but not that they would."

Brendan Daly, a Pelosi spokesman, said Pelosi’s recollection of the meeting is different than the way it is described in the report from the DNI’s office.

Go read the article. They're all rotten!