House panel prepares subpoenas for CIA officials.
By on Dec 19th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
House panel prepares subpoenas for CIA officials.
After Attorney General Mike Mukasey blocked CIA officials from appearing at a closed hearing before Congress last week, the House Intelligence Committee “said Wednesday it has prepared subpoenas to force CIA officials to testify about the agency’s secret destruction of interrogation videotapes.” The Committee’s threat marks “the second challenge to a White House attempt to shut down independent investigations,” after “a federal judge rejected an administration effort to keep the courts out of the investigation.”
View Most Popular
Advertisement
What We're About
What We're Fighting For
What We're Fighting Against
Featured
Subscribe to the Progress Report
Topic CloudView topics sorted by popularity
Afghanistan
Bachmann
Beck
Boehner
Bush
Business
Cheney
Civil Rights
Congress
Corporate Ethics
Dobbs
Education
Election
Energy
Environment
Ethics
Fox News
Gingrich
Glenn Beck
Global Warming
Guantanamo
Health Care
Immigration
International Relations
Justice
LGBT
Lieberman
Limbaugh
Media
Military
O'Reilly
Obama
Palin
Pelosi
Politics
Race
Radical Right
Religion
Steele
Stimulus
Tea Parties
Technology
Terrorism
Veterans
Women's Rights
Visit Our Affiliated Sites
Reports
In-depth studies on select topics
Got a hot tip?
Have a hot news tip? We'd love to hear from you. Use the form below to send us the latest.
ArchivesBlog Roll
Maybe these Bush gangster apologists for torture would like to put on a little public demonstration of how waterboarding is/was/will be done at secret CIA rendiction sites…
December 19th, 2007 at 6:05 pm‘Thoes darn tapes!’……Richard M. Nixon
December 19th, 2007 at 6:08 pm& how will the enforce the subpoenas?
December 19th, 2007 at 6:08 pmDo more than just subpoenas, you should be doing inherent contempt. We absolutely have to get the criminals out of the White House and out of the DOJ, and every other department that Bush and Cheney have corrupted.
Bush/Cheney/Bert/Charles/Frank
Hague Trials ‘09
Buck Fush
December 19th, 2007 at 6:10 pmNo one hold your breath.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:11 pmI’d like to have the House Committee’s recipe for preparing subpoenas.
I’m not interested in serving them, ’cause everyone just ignores them.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:15 pmOff Topic:
Another Republican Candidate goes down in flames. Our own Tancredo throws in the towel and calls it quits. Bye, Tancredo. Guess the public just isn’t as interested in your ‘Illegals bring in Terrorists’ message as you thought they were. Better luck next time.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:18 pmBuckie, unless INHERENT contempt is invoked, executive privilege will trump these spineless congressjellyfish.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:23 pmIt’s hard to fathom the acceptance of an interrogation tactic that is illegal under US and international law, isn’t effective, and just provides trolls and neocons an excuse to get sexually aroused.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:25 pmComment by Jeremy in Denver — December 19, 2007 @ 6:18 pm
###
Sorry, but to continue off topic-
As many of you know Rep Patrick Murphy (D – PA) is the only OIF veteran in congress. However, hopefully, that won’t be the case for long. Rick Noriega, an Afghanistan veteran in Texas, iss challenging John Cornyn for his U.S. Senate seat. Also, Andrew Horne, who served in both Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom, is challenging Mitch McConnell for his Senate seat in KY. Both veterans are running on the Democratic ticket.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:25 pm#3: All it would take is 41 spines in the Senate to stop funding of any agency or office that refuses to show up. Unfortunately, finding 41 spines there is as likely as finding a banana tree growing on the moon.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:25 pmRight you are RUCerious, that is why I say go straight for Inherent Contempt, bring in the Sargent of Arms, and drag them to congress for trial.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:26 pmIt’s easy to question the treatment of terror suspects when you aren’t personally responsible for the safety of the people those terrorists seek to harm.
