Countdown - "Journalist Marcy Wheeler" provides essential briefings link

Run time: 01:10 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-3eu3XQdzo   Posted on YouTube: May 20, 2009 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: May 20, 2009 By DU Member: kpete Views on DU: 1041

 

MSNBC Countdown w/ KEITH OLBERMANN - May 19, 2009:

KEITH: "On the torture briefings themselves, Hoekstra who has joined the chorus of anti-Pelosi outrage, himself says the CIA memo allegedly that Pelosi was told about torture was wrong. 'Our records suggest there may have been a few additional briefings,' he wrote to the CIA in a letter released yesterday. And that's not even the only new question about the memo. Congressman David Obie revealed that the memo revealed that the memo names an appropriations committee aide as present at one briefing when the aide recalls being told he was not cleared to stay there."

"This means Hoekstra joins Democrats Jay Rockefeller and Bob Graham who have also questioned the memos accuracy in terms of dates and time."

"And then there are the memo's self-apparent problems: No record of who gave at least seven briefings. Not quite sure John McCain got briefed - late October. Not sure who the O'Keefe guy was who got the top-secret briefing."

"And as journalist Marcy Wheeler points out, according to the CIA, Congressman Porter Goss got a briefing on March 8, 2005, even though he was not only not a congressman at the time, he was the director of the CIA."

Randi doesn't give certain bloggers enough credit -- she was on a tirade yesterday or today about how bloggers aren't journalists. Yes, some of them are definitely journalists.

airtime.

Hoekstra has gone way further than that. Why aren't the destroyed CIA torture/interrogation tapes mentioned? On that subject, Hoekstra accused the CIA of lying about briefing him. I don't know why nobody brings this up.

NY Times 12/07/07

In his statement, General Hayden said leaders of Congressional oversight committees had been fully briefed about the existence of the tapes and told in advance of the decision to destroy them. But the two top members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2005 said Thursday that they had not been notified in advance of the decision to destroy the tapes.

A spokesman for Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, who was the committee’s chairman between 2004 and 2006, said that Mr. Hoekstra was “never briefed or advised that these tapes existed, or that they were going to be destroyed.”

The spokesman, Jamal Ware, also said that Mr. Hoekstra “absolutely believes that the full committee should have been informed and consulted before the C.I.A. did anything with the tapes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/washington/07intel.html?_r=1

Hoekstra and others are making the case that its outrageous to say the CIA lied. But in Hoekstra's case, he did the same thing, and on the same subject of receiving briefings, with briefings related to torture.

And how can the GOP claim that the CIA is so honest about what occurred concerning torture, when we know the CIA destroyed the interrogation tapes? We also know those tapes were requested by the 9/11 Commission and weren't provided.

So the CIA lied and the GOP called them liars. Why the different standards now?

if this does anything, it will show that there is a level of ineptitude in the Bush's administration during his tenure that permeated the entire government under his direction. Katrina is only a gaping sore which exposed the deeper cancers of the system beneath.

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