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These new reports, dated June 1, 2005 and July 12, 2005, contain some different information than the previously released report, dated June 3, 2005. Notably, the June 1, 2005 report concludes that "Detainee reporting accounts for more than half of all HUMINT reporting on al-Qa'ida since the program began..." This fact is missing from the other two later reports..... .....n March 31, 2009, Vice President Cheney personally issued a request to the National Archives Presidential Libraries section for declassification review of the June 1, 2005 and another detainee program report. The Archives then passed on the request to the CIA...

Maintaining his stature as one of the most forceful defenders of the Bush Administration's defense policies former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Obama of committing "libel" against CIA interrorgators on Wednesday. Mr. Cheney’s criticized the Obama White House in a wide-ranging address on foreign policy matters for abandoning commitments to allies in Poland and the Czech Republic in favor of the Russians, sacrificing American intelligence officials to satisfy the political left and "dithering" on taking action in Afghanistan, among other things. The speech, delivered to the Center for Security Policy, comes as the White House considers U.S. Commander of...

A U.S. federal judge has ruled that hundreds of documents detailing the Central Intelligence Agency's now-shuttered overseas secret detention program of suspected terrorists, including extreme interrogation methods, may be kept secret. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein on Wednesday refused to release documents describing Central Intelligence Agency terror interrogations, and the names of detainees or CIA contractors involved in the secret rendition program. He said he would defer to the CIA's judgment on the need to keep the papers secret in order to protect intelligence methods and sources. The American Civil Liberties Union had asked for the release of 580...

NEW YORK — A judge cited national security concerns in ruling Wednesday that the CIA does not have to release hundreds of documents related to the destruction of videotapes of Sept. 11 detainee interrogations that used harsh methods. U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said he believed he had an obligation to let the CIA director decide what should be released when it pertains to methods used to make uncooperative detainees divulge information. "The need to keep confidential just how the CIA and other government agencies obtained their information is manifest, and that has to do with the identities of...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Senate Republicans on Friday pulled out of a bipartisan investigation into controversial "war on terror" detentions and interrogations, including tactics widely condemned as torture. The move by the opposition party dealt a sharp blow to the Senate Intelligence Committee's efforts to find out exactly what methods were used when and whether they paid off -- without prosecuting witnesses or agents thought to have committed abuses. Senator Kit Bond, the panel's top Republican, blamed Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation into alleged CIA abuse of detainees, which he said made it impossible for current or former CIA officials...

The top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee has pulled out of the panel's bipartisan review of Bush-era terrorist interrogation techniques, saying Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s criminal investigation into the CIA undermines the committee's ability to interview witnesses. "Had Mr. Holder honored the pledge made by the president to look forward, not backwards, we would still be active participants in the committee's review," said Sen. Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the panel's vice chairman. "Instead, DOJ sent a loud and clear message that previous decisions to decline prosecution mean nothing and old criminal charges can be brought anytime...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama says he has no plans to ask the Justice Department to end its criminal investigation into the harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists during the Bush administration. Seven former CIA directors have asked the president to do just that. In a letter to Obama on Friday, they warned that the probe could discourage CIA officers from doing the kind of aggressive intelligence work needed to fight terrorism. Obama tells CBS' "Face the Nation" that he appreciates that the former CIA chiefs are wanting "to look after an institution that they helped to build." Obama says he wants...

WASHINGTON -- President Obama says he has no plans to ask the Justice Department to end its criminal investigation into the harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists during the Bush administration. Seven former CIA directors have asked the president to do just that. In a letter to Obama on Friday, they warned that the probe could discourage CIA officers from doing the kind of aggressive intelligence work needed to fight terrorism. Obama tells CBS' "Face the Nation" that he appreciates that the former CIA chiefs are wanting "to look after an institution that they helped to build."

Tom Maguire, citing the Washington Post, reports that AG Eric Holder seems to be winding down the much ballyhooed and widely criticized decision to investigate the CIA interrogators: The WaPo reports that, having finished with the grandstanding and puffery, Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation into the already-investigated detainee abuse cases is narrowing and winding down. Beyond the obvious problems - in addition to demoralizing the CIA they are investigating the foot soldiers, not the generals who ordered the policy - it turns out that technicalities of law, jurisdiction and evidence make prosecutions and convictions difficult.  That is hardly a surprise to...

