Cheney said Gitmo detainees revealed Iraq-al Qaida link

Jonathan S. Landay
May 15, 2009 - McClatchy Newspapers

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Then-Vice President Dick Cheney, defending the invasion of Iraq, asserted in 2004 that detainees interrogated at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp had revealed that Iraq had trained al Qaida operatives in chemical and biological warfare, an assertion that wasn't true.

Cheney's 2004 comments to the now-defunct Rocky Mountain News were largely overlooked at the time. However, they appear to substantiate recent reports that interrogators at Guantanamo and other prison camps were ordered to find evidence of alleged cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein — despite CIA reports that there were only sporadic, insignificant contacts between the militant Islamic group and the secular Iraqi dictatorship.

The head of the Criminal Investigation Task Force at Guantanamo from 2002-2005 confirmed to McClatchy that in late 2002 and early 2003, intelligence officials were tasked to find, among other things, Iraq-al Qaida ties, which were a central pillar of the Bush administration's case for its March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

"I'm aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side," said retired Army Lt. Col. Brittain Mallow, a former military criminal investigator. "That was something they were tasked to look at."

He said he was unaware of the origins of the directive, but a former senior U.S. intelligence official has told McClatchy that Cheney's and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's offices were demanding that information in 2002 and 2003. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter, requested anonymity.

During the same period, two alleged senior al Qaida operatives in CIA custody were waterboarded repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times and Khalid Sheik Mohammed at least 183 times.

A 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report said that the two were questioned about the relationship between al Qaida and Iraq, and that both denied knowing of one.

A U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Paul Burney, told the Army Inspector General's office in 2006 that during the same period, interrogators at Guantanamo were under pressure to produce evidence of al Qaida-Iraq ties, but were unable to do so.

"The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results," Burney said, according excerpts of an interview published in a declassified Senate Armed Services Committee report released on April 22.

A key proponent of the Iraq invasion and of harsh interrogation methods, Cheney has become the leading defender of such measures, which included forced nudity, prolonged sleep deprivation, stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

The Rocky Mountain News asked Cheney in a Jan. 9, 2004, interview if he stood by his claims that Saddam's regime had maintained a "relationship" with al Qaida, raising the danger that Iraq might give the group chemical, biological or nuclear weapons to attack the U.S.

"Absolutely. Absolutely," Cheney replied.

A Cheney spokeswoman said a response to an e-mail requesting clarification of the former vice president's remarks would be forthcoming next week.

"The (al Qaida-Iraq) links go back," he said. "We know for example from interrogating detainees in Guantanamo that al Qaida sent individuals to Baghdad to be trained in C.W. and B.W. technology, chemical and biological weapons technology. These are all matters that are there for anybody who wants to look at it."

No evidence of such training or of any operational links between Iraq and al Qaida has ever been found, according to several official inquiries.

It's not apparent which Guantanamo detainees Cheney was referring to in the interview.

One al Qaida detainee, Ibn al Sheikh al Libi, claimed that terrorist operatives were sent to Iraq for chemical and biological weapons training, but he was in CIA custody, not at Guantanamo.

Moreover, he recanted his assertions, some of them allegedly made under torture while he was being interrogated in Egypt.

"No postwar information has been found that indicates CBW training occurred, and the detainee who provided the key prewar reporting about this training recanted his claims after the war," a September 2006 Senate Intelligence Committee report said.

Although the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned it at the time, former President George W. Bush cited al Libi's claim in an October 2002 address, and former Secretary of State Colin Powell used in his February 2003 speech to the United Nations.

A Libyan newspaper last week reported that al Libi committed suicide in a Libyan jail.

McChrystal was Cheney's Chief Assassin

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May 16, 2009 - Press TV

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Seymour Hersh says that Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing and the head of the wing has just been named as the new commander in Afghanistan.

In an interview with GulfNews on May 12, 2009 Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, said that there is a special unit called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that does high-value targeting of men that are known to be involved in anti-American activities, or are believed to be planning such activities.

According to Hersh, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was headed by former US vice president Dick Cheney and the former head of JSOC, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal who has just been named the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan.

McChrystal, a West Pointer who became a Green Beret not long after graduation, following a stint as a platoon leader in the 82nd Airborne Division, is currently director of Staff at the Pentagon, the executive to Joint staff to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence.

On July 22, 2006, Human Rights Watch issued a report titled "No blood, no foul" about American torture practices at three facilities in Iraq. One of them was Camp Nama, which was operated by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), under the direction of then Major General Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal was officially based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, but he was a frequent visitor to Camp Nama and other Special Forces bases in Iraq and Afghanistan where forces under his command were based.

An interrogator at Camp Nama known as Jeff described locking prisoners in shipping containers for 24 hours at a time in extreme heat; exposing them to extreme cold with periodic soaking in cold water; bombardment with bright lights and loud music; sleep deprivation; and severe beatings.

When he and other interrogators went to the colonel in charge and expressed concern that this kind of treatment was not legal, and that they might be investigated by the military's Criminal Investigation Division or the International Committee of the Red Cross, the colonel told them he had "this directly from General McChrystal and the Pentagon that there's no way that the Red Cross could get in."

In the July 2, 2006 report, When Human Rights Watch asked whether the interrogator knew whether the colonel was receiving orders or pressures to use the abusive tactics, Jeff said that his understanding was that there was some form of pressure to use aggressive techniques coming from higher up the chain of command; however neither he nor other interrogators were briefed on the particular source.

"We really didn't know too much about it. We knew that we were only like a few steps away in the chain of command from the Pentagon, but it was a little unclear, especially to the interrogators who weren't really part of that task force."

The interrogator said that he did see Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of US Joint Special Operations forces in Iraq, visiting the Nama facility on several occasions. "I saw him a couple of times. I know what he looks like."

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is the international body charged under international law with monitoring compliance with the Geneva Conventions, and it, therefore, has the right to inspect all facilities where people are detained in a country that is at war or under military occupation.

To hide prisoners or facilities from the ICRC or to deny access to them is a serious war crime. But many US prisons in Iraq have held "ghost" prisoners whose imprisonment has not been reported to the ICRC, and these "ghosts" have usually been precisely the ones subjected to the worst torture. Camp Nama, run by McChrystal's JSOC, was an entire "ghost" facility.

The decision by Obama's administration to appoint General McChrystal as the new commander in charge of the war in Afghanistan and retaining the military commission for the US war-on-terror detainees held in the Guantanamo Bay prison are the latest examples of the new US administration walking in Bush's foot steps with regards to torture and denial of habeas corpus.

Zen Moment of the Weekend

Utah Gov. John Huntsman Jr.'s move from the statehouse to the U.S. Embassy in China seems a no-brainer given his resume—Huntsman speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese, has an adopted daughter from China, and previously served as a diplomat in Singapore before taking office. But Barack Obama's reported decision to name Huntsman as ambassador to China also carries tremendous political benefits for the president back home. Huntsman is practically the only prominent Republican moderate in the country who is still popular with his constituents and is considered a likely presidential candidate in 2012. Obama's 2008 campaign manager recently singled Huntsman out as a candidate he feared in a potential 2012 matchup thanks to his centrist appeal. Now, with Huntsman out of the picture for the foreseeable future, it seems the Dick Cheney wing of the party will be free to rule the roost without any major GOP moderates around to counter their message.

- The Daily Beast

The Case of the Missing H-Bomb: The Pentagon Has Lost the Mother of All Weapons

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60 years have passed since a damaged jet dropped hydrogen bomb near Savanah, Ga. -- and the Pentagon still can't find it.

Jeffrey St. Clair
May 16, 2009 - CounterPunch

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Things go missing. It's to be expected. Even at the Pentagon. Last October, the Pentagon's inspector general reported that the military's accountants had misplaced a destroyer, several tanks and armored personnel carriers, hundreds of machine guns, rounds of ammo, grenade launchers and some surface-to-air missiles. In all, nearly $8 billion in weapons were AWOL.

Those anomalies are bad enough. But what's truly chilling is the fact that the Pentagon has lost track of the mother of all weapons, a hydrogen bomb. The thermonuclear weapon, designed to incinerate Moscow, has been sitting somewhere off the coast of Savannah, Georgia for the past 40 years. The Air Force has gone to greater lengths to conceal the mishap than to locate the bomb and secure it.

On the night of February 5, 1958 a B-47 Stratojet bomber carrying a hydrogen bomb on a night training flight off the Georgia coast collided with an F-86 Saberjet fighter at 36,000 feet. The collision destroyed the fighter and severely damaged a wing of the bomber, leaving one of its engines partially dislodged. The bomber's pilot, Maj. Howard Richardson, was instructed to jettison the H-bomb before attempting a landing. Richardson dropped the bomb into the shallow waters of Warsaw Sound, near the mouth of the Savannah River, a few miles from the city of Tybee Island, where he believed the bomb would be swiftly recovered.

