Nominee for Director of CIA may lack experience

By Kayleigh Harvey - Talk Radio News Service

Leon Panetta, nominee for Director of the CIA, was quizzed today in a full committee room by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.

In his opening statement Panetta said: “First I want to work with the professionals to get into the detail of all our operations and to make certain that we are responding to our fundamental intelligence needs...Second, I want to focus on improving intelligence coordination and collaboration...Third, I want to rebuild a close working and consultative relationship with Congress.”

The hearing focused on Panetta’s lack of experience in the intelligence field, raised by Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo), Vice Chairman of the committee.

Senator Bond said: “Many of us were surprised by your nomination because we believed that the next CIA Director should have a professional intelligence background, which you clearly do not have. This raises a number of questions that I will seek your answers to today”.

Panetta began his career in the Army as an intelligence office, then went on to working with policy-makers and to serve in Congress. He leads a complex federal agency and has served as a White House Chief of Staff. At the White House Panetta worked on many sensitive issues. He has also worked with the Iraq Study Group, relying on CIA insight and other intelligence agencies.

Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla) posed a hypothetical situation to Mr. Panetta about his actions as Director of the CIA if a CIA member leaked classified information. Mr. Panetta responded to the committee that he would see this as a “breach” which he would alert to the committee and would “recommend pulling their clearance”.

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) questioned Panetta on his views on Osama Bin Laden. Mr. Panetta said: “One of the responsibilities we have is to go after our worst enemy and that is Osama Bin Laden...there is a continuing effort to ensure that we try to do everything possible to try to find him and that would be one of my priorities frankly, to make sure that we do in fact find him and bring him to justice.”

Panetta was also questioned on torture, sharing intelligence, guantanamo bay and potential threats. The hearing lasted for over 120 minutes.

Water boarding proved "very valuable" in Guantanamo

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke at the fifth part of a hearing entitled “From the Department of Justice to Guantanamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and Administration Interrogation Rules.” Ashcroft defended the Department of Justice’s action in Guantanamo Bay, saying that they worked within the framework of the law and never supported torture.

Ashcroft said that after 9/11, the Bush Administration’s overriding goal was to do everything within its power and within the limits of the law, to keep this country and the American people safe from terrorist attacks. He spoke about the Administration’s efforts to work within the law and follow Supreme Court rulings about torture and interrogations in Guantanamo, and that water boarding was never ruled as torture and has “proved very valuable.” Although the Supreme Court ultimately ruled against certain features of Administration policy in each of these cases, the “Justices themselves were closely divided and the courts of appeals had uniformly upheld the Administration’s positions.”

Ashcroft spoke in defense of the several memos in the Department of Justice about interrogation techniques and anti-torture, saying they were all legal and worked off Supreme Court decisions. Ashcroft said that the Administration’s continual quest for legal guidance and specific authorization for measures necessitated by the “war on terror” is evidence of a government striving to keep within the limits of law, not one seeking to ignore or evade those limits.

Also at the hearing was Benjamin Wittes, follow and research director in public law at the Brookings Institute. Wittes said that the Army Field Manual contains a great deal of specificity about the interrogation tactics used and it is a mark of how successful the policy changes have been that not even human rights groups today complain much about contemporary military interrogation policies. However, the current state of the law is inadequate due to the vagueness which gives the Administration enough interpretive latitude to authorize some pretty extreme tactics, such as water boarding, Wittes said.

McClellan testifies in Congress

Former White House Press Secretary under George W. Bush Scott McClellan testified under oath before the House Judiciary Committee. McClellan presented the committee with his knowledge of the lead-up to the war in Iraq and the Valerie Plame leak, two topics he discusses in his book “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.”

McClellan stated that he did not know if the leak of former covert CIA agent Valerie Plame was used as a way to further criticize Plame’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. In his book, McClellan says that he finds it unlikely that President Bush would have authorized Scooter Libby to leak classified information and said he cannot rule out Vice President Cheney give the authorization. Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) said that the statements made in McClellan’s book are enough to consider impeachment proceedings on Cheney.

On the Iraq War, McClellan said that counterevidence is crucial in the lead-up to a war and that the Bush White House ignored evidence that was contradictory to the administration’s goals. Though he admitted Bush never used words like “shade the truth” or “propaganda,” McClellan said that the war was presented to Americans in those manners.

McClellan explained that the purpose for writing his book was to share his experiences with the American people and to analyze how a popular governor became a polarizing president, frequently beginning his responses by reminding the committee that he discussed the answer in his book. Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) posed questions to McClellan that challenged his motivations for writing the book, asking about the political positions of the book’s editors and inquiring on the profits McClellan will receive. After McClellan repeatedly said “Can I finish my response?” as Smith interjected with additional questions, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) apologized to McClellan, stating that the committee’s purpose was to investigate topics discussed in the book, not to question McClellan’s character.

Sen. Kyl (R-AZ): Democrats have ignored missile defense

The American Foreign Policy Council hosted their second annual conference on missile defense.

The biggest themes from both Jim Woolsey, CIA director under Clinton and Sen. Jon Kyl were that we are moving away from a cold war way of thinking and a focus on negotiating with Russia and focusing on new threats from Iran, China, and North Korea.

Woolsey focused on the ideology that controls Iran and that it should be taken as seriously as Hitler. He advocated even stronger sanctions against Iran for example, cutting off their refined petroleum product such as diesel. He said that the United States should increase their outreach to citizen's in Iran who are displeased with the Amadinejad regime via broadcasting mediums like VOA. He said that caveats the National Intelligence Estimate in December had been ignored and those indicated that Iran continues to March toward developing nuclear weapons. Woolsey said if Iran continues to advance in it's nuclear development the only thing worse than the use of force would be to let Iran have a nuclear weapon.

Kyl went a bit more into Russian and Chinese threats and how a missile that travels through space to reach it's target is a "space weapon." He defended the recent shoot down of the broken US satellite as a good sign for US missile defense. Kyle was much more political saying that the Democrats have been failing in appropriate funding for missile defense. Sen. Kyl said that only John McCain would return solid funding to missile defense. He criticized a "mindset on Capitol Hill that we should be spending as much on the Peace Corps as missile defense." He called for studies on space based missile defense and full funding for missile defense. He said he feared that a new administration with the same person said we should eliminate money from the missile defense program.

House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee hearing on the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel

Acting Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, said there is a specific definition as to what is torture. Torture, he said, is when severe mental or physical suffering causes prolonged mental harm. He said the physiological sensation of the "gag" or "drowning" reaction is what makes the technique acute, even though you know you're not going to drown.

There are new statutes in the War Crimes Act, Bradbury said, that took the definition of torture and changed it. The new statutes became effective Fall 2006, and the department has not analyzed the practice of waterboarding under that new statute. He also said he is not aware of any deaths resulting from being waterboarded.

During questioning about the destroyed CIA tapes, Bradbury said he was not involved in the discussion nor did he have personal knowledge about it, and when asked who may have destroyed them he said, "I don't know." Although he was repeatedly asked the same question in various different ways, he kept saying "I don't know."

Representative Melvin Watt (D-NC) asked if the president had the authority to "disregard" the legality of waterboarding, and under Article II of the Constitution, would he be able to order waterboarding to be done. Bradbury would not directly answer the question, instead saying that the president would not do that even with the power to do so. Watt repeated the question six times, and emphasized that he did not want to know if the president "would" do it, the question was if the president "could" step over the law under Article II. Bradbury never answered that question.