C.I.A. Chiefs Ask Obama to Stop Abuse Inquiry WASHINGTON — Seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency asked President Obama on Friday to shut down the new Justice Department inquiry into past abuses during interrogations of terrorism suspects, arguing that it “will seriously damage” the nation’s ability to protect itself. In a letter to Mr. Obama, the former C.I.A. chiefs said the cases under study had already been examined by career prosecutors who found that no criminal charges were warranted. To reopen cases based on a change in which political party controls the government, they wrote, will make it...

The Justice Department investigation into CIA torture allegations may have already jeopardized American intelligence capabilities, seven former CIA directors told President Obama have claimed. In a letter, the spy chiefs urge him to reverse Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to re-review case files of a dozen interrogations for possible criminal prosecution. Letter to President Obama from Former DCIs and DCIAs.

"Elections have their consequences." In countries without the democratic tradition of America, those consequences may include putting the former leaders in jail, or worse. But that has never been the tradition in the US. The history of America has been that those consequences have been political, a change in policy, appointment of advisers who were hated by the old regime, etc. But has not been the Obama way. Since his election, Obama and his team have attempted to appease their political left by publicly denouncing the Bush Administration's national security policies which kept us safe, even as they claimed Obama...

WASHINGTON — Seven former CIA directors are asking President Barack Obama to quash Attorney GeneralEric Holder's investigation into harsh CIA interrogations of terror suspects during the Bush administration. The request came in a letter Friday from CIA directors who served both Democratic and Republican presidents, including three who served former President George W. Bush. Holder announced in August that he was appointing an independent counsel to investigate incidents of potential abuse that were reported by the CIA inspector general to the Justice Department.

Seven former heads of the CIA wrote President Obama on Friday to ask him to end an investigation launched by former Attorney General Eric Holder into the actions of CIA interrogators who used "enhanced" techniques to question terror detainees.

(CNN) -- Could George W. Bush or some of his top aides end up behind bars? It's extremely unlikely, but the Obama administration is taking its first steps along a path that could lead in that direction, with the investigation of Central Intelligence Agency interrogators involved in the war on terror. "You don't know where these things are going to end up," former CIA agent Peter Brookes told me. "They could go to very high levels in the government." The probe will focus on whether interrogators exceeded their instructions and broke the law when, for example, they choked a prisoner...

Besieged by leaks of several closely held secrets, the CIA has asked the Justice Department to examine what it regards as the criminal disclosure of a secret program to kill foreign terrorist leaders abroad, The Washington Times has learned. Two U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said the leak investigation involved a program that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told Congress about in June and that surfaced in news reports just a month later. The vice chairman of the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence declined...

WASHINGTON -- It’s no surprise that former Vice President Dick Cheney is opposed to the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the torture of prisoners during the Bush-Cheney administration. After all, Cheney has acknowledged that he was "aware" of waterboarding (simulated drowning) of detainees to get them to talk. It’s fair speculation that the orders for this method of torture came from on high. And in the Bush-Cheney administration, no one was higher than the vice president. Cheney has blasted Attorney General Eric Holder’s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate abuse of prisoners. The duty fell to veteran Connecticut lawyer...

WASHINGTON — The Central Intelligence Agency is refusing to make public hundreds of pages of internal documents about the agency’s defunct detention and interrogation program, saying such disclosures would jeopardize national security by revealing classified intelligence sources and operations. The C.I.A.’s argument to withhold the material, laid out Monday in a declaration to a federal court in New York, comes a week after the Obama administration declassified documents about abuses in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons and the Justice Department began investigating the actions of C.I.A. operatives.

Link only, per FR copyright and excerpt rules

In the early days and weeks after September 11, 2001, a small cadre of men (and a few women) with vast amounts of intelligence experience reported to the Langley, Virginia headquarters of the CIA. These unsung heroes were then dispatched across the globe to run operations against the Al-Qaeda conspirators who leveled the World Trade Center and struck the nerve center of the US military. The FBI, a domestic law enforcement agency, did not have the ability or skills needed to track down and strike the attackers overseas. The Pentagon, with F22s, nuclear aircraft carriers, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and battalions...

Republican Senator John McCain has denounced the use of torture on terrorism suspects during the administration of former president George W. Bush. "I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," said McCain. In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, the Arizona senator said that the enhanced interrogation techniques also helped al Qaeda recruit additional members. "I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq,” said McCain, who added that he...