The Pentagon recorded the incident in a top secret memo to the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. The memo has been partially declassified: "A B-47 aircraft with a [word redacted] nuclear weapon aboard was damaged in a collision with an F-86 aircraft near Sylvania, Georgia, on February 5, 1958. The B-47 aircraft attempted three times unsuccessfully to land with the weapon. The weapon was then jettisoned visually over water off the mouth of the Savannah River. No detonation was observed."

Soon search and rescue teams were sent to the site. Warsaw Sound was mysteriously cordoned off by Air Force troops. For six weeks, the Air Force looked for the bomb without success. Underwater divers scoured the depths, troops tromped through nearby salt marshes, and a blimp hovered over the area attempting to spot a hole or crater in the beach or swamp. Then just a month later, the search was abruptly halted. The Air Force sent its forces to Florence, South Carolina, where another H-bomb had been accidentally dropped by a B-47. The bomb's 200 pounds of TNT exploded on impact, sending radioactive debris across the landscape. The explosion caused extensive property damage and several injuries on the ground. Fortunately, the nuke itself didn't detonate.

The search teams never returned to Tybee Island, and the affair of the missing H-bomb was discreetly covered up. The end of the search was noted in a partially declassified memo from the Pentagon to the AEC, in which the Air Force politely requested a new H-bomb to replace the one it had lost. "The search for this weapon was discontinued on 4-16-58 and the weapon is considered irretrievably lost. It is requested that one [phrase redacted] weapon be made available for release to the DOD as a replacement."

There was a big problem, of course, and the Pentagon knew it. In the first three months of 1958 alone, the Air Force had four major accidents involving H-bombs. (Since 1945, the United States has lost 11 nuclear weapons.) The Tybee Island bomb remained a threat, as the AEC acknowledged in a June 10, 1958 classified memo to Congress: "There exists the possibility of accidental discovery of the unrecovered weapon through dredging or construction in the probable impact area. … The Department of Defense has been requested to monitor all dredging and construction activities."

But the wizards of Armageddon saw it less as a security, safety or ecological problem, than a potential public relations disaster that could turn an already paranoid population against their ambitious nuclear project. The Pentagon and the AEC tried to squelch media interest in the issue by a doling out a morsel of candor and a lot of misdirection. In a joint statement to the press, the Defense Department and the AEC admitted that radioactivity could be "scattered" by the detonation of the high explosives in the H-bombs. But the letter downplayed possibility of that ever happening: "The likelihood that a particular accident would involve a nuclear weapon is extremely limited."

In fact, that scenario had already occurred and would occur again.

That's where the matter stood for more than 42 years until a deep sea salvage company, run by former Air Force personnel and a CIA agent, disclosed the existence of the bomb and offered to locate it for a million dollars. Along with recently declassified documents, the disclosure prompted fear and outrage among coastal residents and calls for a congressional investigation into the incident itself and why the Pentagon had stopped looking for the missing bomb. "We're horrified because some of that information has been covered up for years," said Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican.

The cover-up continues. The Air Force, however, has told local residents and the congressional delegation that there was nothing to worry about.

"We've looked into this particular issue from all angles and we're very comfortable," said Major Gen. Franklin J. "Judd" Blaisdell, deputy chief of staff for air and space operations at Air Force headquarters in Washington. "Our biggest concern is that of localized heavy metal contamination."

The Air Force even has suggested that the bomb itself was not armed with a plutonium trigger. But this contention is disputed by a number of factors. Howard Dixon, a former Air Force sergeant who specialized in loading nuclear weapons onto planes, said that in his 31 years of experience he never once remembered a bomb being put on a plane that wasn't fully armed. Moreover, a newly declassified 1966 congressional testimony of W.J. Howard, then assistant secretary of defense, describes the Tybee Island bomb as a "complete weapon, a bomb with a nuclear capsule." Howard said that the Tybee Island bomb was one of two weapons lost up to that time that contained a plutonium trigger.

Recently declassified documents show that the jettisoned bomb was an "Mk-15, Mod O" hydrogen bomb, weighing four tons and packing more than 100 times the explosive punch of the one that incinerated Hiroshima. This was the first thermonuclear weapon deployed by the Air Force and featured the relatively primitive design created by that evil genius Edward Teller. The only fail-safe for this weapon was the physical separation of the plutonium capsule (or pit) from the weapon.

In addition to the primary nuclear capsule, the bomb also harbored a secondary nuclear explosive, or sparkplug, designed to make it go thermo. This is a hollow plug about an inch in diameter made of either plutonium or highly enriched uranium (the Pentagon has never said which) that is filled with fusion fuel, most likely lithium-6 deuteride. Lithium is highly reactive in water. The plutonium in the bomb was manufactured at the Hanford Nuclear Site in Washington State and would be the oldest in the United States. That's bad news: Plutonium gets more dangerous as it ages. In addition, the bomb would contain other radioactive materials, such as uranium and beryllium.

The bomb is also charged with 400 pounds of TNT, designed to cause the plutonium trigger to implode and thus start the nuclear explosion. As the years go by, those high explosives are becoming flaky, brittle and sensitive. The bomb is most likely now buried in 5 to 15 feet of sand and slowly leaking radioactivity into the rich crabbing grounds of the Warsaw Sound. If the Pentagon can't find the Tybee Island bomb, others might. That's the conclusion of Bert Soleau, a former CIA officer who now works with ASSURE, the salvage company. Soleau, a chemical engineer, said that it wouldn't be hard for terrorists to locate the weapon and recover the lithium, beryllium and enriched uranium, "the essential building blocks of nuclear weapons." What to do? Coastal residents want the weapon located and removed. "Plutonium is a nightmare and their own people know it," said Pam O'Brien, an anti-nuke organizer from Douglassville, Georgia. "It can get in everything--your
eyes, your bones, your gonads. You never get over it. They need to get that thing out of there."

The situation is reminiscent of the Palomares incident. On January 16, 1966, a B-52 bomber, carrying four hydrogen bombs, crashed while attempting to refuel in mid-air above the Spanish coast. Three of the H-bombs landed near the coastal farming village of Palomares. One of the bombs landed in a dry creek bed and was recovered, battered but relatively intact. But the TNT in two of the bombs exploded, gouging 10-foot holes in the ground and showering uranium and plutonium over a vast area. Over the next three months, more than 1,400 tons of radioactive soil and vegetation was scooped up, placed in barrels and, ironically enough, shipped back to the Savannah River Nuclear Weapons Lab, where it remains. The tomato fields near the craters were burned and buried. But there's no question that due to strong winds and other factors much of the contaminated soil was simply left in the area. "The total extent of the spread will never be known," concluded a 1975
report by the Defense Nuclear Agency.

The cleanup was a joint operation between Air Force personnel and members of the Spanish civil guard. The U.S. workers wore protective clothing and were monitored for radiation exposure, but similar precautions weren't taken for their Spanish counterparts. "The Air Force was unprepared to provide adequate detection and monitoring for personnel when an aircraft accident occurred involving plutonium weapons in a remote area of a foreign country," the Air Force commander in charge of the cleanup later testified to Congress.

The fourth bomb landed eight miles offshore and was missing for several months. It was eventually located by a mini-submarine in 2,850 feet of water, where it rests to this day.

Two years later, on January 21, 1968, a similar accident occurred when a B-52 caught fire in flight above Greenland and crashed in ice-covered North Star Bay near the Thule Air Base. The impact detonated the explosives in all four of the plane's H-bombs, which scattered uranium, tritium and plutonium over a 2,000-foot radius. The intense fire melted a hole in the ice, which then refroze, encapsulating much of the debris, including the thermonuclear assembly from one of the bombs. The recovery operation, conducted in near total darkness at temperatures that plunged to minus-70 degrees, was known as Project Crested Ice. But the work crews called it "Dr. Freezelove."

More than 10,000 tons of snow and ice were cut away, put into barrels and transported to Savannah River and Oak Ridge for disposal. Other radioactive debris was simply left on site, to melt into the bay after the spring thaws. More than 3,000 workers helped in the Thule recovery effort, many of them Danish soldiers. As at Palomares, most of the American workers were offered some protective gear, but not the Danes, who did much of the most dangerous work, including filling the barrels with the debris, often by hand. The decontamination procedures were primitive to say the least. An Air Force report noted that they were cleansed "by simply brushing the snow from garments and vehicles."

