About Those Memos

I blogged on this earlier in the week, but it's continued to explode, so it's worth a follow up post.  Obama ordered the publication of some classified memos that painted the Bush administration as eeeeevil, torturous bunch of thugs.  Problem is, they only released selected portions of the memos that talked about the procedures in interrogations.  Former VP Dick Cheney responded by challenging Obama to release the rest of the memos to prove how effective these tactics were at gaining critical information, but Obama has yet to do so.  Now, we've seen some disturbing new developments.

In particular, taking up Cheney's challenge, people are digging to find out the so-called rest of the story.  Powerline:

Yesterday John asked why the Obama administration would not want the public to see detailed and previously undisclosed information about intelligence successes achieved through enhanced interrogation, especially when the administration is happy to give terrorists a road map to these interrogation techniques. Now Peter Baker reports on the private memo circulated by DNI Blair last week:

President Obama's national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.

"High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country," Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

Admiral Blair sent his memo on the same day the administration publicly released secret Bush administration legal memos authorizing the use of interrogation methods that the Obama White House has deemed to be illegal torture. Among other things, the Bush administration memos revealed that two captured Qaeda operatives were subjected to a form of near-drowning known as waterboarding a total of 266 times.

Why is this being reported only now when the Bush administration OLC memos were released last week? Baker notes:

Admiral Blair's assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past," he wrote, "but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given."

Baker provides a spokesman's explanation for the redaction:

A spokeswoman for Admiral Blair said the lines were cut in the normal editing process of shortening an internal memo into a media statement emphasizing his concern that the public understand the context of the decisions made in the past and the fact that they followed legal orders.

As John observed, the spokeman to the contrary notwithstanding, the logical inference is that Obama wants to release information that he thinks will smear the Bush administration, but does not want the American public to be fully informed about the benefits that were gained from the Bush administration's policies.

The Obama administration purports to pride itself on its transparency. Normal editing? More like extraordinary redaction. In this case, the only transparency involved is the transparency of the administration's lie.

Hot Air's analysis:

In other words, the Obama administration covered up the fact that even their own DNI acknowledges that the interrogations produced actionable and critical information.  When Dick Cheney demanded the release of the rest of the memos relating that information, he wasn't just going on a fishing expedition.  Cheney filed a request to declassify those memos in March, and the CIA has yet to decide on his request, but we can no longer doubt that records exist showing the success of those interrogations. 

We need to have an honest debate on interrogation techniques and securing America against attack from radical, committed terrorists.  Conservatives should stop pretending that waterboarding isn't a form of torture that the US has opposed for decades when used abroad, especially against our own citizens.  But everyone else should stop pretending that it doesn't work, and that we would have been safer without its use.  The real question — the one Obama wanted to avoid in his cover-up of Blair's memo — is how many American lives is it worth to say we don't waterboard?  Ten? A hundred?  Three thousand?  Fifty thousand, the intended result of 9/11 and presumably the Second Wave waterboarding stopped?

I disagree with the assertion that waterboarding is torture, but the rest of it rings very true.  There's the matter of ultimate priority involved, as I've indicated before. 

Doug Ross has a treasure trove of information about the specific results of those interrogations (h/t The Jawa Report):

To put things in simple terms for any "progressives" reading along, here's what the EITs revealed after 3,000 American civilians were slaughtered in cold blood by Al Qaeda:
• FACT: EITs produced 3,000 of the 6,000 critical counter-terror intelligence reports only after normal techniques had proven fruitless;
• FACT: EITs used on Zubaydah revealed KSM's identity as a mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks;
• FACT: KSM ratted out a number of mass-murderers including Hambali [who masterminded the Bali bombing that killed over 200 people];
• FACT: Hambali's brother ratted out a cell bent on "9/11 Wave 2" on the West Coast [see here];
• FACT: Zubaydah also revealed Padilla and his plan to detonate a simplistic dirty bomb in Washington, DC;
So, drones, you can either believe the CIA forged 3,000 documents and magically captured mass-murderers without EITs... or you can believe the truth.

Hit the link for many more details.

The point is that the whole idea that these interrogations made America less safe is patently false.  To the contrary, they have been proven to have worked, but Obama's one-sided declassification of these memos reveals his desire not to share the truth, but rather to continue smearing Bush.  Is this a preemptive effort to deflect blame for the next inevitable terrorist attack on America?  Don't be surprised if it turns out that way down the road.

And what about that promised transparency on the part of the Obama administration?  It's just not happening:

CNN's Ed Henry asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs about the claim that the Obama administration "selectively declassified" some of the Justice Department memos in order to avoid disclosing information demonstrating that the interrogations produced valuable intelligence. (See here for background.)

Good question.

Gibbs first responded: "I would suggest that you contact the CIA."

When reporters told Gibbs that this effectively means that the documents will remain under seal, he said:
"They're not going to give them to you. They're coincidentally not going to give them to me."

Maybe not. But they'd give them to the president. And the president, of course, can declassify and release the entire memos if he chooses.

The most transparent White House in history is choosing to keep them hidden.

The politicization of this mess speaks to a greater issue that needs to be understood.  By clearly playing hack political games with U.S. intelligence, Obama is recklessly empowering our enemies while seeking to destroy his domestic opponents regardless of the cost to America.  When questioned, the administration's best defense against releasing the remaining portions of the memos is simply that they don't want to, and that Obama is really popular so stop asking.

WHAT?!

Is this how you want your President to govern?  Is this the leadership that will keep America safe?  Is this the superior judgment we were promised before the election?

Stephen Hayes has the best response I've seen:

The president might refer back to a memo he wrote on January 21, 2009, the day after he was sworn in. Obama pledged to run an open government, one that favors transparency as its guiding principle. He wrote that "executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public."

After all: "The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears."

Good point.

Using a liberal's own words against him is always effective because it so clearly illustrates lies.  By the way, here's a quick reminder on liberals' definition of a lie:

lie
- what it really means: a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive; an intentional untruth
- meaning as understood by liberals: the proper way to hide one's liberal preferences; excessive use is grounds for promotion

Clearly, he was lying when he wrote that memo in January, because he's now hiding his preference to destroy his political opponents regardless of the cost to the American people.  Sadly and predictably, the media continues to blindly and robotically shill for him.  Not only is this whole episode unhelpful for America, it is singularly helpful to our enemies - they now have specific information on our interrogation tactics that they can train against.

Who's making America less safe?  Let's see, would it be the man and the administration who got critical information out of captured terrorists and thus prevented a major 'second wave' attack on another American city (and others, for the next seven years)?  Or, would it be the man and the administration who is begging to work with our enemies, selectively releasing classified information on interrogation techniques for political purposes, cutting the defense budget, and disarming America?

You decide.

But the worst aspect of this whole debacle is a consideration of what may eventually come out of it.  President Obama has stated that he is open to the prosecution of Bush administration personnel who may have taken part in such 'torture'.  This is a supremely bad idea.  If following orders and trying to protect America suddenly becomes a prosecutable crime, how likely do you think men and women are going to be to risk their lives to do so?  Our intelligence, military, and law enforcement capabilities will evaporate because people will leave those high risk jobs that promise only death or prison.  While many liberals support such prosecutions, some in Washington immediately pushed back on this idea.  That likely will not matter to Obama.

Let's hope he flip-flops on this one...but I'm not holding my breath.

There's my two cents.