During his interview with Chris Wallace today, former Vice President Dick Cheney was asked about the effect of Attorney General Holder's investigation of the CIA and enhanced interrorgation techniques: Well, you think, for example, in the intelligence arena. We ask those people to do some very difficult things. Sometimes, that put their own lives at risk. They do so at the direction of the president, and they do so with the -- in this case, we had specific legal authority from the Justice Department. And if they are now going to be subject to being investigated and prosecuted by the...

"Give me a break," "This is Obama's decision plain and simple"-Bill Sammon, hitting Obama for playing this phony game of Holder is independent from him..

After pledging during last year's presidential campaign, and as recently as the spring, not to re-visit the past, the Obama administration, in the person of Attorney General Eric Holder, has named a special prosecutor to go after CIA interrogators who pried information from terrorist suspects, preventing more deadly assaults on the country. Before the hard Left assumed power, anyone engaged in protecting America by interrupting terrorist plans might have expected to receive a commendation. Now they could face jail time. And somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden rejoices. By any objective standard, releasing terrorists from prison and...

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator John McCain, a torture survivor from his days as a captive during the Vietnam War, says his private comments about harsh interrogation methods were misrepresented by the Bush Administration in a recently released legal document intended to justify a six-day-long course of sleep deprivation for one CIA detainee in November of 2007. The newly declassified memo by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel mentions a secret briefing McCain and other members of Congress received sometime before October 17, 2006. The memo says the lawmakers were told about six CIA interrogation techniques, including prolonged sleep deprivation....

Says Abuse of Detainees Helped al Qaeda Recruit Terrorists, But Opposes Investigation into "Enhanced" Interrogations. BY MICHELLE LEVI Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he thinks it is a "serious mistake" for the administration to focus on the past when investigating the interrogation techniques of the CIA under President Bush on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "For us now to go back, I think, would be a serious mistake. "I believe that the president was right when he said we ought to go forward and not back. I worry about the morale and effectiveness of the CIA. I worry about this thing...

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL * AUGUST 29, 2009, 5:04 A.M. ET Interrogating the CIA By REUEL MARC GERECHT A clever, streetwise classmate of mine at the Central Intelligence Agency's junior officer training program—a former Delta Force officer—quickly and rudely discovered that counterterrorism in the much-vaunted Reagan years wasn't a serious endeavor at Langley. He had original and provocative ideas on using physical force to scare the bejesus out of terrorist suspects who had American blood on their hands. Although the CIA was then filling up with operatives pretending to be engaged against a growing terrorist menace, Langley's counterterrorist data bank...

When he served as deputy attorney general, now Attorney General Eric Holder gave a "neutral leaning positive" recommendation that led to President Bill Clinton's pardoning of gazillionaire fugitive Marc Rich, who was on the lam in Switzerland hiding from federal charges of fraud, evading more than $48 million in taxes, racketeering and trading oil with Iran in violation of a U.S. embargo. Holder also had a role in the 1999 Clinton pardons of 16 Puerto Rico independence terrorists -- members of the bomb-happy FALN or the splinter group Los Macheteros -- who had been convicted on such charges as bank...

"Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." George Orwell's truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the "rough men" who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, allegedly went too far in frightening Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, engineer of the September 2001 massacres. Yet, it seems now indisputable that those CIA interrogators, with their rough methods, got vital intelligence that saved American lives, as Dick Cheney has consistently contended. According to The Washington Times, which reviewed the newly...

"I believe the explanation lies in the Obama administration’s fondness for transnationalism, a doctrine of post-sovereign globalism in which America is seen as owing its principal allegiance to the international legal order rather than to our own Constitution and national interests. "Recall that the president chose to install former Yale Law School dean Harold Koh as his State Department’s legal adviser. Koh is the country’s leading proponent of transnationalism. He is now a major player in the administration’s deliberations over international law and cooperation. Naturally, membership in the International Criminal Court, which the United States has resisted joining, is high...

Flashback to 9/11 and imagine the reaction if George Bush stood with the firemen amid the smoldering ruins and said the United States government will prosecute CIA interrogators for blowing cigar smoke in the face of the terrorist masterminds. The Bush administration would have been overthrown by the Honduran military. Seven years later and all common sense seems to be going up in smoke. Long gone are the images of Green Berets on horseback. Ranches, action heroes, and slap shots are out. Social media massages are in. The quitters can eat a hockey puck. The White House is white, not...