Even though more than 38 Navy ships were called to assist in the recovery operation, and it was an open secret that the bombs had been lost, the Pentagon continued to lie about the situation. In one contentious exchange with the press, a Pentagon spokesman uttered this classic bit of military doublespeak: "I don't know of any missing bomb, but we have not positively identified what I think you are looking for."

When Danish workers at Thule began to get sick from a slate of illnesses, ranging from rare cancers to blood disorders, the Pentagon refused to help. Even after a 1987 epidemiological study by a Danish medical institute showed that Thule workers were 50 percent more likely to develop cancers than other members of the Danish military, the Pentagon still refused to cooperate. Later that year, 200 of the workers sued the United States under the Foreign Military Claims Act. The lawsuit was dismissed, but the discovery process revealed thousands of pages of secret documents about the incident, including the fact that Air Force workers at the site, unlike the Danes, have not been subject to long-term health monitoring. Even so, the Pentagon continues to keep most of the material on the Thule incident secret, including any information on the extent of the radioactive (and other toxic) contamination.

These recovery efforts don't inspire much confidence. But the Tybee Island bomb presents an even touchier situation. The presence of the unstable lithium deuteride and the deteriorating high explosives make retrieval of the bomb a very dangerous proposition--so dangerous, in fact, that even some environmentalists and anti-nuke activists argue that it might present less of a risk to leave the bomb wherever it is.

In short, there aren't any easy answers. The problem is exacerbated by the Pentagon's failure to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the situation and reluctance to fully disclose what it knows. "I believe the plutonium capsule is in the bomb, but that a nuclear detonation is improbable because the neutron generators used back then were polonium-beryllium, which has a very short half-life," said Don Moniak, a nuclear weapons expert with the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League in Aiken, South Carolina. "Without neutrons, weapons grade plutonium won't blow. However, there could be a fission or criticality event if the plutonium was somehow put in an incorrect configuration. There could be a major inferno if the high explosives went off and the lithium deuteride reacted as expected. Or there could just be an explosion that scattered uranium and plutonium all over hell."

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Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is just out from AK Press.

Transcript of Bob Graham discussing CIA briefings on MSNBC - 05/15/2009

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David Shuster: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the CIA misleads Congress all the time and has at least one big-name Democrat backing her up, Former Senator Bob Graham who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee following the 9/11 attacks and he joins us live this morning. Senator Graham, House Speaker Pelosi said specifically when she was briefed in September 2002, she was told that waterboarding specifically was not being used. What were you told during that same time period, September 2002?

Graham: David, when I was briefed which was about three weeks after the Speaker, the subject of waterboarding did not come up. Nor did the treatment of Abu Zubaydah or any other specific detainee.

Shuster: And the reason that's significant is because by the time of your briefing and the Speaker's briefing, we now knew Zubaydah had been waterboarded some 83 times. So again, was there a requirement, was it incumbent upon the CIA, to tell you as the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee or Ranking Member, was there an obligation on them to tell you about it if it was going on?

Graham: Yes, they're obligated to tell the full Intelligence Committee, not just the leadership. This was the same time within the same week, in fact, that the CIA was submitting its National Intelligence Estimate on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq which proves so erroneous that we went to war, have had thousands of persons killed and injured as a result of misinformation.

Shuster: So what were they telling you that fall in 2002 about what they were and were not doing with terror suspects that were in US custody?

Graham: Nothing very remarkable. They were discussing the fact that they had detainees and that they were interrogating detainees. But nothing such as that they were using these extreme torture techniques that would have made it a surprising briefing.

Shuster: Now, there are some who suggest that by either providing false information to Speaker Pelosi or actually withholding information from her, withholding information from you, that those CIA briefers broke the law. What's your view on that?

Graham: That's for some legal authority to decide. I can only state what I experienced.

Shuster: What do you make of this whole sort of kerfuffle, and that's probably not the right word for it, between the Speaker and yourself and the CIA? What's going on? Do you think the CIA was simply trying to, I don't know, push things sort of under the rug or maybe that they were post dating or taking the documents and writing things in after the fact that hadn't actually happened in these briefings? What do you make of all of this?

Graham: David, I think fundamentally, what's happening is there's an attempt underway to try to shift it, the discussion away from what's really important, and that is did the United States use torture, was that within the law, who authorized it, and what were the consequences of that -- those are the important issues. Whether the Speaker or anybody else knew about it is, frankly, sort of off on the edges.

Shuster: Now, a lot of people who are not familiar with you Senator Graham, might say 'how could Bob Graham know what was going on, what was said to him, nearly seven years ago, September 27th, 2002?' Explain the sort of notebooks that you keep and why they convinced you that in fact, the CIA had not told you certain information at that crucial briefing?

Graham: Well, the notebooks played another role in this. The CIA when I asked them, what were the dates these briefings took place, gave me four dates. And I went back to my spiral notebooks and a daily schedule that I keep and found, and the CIA concurred, that in three of those four dates, there was no briefing held. That raises some questions about the bookkeeping of the CIA. Under the rules of clandestine information, I was prohibited from keeping notes of what was actually said during that briefing other than a brief summation that it had to do with the interrogation of detainees.

Shuster: And finally, Senator Graham, do you believe there should be an investigation, either a special council or truth commission to find out exactly what was going on at the CIA at the time?

Graham: Yes, and more broadly than just what was going on at the CIA -- who was directing the CIA. The CIA is not a rogue organization. It responds to directions from higher authorities -- who were those authorities? What was the basis of their action and what was their motivation? Yes, I think there should be like the 9/11 commission a high level totally impartial group of Americans who will have the respect of the American people, review all those questions.

Shuster: Former Florida Senator Bob Graham. And Senator, thanks for joining us this morning.

Graham: Thank you, David.

Powell Aide Says Torture Helped Build Iraq War Case

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Matt Smith
May 15, 2009 - CNN

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Finding a "smoking gun" linking Iraq and al Qaeda became the main purpose of the abusive interrogation program the Bush administration authorized in 2002, a former State Department official told CNN on Thursday.

Vice President Dick Cheney speaks during a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad March 17, 2008. (REUTERS/Ceerwan Aziz) The allegation was included in an online broadside aimed at former Vice President Dick Cheney by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for then-Secretary of State Colin Powell. In it, Wilkerson wrote that the interrogation program began in April and May of 2002, and then-Vice President Cheney's office kept close tabs on the questioning.

"Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda," Wilkerson wrote in The Washington Note, an online political journal.

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said his accusation is based on information from current and former officials. He said he has been "relentlessly digging" since 2004, when Powell asked him to look into the scandal surrounding the treatment of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

"I couldn't walk into a courtroom and prove this to anybody, but I'm pretty sure it's fairly accurate," he told CNN.

Most of Wilkerson's online essay criticizes Cheney's recent defense of the "alternative" interrogation techniques the Bush administration authorized for use against suspected terrorists. Cheney has argued the interrogation program was legal and effective in preventing further attacks on Americans.

Critics say the tactics amounted to the illegal torture of prisoners in U.S. custody and have called for investigations of those who authorized them.

Representatives of the former vice president declined comment on Wilkerson's allegations. But Wilkerson told CNN that by early 2002, U.S. officials had decided that "we had al Qaeda pretty much on the run."

"The priority had turned to other purposes, and one of those purposes was to find substantial contacts between al Qaeda and Baghdad," he said.

The argument that Iraq could have provided weapons of mass destruction to terrorists such as al Qaeda was a key element of the Bush administration's case for the March 2003 invasion. But after the invasion, Iraq was found to have dismantled its nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs, and the independent commission that investigated the 2001 attacks found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between the two entities.

Wilkerson wrote that in one case, the CIA told Cheney's office that a prisoner under its interrogation program was now "compliant," meaning agents recommended the use of "alternative" techniques should stop.

At that point, "The VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods," Wilkerson wrote.

"The detainee had not revealed any al Qaeda-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, 'revealed' such contacts."

Al-Libi's claim that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government had trained al Qaeda operatives in producing chemical and biological weapons appeared in the October 2002 speech then-President Bush gave when pushing Congress to authorize military action against Iraq. It also was part of Powell's February 2003 presentation to the United Nations on the case for war, a speech Powell has called a "blot" on his record.

Al-Libi later recanted the claim, saying it was made under torture by Egyptian intelligence agents, a claim Egypt denies. He died last week in a Libyan prison, reportedly a suicide, Human Rights Watch reported.

Stacy Sullivan, a counterterrorism adviser for the U.S.-based group, called al-Libi's allegation "pivotal" to the Bush administration's case for war, as it connected Baghdad to the terrorist organization behind the 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

And an Army psychiatrist assigned to support questioning of suspected terrorists at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba told the service's inspector-general that interrogators there were trying to connect al Qaeda and Iraq.

