Obama open to probe of government officials who approved harsh interrogation tactics. I am as shocked as anyone by the nasty treatment accorded terrorists and I want to see all who approved such procedures punished and removed from government. First up, of course, would be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who was not only told of the use of waterboarding and other persuasion techniques, she approved it and asked if we couldn’t do anything a bit rougher.
Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002
In Meetings, Spy Panels’ Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say
By Joby Warrick and Dan EggenWashington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007; Page A01
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included currentHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
I assume this probe will start just as soon as Chris Dodd and barney Frank conclude their own investigations into who took it easy on the banks.