Comment by CaptainMantastic — December 19, 2007 @ 6:23 pm
####
Many of the people questioning the treatment of terror suspects have served as Generals, Admirals, troops on the ground, and as Special Agents for the FBI.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:27 pmBIG NEWS! Since the weekend when he had 36,000 signatures on his petition for the impeachment of Cheney, Wexler now has 102,000 and rising every hour. This is significant news yet no MSM has cared enough about the people to touch it.
Soon it will not be able to be ignored when people nationwide begin pressing their congressmen to support this necessary impeachment. It’s necessary if we care about our national security which goes hand in hand with our international reputation.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:27 pmCheck out Wexler’s impeachment link! http://www.wexlerforcongress.com/
December 19th, 2007 at 6:28 pmVeritas, keep spreading that out to yoru friends, and get them to spread it out to their friends, and so on. 102k signatures? That’s good, but that would really only mean something in Denver. We need at least a million, if not significantly more than a million, to attract attention. Honestly, if we could get the 50+ million who voted for Kerry in 2004 to sign this, then it would be a much more effective message.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:30 pm#14 Your highly questionable premise falls apart with your words “personally responsible for the safety of the people the terrorist want to hurt”. I presume that you’re referring to the Bush Cabal here? If so, what about the now 4,000+ american patriots whose blood is on the hands of Cheney & Bush and their war of choice for oil then? They’re “hurting our own” by continuing this war which is tanking our country so the “terrorist” moniker can be applied to them as well – according to your own logic, that is.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:30 pmJeremy: I have been and will continue to spread the word. No thanks to our supposed “free press”, there has been little to no coverage of Wexler’s petition in our wholly-owned subsidiary of the white house called the mainstream news media.
I have little doubt that he will reach the one million mark if this recent uptick is any indication. Keep the faith!
December 19th, 2007 at 6:32 pmJeremy: Is Kucinich involved with Wexler on this? If not, he should be – since he’s already laid some very respectable groundwork for impeachment.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:33 pmChris L: That’s right. One FBI agent warned the CIA agents engaging in torture that he was going to arrest them if they did not stop.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:34 pmAG Mukasey has a conflict of interest problem already, and
should recuse himself and appoint a Special Prosecutor.
Jose Padilla’s lawyers argued before the Florida Federal Court
that Abu Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla was an al
Qaeda associate. The DOJ dismissed Padilla”s allegations as
“meritless,” asserting Padilla”s legal team could not prove
that Abu Zubaydah had been tortured. Well, it”s clear now that
they certainly COULD have, if the tapes of the interrogations
of Abu Zubaydah had been made available!
Now here is where Mukasey’s role comes into question. U.S.
District Judge Mukasey, now attorney general, was the one who
signed the warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla in May
2002. Court records show the warrant relied in part on
information obtained from Abu Zubaydah”s interrogation. So we
have a problem Houston.
The then Judge Mukasey could only issue a warrant based upon
legally obtained evidence, and confessions under torture are
certainly not “legally obtained”. So either Mukasey was
misrepresented the evidence, and would be liable to be
potentially a party in those who were presented with “perjured
evidence”; or he knew that torture was used in obtaining the
confession and ignored it.
In either case he is unsuitable to run an investigation, as it
will, inevitably, involve himself. Thus a Special Prosecutor
is necessary… Odds that this will happen? Zero percent.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:37 pmJeremy: Is that true? Tancredo has tanked? Can’t say that I’d miss him one iota however. As for the “inherent contempt” charge, it’s precisely what Congress should be doing right now as they continue to get trampled in their calls for documents, subpoenas, etc. They’re getting their butts kicked and continue to bend over for Chimpy nevertheless. They must have serious insecurity complexes, that’s all I can say – either that, or what they’re all being blackmailed with is really horrendous.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:37 pmAll I know is that this country cannot sustain another 12 months of Chimpy & Friends. They’ve injured this country beyond recognition at this point as we become a shadow of our former self. They’ve raided the treasury and put an unprecedented national debt onto the backs of our ancestors through probably 3 or 4 generations; they’ve raped our environment to fill their own oil-rich coffers and have used our constitution for toilet paper.