"This is my opinion," Maj. Paul Burney told the inspector-general's office. "Even though they were giving information and some of it was useful, while we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between aI Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful in establishing a link between aI Qaeda and Iraq. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish this link ... there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Burney's account was included in a Senate Armed Services Committee report released in April. Other interrogators reported pressure to produce intelligence "but did not recall pressure to identify links between Iraq and al Qaeda," the Senate report states.

Cheney criticized Powell during a television interview over the weekend, saying he no longer considers Powell a fellow Republican after his former colleague endorsed Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

Wilkerson said he is not speaking for his former boss and does not know whether Powell shares his views.

Excuses You Might Believe In

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Democrats Are More Powerful Than Ever. How Will They Justify Doing Nothing?

Ted Rall
May 14, 2009 - YahooNews

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The defection of Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter and the imminent certification of Al Franken as the winner of Minnesota's election recount has handed Democrats what they always said they lacked in order to pass a progressive agenda: a filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate. Now they face the awful problem of coming up with new excuses for not doing anything.

How will Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other fake liberals weasel out of making good on their promises for real action on healthcare, the economy and the war? It won't be easy. They control both houses of Congress and the White House. Obama is about to fill a new vacancy on the Supreme Court. The Times of London writes that "Mr. Obama, by some assessments, has more political leverage than any president since Franklin Roosevelt in 1937"--at the peak of the New Deal, just before he overreached by trying to pack the Supreme Court.

The Republican Party, on the other hand, is suffering a crisis of faith--too much God-cheering and not enough adherence to core values like small government, fiscal conservatism, isolationism and protectionist trade policy. A mere 21 percent of Americans still call themselves Republicans, the lowest number since 1983. Similarly, reports the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, "just 21 percent say they're confident in the Republicans in Congress 'to make the right decisions for the country's future,' compared with 60 percent who express that confidence in Obama."

Democrats have never been as powerful. Republicans are weak. Obama won with a decisive, sweeping rejection of the Republican status quo. Harry and Louise, call your agents--socialized medicine is on the way! Not.

Be careful what you wish for--what you say you wish for, anyway. "The left is going to push Obama--now that he's got a veto-proof majority--to drive an agenda that a smart president would realize is a long-term political disaster," GOP pollster Rick Wilson tells ABC. "Long-term political disaster" is mainstream media code for "stuff that corporations hate."

Well, yes. What passes for the left in this country (center-right everywhere else, because they read) now has some not-unreasonable questions for Barack Obama. Such as:

Pretty please, can we now live in a country where people don't have to spend $800 a month to health insurance companies that deny their customers' claims?

Why are we still in Iraq?

How about some help for the victims of Katrina, many of whom never collected one red cent after losing everything?

Why are we paying billions to banks and still letting them gouge us with 25 interest credit card rates? Speaking of which:

How about doing something that might actually help people who live in the economy, rather than just capital markets?

These queries seem all the more relevant coming, as they do, from the liberal base of the Democratic party--the people who got Obama elected.

The trouble for our cute, charming prez is that he has no intention whatsoever of introducing a true national healthcare plan: one that covers everybody for free. He wants to expand the war in Afghanistan and drag out the one against Iraq. He will not punish Bush or his torturers, rescue homeowners in foreclosure, or nail scumbag banks to the wall. These changes would cost trillions of dollars to multinational insurance companies, defense contractors and other huge financial concerns who donate generously to candidates of both political parties and have a history of using their clout to manipulate elections in favor of their favorite candidates. A classic example is oil companies, who push down gas prices before elections in order to help Republicans.

The most that Democratic voters can expect from Democratic politicians is incremental, symbolic change that doesn't cost their corporate sponsors any serious coin. The New York Times marked Obama's 100th day in office with an editorial that approvingly encapsulated his accomplishments to date: "He is trying to rebuild this country's shattered reputation with his pledge to shut down the prison camp in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, his offer to talk with Iran and Syria, and, yes, that handshake with Venezuela's blow-hard president, Hugo Chávez...The government is promoting women's reproductive rights. It is restoring regulations to keep water clean and food safe. The White House has promised to tackle immigration reform this year."

Trying. Promoting. Has promised.

Guantánamo isn't being closed; it's being moved. Gitmo's detainees will be transferred to a new harsher gulag under construction in Afghanistan. Thawed relations with Iran and Syria would create new business opportunities for big oil. Defending the right to an abortion is popular and doesn't cost Bank of America a dime. Immigration reform is code for legalizing illegal immigrants, not closing the border. Safety regulations reassure consumers and pump up the economy. Closing the border would raise wages. Corporations won't allow that.

Unfortunately for Obama's Democrats, small-bore initiatives only go so far, especially with the economy in meltdown. When people are desperate and angry they don't care as much about flag-burning or creationism or a handshake with Hugo Chávez. They want action--real action.

How will the Democrats avoid genuine change now that they enjoy the ability to enact it? Will they blame obstructionist Republicans? Will Democrats cross the aisle to vote with the Republicans? A new war, perhaps?

If nothing else, whatever dog-ate-my-homework excuse they come up with for sitting on their butts is bound to be amusing. If nothing else.

Senator Bob Graham: The CIA Made Up Two Briefing Sessions

HAKA note: Bob Graham was a notorious note taker and note keeper of 'everything and anything' that happened during his time while in public office. If he says they were not told I believe him.

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May 14, 2009 - emptywheel.firedoglake.com

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Bob Graham just appeared on WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show. In addition to repeating earlier reports that he was never briefed on waterboarding, Graham revealed that the first time he asked the CIA when he was briefed on torture, it claimed it had briefed him on two dates when no briefing took place.

I didn't get Graham's exact quotes (and the quotes below are rough approximations), but when asked to respond to Philip Zelikow's assertion that members of Congress from both parties had been briefed on this program, Graham said that when he asked the CIA when he had been briefed on the program, the CIA gave him the dates of four briefings, two in April 2002 and two in September 2002, when they claimed they had briefed him about the program. But after Graham consulted his own records, he pointed out that on two of those dates, he had not attended any briefing. After Graham pointed this out to the CIA, they conceded their own dates were incorrect.

Graham then went on to repeat his claim that he had no recollection of being told about waterboarding Zubaydah or anything else about extreme interrogation.

In addition to repeating his earlier assertion that he would have remembered something that dramatic, Graham contextualized the briefing the CIA gave him--which occurred right in the middle of Graham's complaints about the inaccuracy of the Iraq NIE (the briefing on September 27, 2002 would have shown up just a few days after the British released a White Paper on September 24, 2002 that publicized for the first time the yellocake claim).

"Occurred in September 2002, right in the middle of the NIE on Iraq where I was at open war with the Administration where I was at war with the Administration on the inaccuracies of that NIE."

As Graham went on to point out, given the way the CIA was lying heavily to make the case for war against Iraq at the time, there's no reason they should be trusted to tell the truth about the briefings they gave.

"I'm a little surprised that Phil [Zelikow] would accept at face value on this subject when at the very same time they were telling us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq."

Finally, Graham suggested that by briefing just two intell leaders at a time, it prevented those attending the briefings from comparing notes about what was heard; Graham has never even compared notes with Pelosi about what she got briefed three weeks earlier than Graham in September 2002.

"I was never in a briefing with House members. According to the CIA report, I was only at the September 27 meeting with one other senator, and surprisingly with two staff members, which would have been unusual."

The really damning thing, though, is the first point: CIA claimed Graham had been briefed on two days when no briefing occurred, which is not dissimilar from their claims that Jello Jay was briefed on February 4, 2003 when he didn't attend the briefing in question.

The CIA is just making shit up about these briefings, even to the point of claiming there were briefings when none occurred. Can we set aside, now, the notion that the CIA's own version of what it told Congress when has any credibility in the least?

More on this:

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/11/graham-corroborates-pelosi/

'Impolite' Questions for Gen. Myers

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Tuesday evening offered an unusual opportunity to question the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (2001-2005), Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, at an alumni club dinner.

Ray McGovern
May 13, 2009 - Consortiumnews.com

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He was eager to talk about his just-published memoir, Eyes on the Horizon (and I was able to scan through a copy during the cocktail hour). Myers's presentation, like his book, was thin gruel.

After his brief talk, he seemed intent on filibustering during a meandering Q & A session. He finally called on me since no other hands were up. Some were yawning, but it was too early to simply leave.

I introduced myself as a former Army intelligence officer and CIA analyst with combined service of almost 30 years.

