Harry James Does "Green Onions"

Absolutely amazing. Yes, I know it's not Memphis "Soul." And I know it's not Stax. But it's a great song delivered up with style all the same. And if that trumpet ain't sexy, I don't know what is.

Back to Top

The Politics of God

I'd never heard of Welton Gaddy, a Baptist minister from Louisiana, but I caught this bit on MSNBC's Hardball Monday night. The guy impressed me.

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

Back to Top

Internal Agency Probe: CIA Misleads Congress

Does the CIA mislead congress? According the CIA's internal Inspector General, yes. This is from the Washington Post:

"An internal CIA probe has concluded that agency officials deliberately misled Congress, the White House and federal prosecutors about key details of the 2001 downing of an airplane carrying U.S. missionaries in Peru, according to a senior lawmaker who called yesterday for a new criminal inquiry into the case."

Back to Top

Specter Chimes in on CIA "Honesty"

Long-time republican, now turned Democrat, Senator Arlen Specter has joined the chorus of congressmen and legislators questioning the "honesty" of the CIA. This is from The Hill:

"The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to -- I was about to say candid, that's too mild -- to honesty."

After a while, it can't be denied any longer that the CIA has a reputation for being less than truthful.

Back to Top

CIA Already Being Probed for Possible Lying

Pelosi isn't the only one in the House who suspects the CIA of lying. According to this report in Muskegon News, then ranking republican on the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, suggested that the CIA may be covering up and even lying to Congress:

"We need to follow up as aggressively as we can," Hoekstra said. "We cannot have an intelligence community that covers up what it does and then lies to Congress." [- then Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, U.S. Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R)]

Talking Points Memo's Zachary Roth has more on the story.

As they go after Nancy Pelosi over those CIA briefings, Republicans have been putting the burden of proof on the Speaker, suggesting that it's all but unheard of for the CIA to mislead others in government. But in fact, the agency is currently being probed for doing exactly that on a different issue -- and the effort was initiated by one of Pelosi's fiercest critics on the torture briefings kerfuffle.

Back to Top

Goss Backs Pelosi

Porter Goss backs Peslosi's claim.

"Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned….” [my emphasis added] "

In other words, Goss says Pelosi should have understood NOT that "specific techniques" HAD been employed, but that these techniques were to be employed in the future. This supports Pelosi's version of events.

Back to Top

Who's Lying?

In a Washington Post Op-Ed piece, Porter Goss expresses amazement that Pelosi would claim waterboarding was not mentioned in the 2002 briefing the two of them received from the CIA regarding interrogation of detainees. This bears some examination.

"Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned."

I've yet to see where Speaker Pelosi made such a claim.

Furthermore, the CIA has released a table which summarizes the dates of briefings, subject of the briefings, and the names of those in attendance. The table shows that Pelosi was briefed in 2002, but the subject-entry for that briefing makes no mention of waterboarding. The subject-entry for a February, 2003 briefing NOT attended by Pelosi, does specifically mention "the waterboard." If waterboarding was discussed in the 2002, briefing, why was it not mentioned in the table summarizing the briefing subjects as it was for the February 2003 briefing? So far, the evidence favors Pelosi. See the CIA document here.

Back to Top

Press Bashing Pelosi

Thanks to Greg Sargent for this bit on the Pelsosi bashing.

"Let’s briefly recap. Three senior Democrats — Pelosi, Bob Graham, and Jay Rockefeller — have all publicly claimed that the CIA didn’t brief them about the use of torture in the manner the agency has claimed. Meanwhile, the CIA itself has conceded that its own accounting may not be accurate.

Yet key facts that cast doubt on the CIA’s claims have been buried or completely omitted from multiple news reports. The Times’s first mention of Graham’s claims came today, five days after he first made them, and they were buried in the 22nd paragraph of the paper’s write-up. Neither The Time nor The Post have even mentioned Rockefeller’s claims once. The networks have refused across the board to mention the CIA’s own unwillingness to vouch for the accuracy of its information."

Then there is this from Talking Points Memo.

Graham: "Well, [my] 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."

Back to Top

Nightmare for the GOP

Howard Fineman calls it a "nightmare for the republican party.

Back to Top