I found it quite amusing that the Magna Carta was purchased today for about 13 billion dollars by none other than Pappy Bush’s Oil Rich Enterprise – The Carlyle Group! That same Carlyle Group which just happened to be meeting on 9/10 and 9/11 (cough cough).
December 19th, 2007 at 6:40 pmSo, it can be said that as Chimpy wads up the constitution and uses it to wipe himself, his lamebrained old codger dad is out there buying up the Magna Carta – only in america!!
December 19th, 2007 at 6:41 pmI imagine a terse letter from Harry Reid can’t be too far away.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:42 pmJJ: We knew Mukasey was as crooked as the day is long and it didn’t take much time for him to out himself. He tried to give us a major clue during his hearings when he refused to identify waterboarding as torture – guess he knew that the real torture conversation was coming down the pike, as did Chimpy. Why do you think it was so critical for him to have Mukasy in position for this hitting the fan?
Some claim Bush is simply incompetent; I say that nothing a truly sociopathic mind does is not very cleverly schemed, hatched, and plotted – with no detail left to the imagination. I say that he is perhaps the biggest sociopath in history with what he’s masterminded against the people of this country and accomplished.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:44 pm“I found it quite amusing that the Magna Carta was purchased today for about 13 billion dollars by none other than Pappy Bush’s Oil Rich Enterprise – The Carlyle Group!”
They’ll take turns lighting their cigars with it at the christmas party.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:45 pmdim wit: I think the only thing impotent Harry’s good for is letter writing. God knows there’s nothing else he can do.
December 19th, 2007 at 6:47 pmNevar: You got it!
December 19th, 2007 at 6:47 pmI’m not sure if Kuicinich is involved in this. He oughtta, that much is for sure. Unfortunately, my life’s other obsession, computer stuff, is taking over now. Vista SP1 Release Candidate 1 is installing on my notebook. Here’s hoping that operates as well as advertised.
December 19th, 2007 at 7:06 pmDang Jeremy, I’m just going to have to flag you tonight, you’re weaving all over the map…. ;)
December 19th, 2007 at 7:07 pmThey better not do it unless they are prepared to follow through when the people they subpoena refuse to show up and testify. I mean, how many times are the Democrats going to humiliate themselves before they grow a spine?
December 19th, 2007 at 8:03 pmI figured it out.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:26 pmPelosi and Reid have been waiting for the silver bullet they knew would come. Rather than kill the Bush administration with 1000 small cuts, they’ll chop off it’s head.
And this issue is the silver bullet they’ve been waiting for.
They played out enough rope to let BushCo hang itself.
At lease I hope that’s what they’re doing.
Mixed metaphors are fun.
I hope you’re right, there has to be a tipping point around here somewhere…
December 19th, 2007 at 9:40 pmimportant UPDATE:
the new york times, in
tomorrow’s edition, reports
that the CIA will now cooperate. . .
like they say — “don’t f. with the company. . .”
i think cheney and bush have run
December 19th, 2007 at 11:21 pmtoo far afoul of “the company’s” rules.
so, now the intelligence community is
going to bury them — with their own
supposed-secrets.
“It’s easy to question the treatment of terror suspects when you aren’t personally responsible for the safety of the people those terrorists seek to harm.”
See, it isn’t so hard when you don’t CARE about the people those terrorists seek to harm. Just ask Bush.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:28 amIt sure is starting to look like various parties will need to be dragged, in irons, in front of the bench; before this nightmare can end.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:53 amdo these congress people actually acheive anything for the american people????
December 20th, 2007 at 1:05 am