I thanked him for his stated opposition to interrogation techniques that go beyond "our interrogation manual"; and his conviction that "the Geneva Conventions were a fundamental part of our military culture"—both viewpoints emphasized in his book.

I then noted that the recently published Senate Armed Services Committee report, "Inquiry Into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody," sowed some doubt regarding the strength of his convictions.

Why, I asked, did Gen. Myers go along when then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized harsh interrogation techniques and, earlier, when President George W. Bush himself issued an executive order arbitrarily denying Geneva protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees?

I referred Gen. Myers to the Senate committee's finding that he had nipped in the bud an in-depth legal review of interrogation techniques, when all interested parties were eager for an authoritative ruling on their lawfulness. (The following account borrows heavily from the Senate committee report.)

Background: The summer of 2002 brought to interrogators at Guantanamo fresh guidance, plus new techniques adopted from the Korean War practices of Chinese Communist interrogators who had extracted false confessions from captured American soldiers.

On Aug. 1, 2002 a memo signed by the head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jay Bybee, stated that for an act to qualify as "torture":

--"Physical pain … must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.

--"Purely mental pain or suffering … must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years."

During the week of Sept. 16, 2002, a group of interrogators from Guantanamo flew to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for training in the use of these SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, & Escape) techniques, which were originally designed to help downed pilots withstand the regimen of torture employed by China. Now, SERE techniques were being "reverse engineered" and placed in the toolkit of U.S. military and CIA interrogators.

As soon as the Guantanamo interrogators returned from Fort Bragg, senior administration lawyers, including William "Jim" Haynes II (Department of Defense), John Rizzo (CIA), and David Addington (counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney), visited Guantanamo for consultations.

And, just to make quite sure there was no doubt about the new license given to interrogators, Jonathan Fredman, chief counsel to CIA's Counterterrorist Center, arrived and gathered the Guantanamo staff together on Oct. 2, 2002, to resolve any lingering questions regarding unfamiliar aggressive interrogation techniques, like waterboarding.

Fredman stressed, "The language of the statutes is written vaguely." He repeated Bybee's Aug. 1 guidance and summed up the legalities in this way: "It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong."

More Authoritative Guidance

Small wonder that on Oct. 11, 2002, Gen. Michael Dunlavey, the commander at Guantanamo, saw fit to double check with his superior, SOUTHCOM commander Gen. James Hill and request formal authorization to use aggressive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding.

On Oct. 25, 2002, Hill forwarded the request to Gen. Myers and Secretary Rumsfeld, commenting that, while lawyers were saying the techniques could be used, "I want a legal review of it, and I want you to tell me that, policy-wise, it's the right way to do business."

Hill later told the Army Inspector General that he (Hill) thought the request "was important enough that there ought to be a high-level look at it … ought to be a major policy discussion of this and everybody ought to be involved."

Gen. Myers, in turn, solicited the views of the military services on the Dunlavey/Hill request.

The Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force all expressed serious concerns about the legality of the techniques and called for a comprehensive legal review. The Marine Corps, for example, wrote, "Several of the techniques arguably violate federal law, and would expose our service members to possible prosecution."

The Defense Department's Criminal Investigative Task Force (CITF) at Guantanamo joined the services in expressing grave misgivings. Reflecting the tenor of the four services' concerns, CITF's chief legal advisor wrote that the "legality of applying certain techniques" for which authorization was requested was "questionable."

He added that he could not "advocate any action, interrogation or otherwise, that is predicated upon the principle that all is well if the ends justify the means and others are not aware of how we conduct our business."

Myers's Legal Counsel, Captain (now Rear Admiral) Jane Dalton, had her own concerns (and has testified that she made Gen. Myers aware of them), together with those expressed in writing by the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force.

Dalton directed her staff to initiate a thorough legal and policy review of the proposed techniques.

The review got off to a quick start. As a first step, Dalton ordered a secure video teleconference including Guantanamo, SOUTHCOM, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Army's intelligence school at Fort Huachuca.

Dalton said she wanted to find out more information about the techniques in the request and to begin discussing the legal issues to see if her office could do its own independent legal analysis.

Under oath before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Captain Dalton testified that, after she and her staff had begun their analysis, Gen. Myers directed her in November 2002 to stop the review.

She explained that Myers returned from a meeting and "advised me that [Pentagon General Counsel] Mr. Haynes wanted me … to cancel the video teleconference and to stop the review" because of concerns that "people were going to see" the Guantanamo request and the military services' analysis of it.

Haynes "wanted to keep it much more close-hold," Dalton said.

Dalton ordered her staff to stop the legal analysis. She testified that this was the only time that she had ever been asked to stop analyzing a request that came to her for review.

Asking Myers

I asked Gen. Myers why he stopped the in-depth legal review. He bobbed and weaved, contending first that some of the Senate report was wrong.

"But you did stop the review, that is a matter of record. Why?" I asked again.

"I stopped the broad review," Myers replied, "but I asked Dalton to do her personal review and keep me advised."

(Myers had a memory lapse when Senate committee members asked him about stopping the review.)

I asked again why he stopped the review, but was shouted down by an audience not used to having plain folks ask direct questions of very senior officials, past or present.

Haynes told the Senate committee that "there was a sense by DoD leadership that this decision was taking too long."

On Nov. 27, 2002, shortly after Haynes told Myers to order Dalton to stop her review – and despite the serious legal concerns of the military services – Haynes sent Rumsfeld a one-page memo recommending that he approve all but three of the 18 techniques in the request from Guantanamo.

Techniques like stress positions, nudity, exploitation of phobias (like fear of dogs), deprivation of light, and auditory stimuli were all recommended for approval.

On Dec. 2, 2002, Rumsfeld signed Haynes's recommendation, adding a handwritten note referring to the use of stress positions: "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

I too remained standing, as the shouting by my distinguished colleagues died down, reminding myself that I had wanted to say a word about the Geneva Conventions, "for which you, Gen. Myers, express such strong support in your book."

I waved a copy of the smoking-gun, two-page executive memorandum signed by George W. Bush on Feb. 7, 2002. That's the one in which the President declared that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees, who would nonetheless be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva."

I then made reference to "Conclusion 1" of the Senate committee report:

"On Feb. 7, 2002, President George W. Bush made a written determination that Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, did not apply to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees.

"Following the President's determination, techniques such as waterboarding, nudity, and stress positions … were authorized for use in interrogations of detainees in U.S. custody."

"Gen. Myers," I asked, "you were one of eight addressees for the President's directive of Feb. 7, 2002. What did you do when you learned of the President's decision to ignore Geneva?"

"Please just read my book," Myers said. I told him I had; and I read a couple of sentences aloud from my copy:

"You write that you told Douglas Feith, 'I feel very strongly about this. And if Rumsfeld doesn't defend the Geneva Conventions, I'll contradict him in front of the President.'

"You go on to explain very clearly, 'I was legally obligated to provide the President my best military advice — not the best advice as approved by the Secretary of Defense.'

"So, again, what did you do when you read the President's executive order of Feb. 7, 2002?"

Myers said he had fought the good fight before the President's decision. The sense was, if the President wanted to dismiss Geneva, what was a mere general to do?

In this connection, Myers included this curious passage in his book:

"By relying so heavily on just the lawyers, the President did not get the broader advice on these matters that he needed to fully consider the consequences of his actions. I thought it was critical that the nation's leadership convey the right message to those engaged in the War on Terror.

"Showing respect for the Geneva Conventions was important to all of us in uniform. This episode epitomized the Secretary's and the Chairman's different statutory responsibilities to the President and the nation. The fact that the President appeared to change his previous decision showed that the system, however, imperfect, had worked."

Enter Douglas Feith

Interestingly, Myers writes, "Douglas Feith supported my views strongly … noting that the United States had no choice but to apply the Geneva Conventions, because, like all treaties in force for the country, they bore the same weight as a federal statute."

Myers goes on to corroborate what British lawyer/author Philippe Sands writes in The Torture Team about the apparent twinning of Feith and Myers on this issue. Sands says Feith portrayed himself and Myers as of one mind on Geneva.

Just before the President issued his Feb. 7, 2002 executive order, Feith developed this line of reasoning: The Geneva Conventions are very important. The best way to defend them is by honoring their "incentive system," which rewards soldiers who fight openly and in uniform with all kinds of protections if captured.

In his book, Myers notes approvingly that this is indeed the line Feith took with the President at an NSC meeting on Feb. 4, 2002, to which Feith had been invited, three days before President Bush signed the order that has now become a smoking gun.

According to Feith, the all-important corollary is to take care not to "promiscuously hand out POW status to fighters who don't obey the rules."