Savor the silence of America's self-serving champions of privacy. For once, the American Civil Liberties Union has nothing bad to say about the latest case of secret domestic surveillance -- because it was the ACLU that did the spying. Last week, The Washington Post reported on a new Justice Department inquiry into photographs of undercover CIA officials and other intelligence personnel taken by ACLU-sponsored researchers assisting the defense team of Guantanamo Bay detainees. According to the report, the pictures of covert American CIA officers -- "in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes" -- were shown to jihadi suspects tied...

On March 1, 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the principal planner of the September 11 attacks, was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. U.S. interrogators quickly went about the business of getting him to talk, and for good reasons. KSM's operatives were already here, inside America, planning attacks. Shortly after KSM was detained, an Ohio-based truck driver named Iyman Faris was arrested by the FBI. Faris had reportedly been under suspicion beforehand, but U.S. authorities suddenly determined that they had to arrest him. It turned out that Faris, an al Qaeda-trained sleeper agent, had been dispatched to the United States by KSM...

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to ask a special prosecutor to investigate for possible criminal prosecution CIA operatives who interrogated terrorists in overseas locations is the latest and most egregious instance of political gamesmanship by Holder, who strode into office promising to remove the taint of politicization from the Justice Department. Holder's announcement brought a storm of criticism from senators, former CIA director Michael Hayden, former vice president Dick Cheney, and veteran Justice Department attorneys. CIA employees, already reeling from congressional attacks, were understandably mystified by Holder's words assuring them of his "respect and gratitude" and puzzled as to how...

AUGUST 28, 2009 The Fall Guy CIA Director Leon Panetta getting sacked by his own team. By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL In the game of political football that is today national security, spare a thought for CIA Director Leon Panetta. Quarterbacking is hard enough without getting sacked by your own team. President Barack Obama fought hard for the former California congressman during his uncertain February confirmation fight. That's about the last thing the president has done for his spy chief. Quite the opposite: If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it's that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president's...

Outraged.

Here is a brief clip from an exclusive Fox News Sunday interview to air this weekend in which former Vice-President Dick Cheney said the approach of the Obama Administration on National Security should have been to go to those in the Bush Administration, the military, and the CIA and ask them "How have you kept America safe" since the September 11 attacks? Instead, Cheney says they are going after the very people who have helped to keep America safe. . . . . . (Watch Video)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Friday said the Obama administration should be debriefing CIA interrogators about keeping the country safe rather than trying to punish them for doing their jobs. In an exclusive interview taped to air this weekend on "FOX News Sunday," Cheney called the Justice Department probe of interrogators an "outrageous political act" that will do long-term damage to the United States' capacity to protect the country. "We had a track record now of eight years of defending the nation against any further mass casualty attacks from al Qaeda. The approach of the Obama administration should be...

WASHINGTON — The US Central Intelligence Agency will pay the legal fees of any officers involved in a government probe of alleged abusive interrogation techniques, the Washington Post said Friday. CIA Director Leon "Panetta will do everything he can to ensure that anyone who needs legal representation has it, whether they have liability insurance or not," a senior intelligence official was quoted as saying. "It's a question of fairness. People who did tough jobs for the country won't be left by the side of the road." Some, but not all, CIA agents working on controversial assignments take out personal liability...

‘This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law. And to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately created court, we would obviously respond to it.” It was springtime in Berlin and Eric Holder, a well-known “rule of law” devotee, was speaking to the German press. He’d been asked if his Justice Department would cooperate with efforts by foreign or international tribunals to prosecute U.S. government officials who carried out the Bush administration’s post-9/11 counterterrorism policies. The attorney general assured listeners that he was certainly open to being helpful. “Obviously,” he...

Nancy Pelosi is a liar. And not just the typical, sniveling, inside-the-Beltway-talking-head prevaricator, either. Nancy Pelosi is a wide-eyed, stare-you-in-the-face, What-planet-are-you-from? liar. Proof is provided in Thursday's Wall Street Journal. Rather than just regurgitating Democrat talking points - -Why is it I always have the feeling that Rahm Emmanuel is barking questions into Chris Matthews IFB? -- about recently released documents on the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs), the WSJ actually read the reports. Their conclusion? Whoever advised people to be skeptical of what they read in the papers must have had in mind this week's coverage of...

