I suspect this is right, and true of a whole bunch of scary police state measures. If the CIA implied or hinted at harsher things being done, or wider surveillance nets being cast, many congressmen may have decided that they didn’t want to know more. And anyone bright enough to make it into Congress must know that what the agency tells its oversight people is a fraction of what it really does internally, which in turn is a fraction of what its agents do far away from their supervisors. With explicit anti-torture policies and CIA/military management/commanders dead set against torture, you can bet that CIA and military people would have been trying to beat answers out of some prisoners in various deep dark holes. Explicitly permitting it just makes it more widespread, and probably allows even more extreme stuff in the deep dark holes.

It really depends on where you think the authority for government secrecy comes from. If it’s the inherent power of the presidency, or the national security apparatus, or the military, then yeah, congressmen have no right to interfere. On the other hand, if you think that authority comes from the consent of us, the governed, then it’s hard to see how our elected representatives are somehow bound to maintain whatever secrecy the executive branch decides is necessary, even when that involves apparent ignoring of the constitution, violation of basic human rights, or scary power grabs that might call the future of democracy in the country into question.

The congress has the power to censure their own. If they feel that a congressman has leaked too much, they can use that power. Their leadership can remove people from committees. The executive branch doesn’t and mustn’t have the power to decide what congressmen are allowed to say and do in the course of their oversight duties.

Should each and every congresscritter have the power to undermine each and every military operation whose success would require secrecy? Such a policy would neutralize the ability of the U.S. to wage war against any country which managed to install a covert operative in the Congress, and would consequently leave the U.S. at the mercy of any such country.

I would expect that when the Constitution was written, it would have been expected that the military leadership of any country would be expected to keep secrets; I see no reason to believe the U.S. was supposed to be different in that regard. While the Constitution doesn’t explicitly authorize the President to order that the military keep any particular matters secret, it also doesn’t explicitly authorize most of the other things that a military leader would be expected to do. My inference from that omission would be that the Framers didn’t think it necessary to go into such detail.

“Dr Kelly died shortly after he was exposed as the source for a story claiming the Government “probably knew” that a claim Iraq could attack with weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes was not true. ”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5811102/Doctors-demand-inquest-into-death-of-Dr-David-Kelly.html

The founders are spinning like tops in their graves.

Attach those suckers to a generator and you’ve solved the energy crisis.

About John Yoo: Yes he’s an arse. BUT do not look at him as the problem. Read _The_Cult_of_the_Presidency for much more info. The types of activites that the Bush administration was engaged in need to be recognized as part and parcel of things in the US beginning at least with Lincoln (_The_Real_Lincoln_). THe current screaming, yelling, and finger-pointing are simply posturing so that those who now hold power can keep the stupid, ignorant public scared and clamoring for protection from the very people the public needs to fear.

Tiocfaidh ar la!

But we now get to justify things based on “what would’ve happened if we hadn’t acted”. I’m looking at TARP and the bailouts. If I count the number of public admissions of failure or jail sentences, the US Government has never made a wrong decision and no one has ever committed a crime! USA #1 Super Terrific!

Graham is known as a meticulous note-taker and has maintained a daily log that fills hundreds of spiral notebooks, which now reside at the University of Florida Library of Florida History.

“I’m not impressed with the credibility of the CIA as it was being led in 2002,” Graham says. “I think it had become an agency that instead of following the admonition to speak truth to power, it was trying to speak what it thought power wanted to hear.”

that being said, I don’t think the dems on that committee were completely naive- I think that the CIA didn’t tell them but they had an idea what was going on but didn’t probe further because they’re spineless and knew they wouldn’t like what they’d uncover.

Of course, it’s entirely possible I’m over rating their manipulative abilities.

Except that it is now plausible that the CIA was lying about specific topics of importance. Wasn’t there some debate about exactly how forthright the CIA was being with the techniques being used?

No.

If her lips are moving, she is lying!

There is not a better person qualified to start a witch hunt than a bonafied witch!

Hey news suckers, just hold up a mirror instead of a recording device. She will melt.

@Sam: I don’t think it does, no. Pelosi didn’t claim that the CIA concealed the existence of this program from her. (how could she have, if it were just recently revealed?)

Pelosi claimed that the CIA lied about interrogation techniques, up to and including torture, that it was using, and the CIA said she was full of crap because Congress knew everything they were doing and said nothing (thus giving tacit approval).

It has always been possible that she was telling the truth, but I doubt it. I have no doubt that there is enough prevarication in Washington to go around and that everyone up there is full of shit. I am, however, something of a cynic.

and SJE:

a former top Bush administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the issue, said he was certain that, if the nature of the program could be revealed, it would be seen as “no big deal.”

he may not be lying, I wouldn’t be surprised if that offical sees “domestic infiltration, assassinations and warrantless entry” as no big deal.

I’ll use that line of defense if I ever end up in court and see how it works out for me.

Instead of harping on stuff that now out of date, how about you concentrate on what the current gang of criminals are up to?

When this stuff mattered, nobody paid any real attention. At least you managed to not point out which of the Palin children is having sex….

President Obama: Shit. None of the shit we’re doing is working. People are starting to question me. What the hell are we going to do to get them off my back?

Vice President Biden: Well, surely Bush did something that we can capitalize on. Those guys fucked up so much, we can’t have found everything yet. I’ll see what I can do.

Any time the Bush administration got in trouble, they trotted out some terrorism-related idea to obfuscate the issues. Now Bush serves the same purpose for the Obama administration. No surprises here.