"In other words, the best way to protect the Geneva Conventions is to gut them," as Dahlia Lithwick of Slate put it in a commentary last July.

I suppose it could even be the case that this seemed persuasive to President Bush, as well. Which would mean that Doug Feith has at least two contenders for the unenviable sobriquet with which Gen. Tommy Franks tagged him — "the f---ing stupidest guy on the face of the earth."

It is not really funny, of course.

While researching his book, Sands, a very astute observer, emerged from a three-hour session with Myers convinced that Myers did not understand the implications of what was being done and was "confused" about the decisions that were taken.

Sands writes that when he described the interrogation techniques introduced and stressed that they were not in the manual but rather breached U.S. military guidelines, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled.

Author Sands came to the conclusion that Myers was "hoodwinked;" that "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him."

There is no doubt something to that. And the apparent absence of Myers from the infamous torture boutiques in the White House Situation Room, aimed at discerning which particular techniques might be most appropriate for which "high-value" detainees, tends to support an out-of-the-loop defense for Myers.

I imagine it should not be all that surprising, given the way general officers are promoted these days, that a vacuous mind like Myers's could rise to the very pinnacle of our entire military establishment.
Certainly, nothing Myers said or did Tuesday evening would contradict Sands's assessment regarding naïveté.

My best guess is that it is a combination of dullness, cowardice and careerism that accounts for Myers' behavior — then and now. And, with those attributes well in place, falling in with bad companions as Richard Myers did, can really do you in.

Myers still writes that he found Rumsfeld to be "an insightful and incisive leader;" the general seems to have been putty in Rumsfeld's hands — one reason he was promoted, no doubt.

As we said our good-byes Tuesday evening, one of my alumni colleagues lamented my "ugly" behavior, although it was no more ugly than it was on May 4, 2006, during my four-minute debate with Donald Rumsfeld in Atlanta. (Sadly, my encounter with Myers was not broadcast live on TV.)

A Plaudit From the Press

In attendance was a reporter from the Washington Post, but his note-taking was confined to computing whether he should take the Post's buyout, or try to hang around for the newspaper's inevitable funeral in a couple of years. (So don't bother looking for a print story on the Myers event.)

As we departed, the Post-man gave me what he seemed to think was the ultimate compliment — I should have been a journalist, he said.

I told him thanks just the same — that my experience has been that, unless they promise not to ask "ugly" questions, journalists of the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) do not get to hang around long enough to qualify for a meager 401k — much less an eventual buyout.

At least I was consistent, retaining with such groups an unblemished winning-no-friends-and-influencing-no-people record, originally set three years ago when I had a chance to ask an "ugly" question or two of Donald Rumsfeld.

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst, and more recently is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Cheney's Role Deepens

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Robert Windrem
May 14, 2009 - The Daily Beast

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At the end of April 2003, not long after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi who Bush White House officials suspected might provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime. Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi was the head of the M-14 section of Mukhabarat, one of Saddam's secret police organizations. His responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.

"To those who wanted or suspected a relationship, he would have been a guy who would know, so [White House officials] had particular interest," Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraqi Survey Group and the man in charge of interrogations of Iraqi officials, told me. So much so that the officials, according to Duelfer, inquired how the interrogation was proceeding.

In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from "some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA)," who thought Khudayr's interrogation had been "too gentle" and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. "They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used," Duelfer writes. "The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature."

Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: "The language I can use is what has been cleared." In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. Cheney, of course, has vehemently defended waterboarding and other harsh techniques, insisting they elicited valuable intelligence and saved lives. He has also asked that several memoranda be declassified to prove his case. (The Daily Beast placed a call to Cheney's office and will post a response if we get one.)

Without admitting where the suggestion came from, Duelfer revealed that he considered it reprehensible and understood the rationale as political-and ultimately counterproductive to the overall mission of the Iraq Survey Group, which was assigned the mission of finding Saddam Hussein's WMD after the invasion.

"Everyone knew there would be more smiles in Washington if WMD stocks were found," Duelfer said in the interview. "My only obligation was to find the truth. It would be interesting if there was WMD in May 2003, but what was more interesting to me was looking at the entire regime through the slice of WMD."

But, Duelfer says, Khudayr in fact repeatedly denied knowing the location of WMD or links between Saddam's regime and al Qaeda and was not subjected to any enhanced interrogation. Duelfer says the idea that he would have known of such links was "ludicrous".

This proposed use of enhanced interrogation techniques, or torture, in Iraq was not the only time these methods were actually used to derive information for a purpose other than the stated one-to derive intelligence about imminent threats to the United States following the 9/11 attacks.

An extensive analysis I conducted as a reporter for NBC News of the 9/11 Commission's Final Report and its monograph on terrorist travel showed that much of what was reported about the planning and execution of the terror attacks on New York and Washington was based on the CIA's interrogations of high-ranking al Qaeda operatives who had been subjected to "enhanced interrogation techniques."

More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report's most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.

The NBC analysis also showed-and agency and commission staffers concur-there was a separate, second round of interrogations in early 2004, specifically conducted to answer new questions from the 9/11 Commission after its lawyers had been left unsatisfied by the agency's internal interrogation reports.

Human-rights advocates, including Karen Greenberg of New York University Law School's Center for Law and Security and Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights, have said that, at the least, the 9/11 Commission should have been more suspect of the information derived under such pressure.

Commission executive director Philip Zelikow (later counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice) admitted, "We were not aware, but we guessed, that things like that were going on. We were wary...we tried to find different sources to enhance our credibility." (Zelikow testified before the Senate on Wednesday, May 13, that he had argued in a 2005 memo that some of the tactics used on suspected terrorists violated the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.)

A former senior U.S. intelligence official told me the Commission never expressed any concerns about techniques and even pushed for a second round of interrogations in early 2004, as the Commission was finishing up its work. The second round of interrogations sought by the Commission involved more than 30 separate interrogation sessions.

"Remember," the intelligence official said, "the Commission had access to the intelligence reports that came out of the interrogation. This didn't satisfy them. They demanded direct personal access to the detainees and the administration told them to go pound sand."

"As a compromise, they were allowed to let us know what questions they would have liked to ask the detainees. At appropriate times in the interrogation cycle, agency questioners would go back and re-interview the detainees. Many of [those] questions were variants or follow-ups to stuff previously asked."

At least four operatives whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators critical information as a way to stop being "tortured." Those claims came during their hearings in the spring of 2007 at the U.S. military facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

For Duelfer, an experienced interrogator, the details now being laid out in CIA and White House memoranda and in congressional hearings cannot be justified. While admitting that the interrogators faced enormous pressure in 2002 and 2003, he said he had problems with the overall strategy.

"Interrogation is about two humans who are face to face, sweat to sweat. Is your hand going to hit them?" he notes. "That's a relationship that becomes very deep. If you are going to reach someone at an intellectual or emotive level, it's hard to see how you can do that and still be the person who accosts that person. I don't know how to do that."

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Robert Windrem is a Senior Reserach Fellow at the NYU Center on Law and Security. For three decades, he worked as a producer for NBC News. During that time, he focused on issues of international security, strategic policy, intelligence and terrorism. He is the winner of more than 40 national journalism awards for his work in print, television, and online journalism, including a Columbia-duPont Award, mostly for his work on international security issues.

For Explorer Scouts, Good Deeds Have Whole New Meaning

Photo: In a training exercise run by Border Patrol agents, Explorer scouts from Visalia, Calif., prepare to storm a "hijacked" bus. (Todd Krainin)

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Jennifer Steinhauer
May 14, 2009 - The New York Times

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IMPERIAL, Calif. - Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers - eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 - face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots - BAM! BAM! - fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

"United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!" screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence - an intense ratcheting up of one of the group's longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

"This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl," said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff's deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. "It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts."

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out "active shooters," like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

"Put him on his face and put a knee in his back," a Border Patrol agent explained. "I guarantee that he'll shut up."

One participant, Felix Arce, 16, said he liked "the discipline of the program," which was something he said his life was lacking. "I want to be a lawyer, and this teaches you about how crimes are committed," he said.

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns - known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets - in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

"I like shooting them," Cathy said. "I like the sound they make. It gets me excited."

If there are critics of the content or purpose of the law enforcement training, they have not made themselves known to the Explorers' national organization in Irving, Tex., or to the volunteers here on the ground, national officials and local leaders said. That said, the Explorers have faced problems over the years. There have been numerous cases over the last three decades in which police officers supervising Explorers have been charged, in civil and criminal cases, with sexually abusing them.

Several years ago, two University of Nebraska criminal justice professors published a study that found at least a dozen cases of sexual abuse involving police officers over the last decade. Adult Explorer leaders are now required to take an online training program on sexual misconduct.