‘This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law. And to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately created court, we would obviously respond to it.” It was springtime in Berlin and Eric Holder, a well-known “rule of law” devotee, was speaking to the German press. He’d been asked if his Justice Department would cooperate with efforts by foreign or international tribunals to prosecute U.S. government officials who carried out the Bush administration’s post-9/11 counterterrorism policies. The attorney general assured listeners that he was certainly open to being helpful. “Obviously,” he...

In the game of political football that is today national security, spare a thought for CIA Director Leon Panetta. Quarterbacking is hard enough without getting sacked by your own team. President Barack Obama fought hard for the former California congressman during his uncertain February confirmation fight. That's about the last thing the president has done for his spy chief. Quite the opposite: If the latest flap over CIA interrogations shows anything, it's that Mr. Panetta has officially become the president's designated fall guy. The title has been months in the making. Mr. Obama is contending with an angry left that's...

After vowing not to become involved in recriminations over the Bush anti-terror policies, President Obama has allowed his Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to dig up all the dirt he can find on the CIA and the anti-terror investigators whose aggressive questioning saved us from countless attacks. Why the switch? Because Obama needs to do something to appease the left that elected him. After refusing to pull out of Iraq and deciding to follow the Bush timetable for withdrawing and staying in Afghanistan and likely having to beef up our presence there, liberals might be wondering...

In an at-times-disjointed interview (no fault of his), Pat Caddell gets to the nub of the Justice Department conundrum: is Eric Holder running the administration, or is the president disingenuous when he denies responsibility for reactivating the investigation of CIA detainee-interrogation cases? Caddell goes after both Holder’s handling of the Black Panther case (dismissing a default judgment in an obvious case of physical intimidation of voters) and the naming of a special prosecutor to look at alleged detainee abuse—a move directly contrary to the president’s plea to look forward, not backward. Caddell favors the “rogue attorney general” theory. Andy McCarthy...

BILL O'REILLY, HOST: In the "Impact" segment tonight: controversy still raging over Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to appoint a special prosecutor to look into alleged CIA abuses in the interrogations of about a dozen terror suspects. ABC News is reporting that CIA chief Leon Panetta confronted some high-level White House people and even used obscenities in the heated discussion. Joining us now from ABC News headquarters in New York, the chief investigative reporter for that outfit, Brian Ross. So we're hearing it was Rahm Emanuel that Leon Panetta went toe to toe with. Is that what you're hearing? BRIAN...

Smoke in the face. The sound of a drill. The threat to kill a terrorist’s family. A new inspector general’s report says that these techniques, plus waterboarding, were used — not widely, but sparingly — in CIA interrogations of terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the “mastermind of 9/11.” Mohammed broke under the pressure and disclosed important details about how the attack against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was planned and executed. Now, Attorney General Eric Holder is going to break the people who broke Mohammed. And by appointing a special prosecutor to do it, he’s also trying...

Forty-nine percent (49%) of U.S. voters disagree with the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the treatment and possible torture of terrorists during the Bush administration, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Thirty-six percent (36%) agree with Attorney General Eric Holder’s naming of a veteran prosecutor to probe the CIA’s handling of terrorists under the previous administration. Fifteen percent (15%) are undecided.

The investigation of the CIA announced by the Attorney General was almost a declaration that the war on terror was over. "We must remain mindful that we still are very much a nation at war with terrorists who spend every hour of their day planning how to hurt America and Americans. That's why reports that the Department of Justice has directed a special prosecutor to investigate the men and women tasked with keeping America safe is such a poor and misguided decision," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "They've kept us safe for eight years," said Rep. Peter King,...

Sometime after 5 pm last Friday, when many political reporters had succumbed to the siren call of weekend houses, the White House sent out a press release admitting that they’d made a little error. The deficit will actually be about two trillion dollars higher than previously estimated. The “7″ is turning into a “9.” This, on top of sinking job approval numbers and the floundering of ObamaCare. What do you do in the middle of such a storm? Once again, the White House pulled the bogeyman stunt, otherwise known as “Things may be bad now, but you wouldn’t want Farmer...