Many law enforcement officials, particularly those who work for the rapidly growing Border Patrol, part of the Homeland Security Department, have helped shape the program's focus and see it as preparing the Explorers as potential employees. The Explorer posts are attached to various agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and local police and fire departments, that sponsor them much the way churches sponsor Boy Scout troops.

"Our end goal is to create more agents," said April McKee, a senior Border Patrol agent and mentor at the session here.

Membership in the Explorers has been overseen since 1998 by an affiliate of the Boy Scouts called Learning for Life, which offers 12 career-related programs, including those focused on aviation, medicine and the sciences.

But the more than 2,000 law enforcement posts across the country are the Explorers' most popular, accounting for 35,000 of the group's 145,000 members, said John Anthony, national director of Learning for Life. Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, many posts have taken on an emphasis of fighting terrorism and other less conventional threats.

"Before it was more about the basics," said Johnny Longoria, a Border Patrol agent here. "But now our emphasis is on terrorism, illegal entry, drugs and human smuggling."

The law enforcement posts are restricted to those ages 14 to 21 who have a C average, but there seems to be some wiggle room. "I will take them at 13 and a half," Deputy Lowenthal said. "I would rather take a kid than possibly lose a kid."

The law enforcement programs are highly decentralized, and each post is run in a way that reflects the culture of its sponsoring agency and region. Most have weekly meetings in which the children work on their law-enforcement techniques in preparing for competitions. Weekends are often spent on service projects.

Just as there are soccer moms, there are Explorers dads, who attend the competitions, man the hamburger grill and donate their land for the simulated marijuana field raids. In their training, the would-be law-enforcement officers do not mess around, as revealed at a recent competition on the state fairgrounds here, where a Ferris wheel sat next to the police cars set up for a felony investigation.

Their hearts pounding, Explorers moved down alleys where there were hidden paper targets of people pointing guns, and made split-second decisions about when to shoot. In rescuing hostages from a bus taken over by terrorists, a baby-faced young girl screamed, "Separate your feet!" as she moved to handcuff her suspect.

In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. "If we're looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like," he said, "then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don't know, would you call that politically incorrect?"

Authenticity seems to be the goal. Imperial County, in Southern California, is the poorest in the state, and the local economy revolves largely around the criminal justice system. In addition to the sheriff and local police departments, there are two state prisons and a large Border Patrol and immigration enforcement presence.

"My uncle was a sheriff's deputy," said Alexandra Sanchez, 17, who joined the Explorers when she was 13. Alexandra's police uniform was baggy on her lithe frame, her airsoft gun slung carefully to the side. She wants to be a coroner.

"I like the idea of having law enforcement work with medicine," she said. "This is a great program for me."

And then she was off to another bus hijacking.

Charlie Crist's Secret

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Reihan Salam
May 14, 2009 - The Daily Beast

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No, it's not that he's gay, though those rumors remain. Rather, says The Daily Beast's Reihan Salam, the Republicans' best hope in 2010 might be derailed by his shabby governing legacy.

Is he or isn't he? After almost two decades in public life, Florida Governor Charlie Crist is still dealing with questions about his sexual preferences. Every time Crist is asked if he's gay, he gives the same answer: a simple no. There's nothing defensive or cagey about it. But the questions persist nevertheless, even after Crist married a strikingly attractive woman late last year. To diehard believers in the Crist-is-closeted theory, the marriage is further evidence of Crist's dishonesty—a naked attempt to distract the voting public from the truth. Similarly, a short-lived scandal over a 1989 paternity claim against Crist is dismissed by the conspiratorial as yet another effort to dupe Floridians.

Crist is not a conservative. With his permanent tan and slick white mane, he's more like a kinder, gentler Latin American caudillo, who wants nothing more than to be cheered on by adoring throngs.

Like the notion that President Obama is a secret Muslim, the idea that Crist is gay will never go away. Assuming the NSA hasn't invented a long-distance sexual brain probe that I don't know about, it is impossible to determine whether or not Crist's late-night fantasies star a young Jaclyn Smith or a young Tom Selleck. A number of observers are openly wondering if the gay rumor will sink Crist's chances of holding Mel Martinez's Senate seat for the GOP. The theory, advanced mostly on the left-of-center, is that gay-hating right-wingers will try to bring Crist down.

It turns out, though, that Florida's Republican primary voters are more interested in another "is he or isn't he?": A growing number of conservatives want to know if Crist is the next Arlen Specter. For a party on the ropes, you'd think Republicans would be less interested in ideological purity. Without Crist or former Governor Jeb Bush in the race, Democrats have long expected Martinez's seat to fall into their hands like a ripened papaya. But with Crist as the Republican candidate, no Democrat stands a chance. Crist's Senate run is already being touted as the beginning of a Republican comeback.

Given that GOP high command is praising Allah for delivering Crist unto them, it's worth noting that conservatives are buzzing about Marco Rubio, the youthful former Speaker of the Florida House. A fluently bilingual 37-year-old Cuban-American evangelical from a blue-collar immigrant background with an ex-cheerleader wife, four children, a deep belief in the healing power of tax cuts, and square-jawed all-American looks, Rubio is a caricature of the ideal 21st-century Republican. With possible behind-the-scenes support from Jeb Bush, Rubio is planning a scorched-earth campaign against Crist as a firebrand conservative standing against the forces of big-government RINOism.

And Rubio, a rare political talent, might actually pull it off, or at least he might leave Crist just bloodied enough to give Democrats the Senate seat in November. Getting there, however, will mean jettisoning much of what is most appealing about Rubio. In the State House, Rubio developed a reputation as a policy wonk interested in overhauling the state's public sector along the lines that centrist Republicans have pursued in the good-government paradise that is Indiana. This isn't very sexy, and it isn't very ideological. But it did suggest that Rubio was more than a Reaganite automaton. The same goes for Rubio's gutsy and contrarian decision to back the real Republican maverick of 2008, Mike Huckabee. There's a world in which Rubio should absolutely crush and destroy Crist—a world in which Rubio ran a truly innovative, policy-heavy campaign. Instead, depressingly, we'll probably see Rubio attack Crist as a Chardonnay-sipping socialist.

One of the key conservative charges against Crist is that his decision to back President Obama's stimulus package was utterly bankrupt. Crist seemed more interested in currying favor with the state's army of public-sector workers than keeping the faith with conservative principles. And honestly, that's exactly right. Crist is not a conservative. With his permanent tan and slick white mane, he's more like a kinder, gentler Latin American caudillo, who wants nothing more than to be cheered on by adoring throngs. Crist would be right at home with Juan and Eva Peron, dancing the night away and promising free T-bone steaks to the impoverished masses. As governor, Crist has enjoyed tremendous popularity—he has Obama-like job-approval numbers—and he's done it by hardly ever making tough calls.

There's no question that Florida is trending Democratic, and it doesn't help that the state's economy is sinking into the marshy deep from whence it came. Crist is keenly aware of this, and he's moved accordingly. In flush times, a decent number of Florida's must-win Latinos, notably Miami's highly influential Cuban-American community, were open to small-government Republicans. A punishing wave of foreclosures—which hit Latino families particularly hard—has changed all that. Earlier in his political career, when hard-edged conservatism was on the rise, Crist was known as "Chain Gang Charlie" for backing extreme punishments for convicted felons. Now he's better known for his efforts to fight climate change and save the Everglades. There's little doubt that Crist looks himself in the mirror every morning and sees a future president. So why not run for reelection as governor?

Spending has increased steadily throughout Crist's tenure, yet he has managed to avoid raising taxes. Normally this is a feat that can only be pulled off during a boom, but Obama's stimulus package gave this strategy, if you can call it that, a new lease on life. Backing the stimulus bill wasn't just about high-fiving a popular president. It was a way to keep Florida's Ponzi scheme going. But because the state's economy is still sinking into the marshy deep, economic pain is guaranteed to sandbag whoever serves as governor for the next four years. Crist, who loves to be loved, intends to make sure that it's not him.

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Reihan Salam is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the co-author of Grand New Party

Baby Boomer Alert: The Truth Behind Social Security Propaganda

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Robert B. Reich
May 13, 2009 - Robert Reich's

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What are we to make of yesterday's report from the trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds that Social Security will run out of assets in 2037, four years sooner than previously forecast, and Medicare's hospital fund will be exhausted by 2017, two years earlier than predicted a year ago?

Reports of these two funds' demise are not new. Fifteen years ago, when I was a trustee of the Social Security and the Medicare trust funds (which meant, essentially, that I and a few others met periodically with the official actuary of the funds, received his report, asked a few questions, and signed some papers) both funds were supposedly in trouble. But as I learned, the timing and magnitude of the trouble depended a great deal on what assumptions the actuary used in his models. As I recall, he then assumed that the economy would grow by about 2.6 percent a year over the next seventy-five years. But go back into American history all the way to the Civil War -- including the Great Depression and the severe depressions of the late 19th century -- and the economy's average annual growth is closer to 3 percent. Use a 3 percent assumption and Social Security is flush for the next seventy-five years.

Yes, I know, the post-war Baby Boom is moving through the population like a pig through a python. The number of retirees eligible for benefits will almost double to 79.5 million in 2045 from 40.5 million this year. But we knew that the Boomers were coming then, too. What we didn't know then was the surge in immigration. Yet immigrants are mostly young. Rather than being a drain on Social Security when the Boomers need it, most immigrants will be contributing to the system during these years, which should take more of the pressure off.

Even if you assume Social Security is a problem, it's not a big problem. Raise the ceiling slightly on yearly wages subject to Social Security payroll taxes (now a bit over $100,000), and the problem vanishes under harsher assumptions than I'd use about the future. President Obama suggested this in the campaign and stirred up a hornet's nest because this solution apparently dips too deeply into the middle class, which made him backtrack and begin talking about raising additional Social Security payroll taxes on people earning over $250,000. Social Security would also be in safe shape if it were slightly more means tested, or if the retirement age were raised just a bit. The main point is that Social Security is a tiny problem, as these things go.

Medicare is entirely different. It's a monster. But fixing it has everything to do with slowing the rate of growth of medical costs -- including, let's not forget, having a public option when it comes to choosing insurance plans under the emerging universal health insurance bill. With a public option, the government can use its bargaining power with drug companies and suppliers of medical services to reduce prices. And, as I've noted, keep pressure on private insurers to trim costs yet provide effective medical outcomes.

Don't be confused by these alarms from the Social Security and Medicare trustees. Social Security is a tiny problem. Medicare is a terrible one, but the problem is not really Medicare; it's quickly rising health-care costs. Look more closely and the real problem isn't even health-care costs; it's a system that pushes up costs by rewarding inefficiency, causing unbelievable waste, pushing over-medication, providing inadequate prevention, over-using emergency rooms because many uninsured people can't afford regular doctor checkups, and spending billions on advertising and marketing seeking to enroll healthy people and avoid sick ones.

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Robert Reich is professor of public policy at the Richard and Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. He was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.

TOON

Barack Obama's Key Climate Bill Hit by $45M PR Campaign

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Surge in oil, gas and coal industry lobbying against Democratic leadership on 'cap and trade' legislation

Suzanne Goldenberg
May 13, 2009 - The Guardian/UK

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America's oil, gas and coal industry has increased its lobbying budget by 50%, with key players spending $44.5m in the first three months of this year in an intense effort to cut off support for Barack Obama's plan to build a clean energy economy.

The spoiler campaign runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and involves industry front groups, lobbying firms, television, print and radio advertising, and donations to pivotal members of Congress. Its intention is to water down or kill off plans by the Democratic leadership to pass "cap and trade" legislation this year, which would place limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

A defeat for the bill would have global consequences. The international community is depending on America, as the world's biggest per capita polluter, to set out a firm plan for getting off dirty fuels in the months before crucial UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

Without such action, the chances of getting a deal that scientists say is vital to limiting dangerous climate change are much reduced.
Suzanne Goldenberg reports on US fossil fuel firms PR blitz Link to this audio

Those high stakes have intensified the fight for control over America's energy future. "There are an awful lot of people who have an awful lot to gain and lose and they have been acting accordingly," said Evan Tracey, founder of the Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), who has tracked the proliferation of climate change ads.

But it is an unequal contest. Liberal and environmental organisations, as well as the major corporations that support climate change legislation, say they are being vastly outspent by fossil fuel interests.

"These guys are spending a billion dollars this year convincing Americans that they are clean, green, cuddly and warm," said Bob Perkowitz, founder of the eco- America PR firm. Perkowitz is to brief the White House yesterday on a new environmental messaging strategy. "The enviros are getting their message out, but they are being outspent by 10 to one." he said.On advertising, the ratio is about three to one. The oil and coal industry spent $76.1m on ads from 1 January to 27 April, according to CMAG data seen by the Guardian. Environmental groups, led by Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection, the Environmental Defence Fund and the Sierra Club, spent $28.6m on ads in the same period, Tracey said.

Despite its global significance, the fate of the draft "cap and trade" bill now lies in the hands of just a dozen Democrats, who have yet to back Obama's energy transformation. The Democratic leadership cannot take their support for granted. Seven of those pivotal Democrats received campaign donations in excess of $100,000 from the oil and gas industry, coal producers, and electricity firms during last year's elections, according to an analysis provided to the Guardian by the Centre for Responsive Politics. Another two received more than $90,000 last year.

Environmentalists say those Democrats, who hold the balance of power on the committee, pose a far greater threat to the chances of passing climate change legislation than a full vote in the House of Representatives. "If they can get that bill through the subcommittee what is going to emerge is a piece of legislation," said Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defence Fund. "So this is ground zero for the vote."

GOP, RNC to rebrand Democrats as 'Socialists'

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Roger Simon
5/13/09 - Politico

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A member of the Republican National Committee told me Tuesday that when the RNC meets in an extraordinary special session next week, it will approve a resolution rebranding Democrats as the "Democrat Socialist Party."

When I asked if such a resolution would force RNC Chairman Michael Steele to use that label when talking about Democrats in all his speeches and press releases, the RNC member replied: "Who cares?"

Which pretty much sums up the attitude some members of the RNC have toward their chairman these days.

Steele wrote a memo last month opposing the resolution. Steele said that while he believes Democrats "are indeed marching America toward European-style socialism," he also said in a (rare) flash of insight that officially referring to them as the Democrat Socialist Party "will accomplish little than to give the media and our opponents the opportunity to mischaracterize Republicans."

Two other resolutions — to urge Republican lawmakers to reject earmarks and to commend them for opposing "bailouts and reckless spending bills" — are also on the agenda, but language that would have denounced Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican turned Democrat, and Republican Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins for voting for President Obama's stimulus package has been dropped.

Steele didn't want the special session to be held at all. The RNC will hold its regular summer meeting in July, and all matters could have waited until then. But the special session is being viewed by some in the party as a "comeuppance" for Steele and an implied criticism of his performance and behavior in his first 100 days in office.

Exercising a rarely used party rule that allows any 16 RNC members from 16 different states to demand a special meeting, conservatives in the party forced Steele's hand, and now the special meeting will be tacked onto the end of a previously scheduled meeting of state party chairmen that will convene next week at National Harbor outside Washington.

A further comeuppance — a vote of "no confidence" in Steele — is not being contemplated, I am informed, because Steele's opponents in the RNC have already won a major victory by forcing him to accept greater controls on how he spends party funds.

Also, while there has been some talk about replacing Steele, few consider that likely, at least in the near future. "Without a Republican president to decide on that change, that won't happen," the RNC member said.

But Steele is not a popular chairman within the RNC, and his recent statements that appeared to attack Mitt Romney and the Republican base have undermined his popularity even further.

Steele was elected to a two-year term as party chairman on Jan. 30 on the sixth ballot, but instead of quietly trying to consolidate power within the party and build up his image, he embarked on a publicity tour that included statements that some in the party considered baffling at best and incendiary at worst.

"He has a tin ear," the RNC member told me when I asked him to name Steele's worst problem. "He has a tin ear when it comes to the building (i.e., the RNC staff), the RNC and the party."

Last Friday, when Steele was guest-hosting conservative pundit Bill Bennett's radio show, a caller suggested that Romney would have been a stronger candidate against Barack Obama than John McCain but that liberals and the media had pushed for McCain to win the Republican nomination.

The caller was, perhaps, not making the most intellectually rigorous of arguments, but in his answer Steele seemed to outdo the caller.

"Remember, it was the base that rejected Mitt because of his switch on pro-life, from pro-choice to pro-life," Steele replied. "It was the base that rejected Mitt because it had issues with Mormonism. It was the base that rejected Mitt because they thought he was back and forth and waffling on those very economic issues you're talking about."

Steele, who himself has said that abortion is a matter of "individual choice," was opening old wounds not only by attacking Romney but also by suggesting the Republican base is bigoted when it comes to Mormons.

"His job should be to get everybody to sit down and focus on a message for the party and then get them to be the messengers," the RNC member told me. "Steele wants to do the right thing, but he is clueless as to how the RNC really runs."

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Roger Simon is POLITICO's chief political columnist.