Obama administration turns down Cheney declassification request.
By on May 14th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
Obama administration turns down Cheney declassification request.
Last month, former Vice President Dick Cheney revealed that he had requested the release of CIA documents supposedly showing that the Bush administration’s torture program produced valuable intelligence and protected the U.S. against terrorist attacks. Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) responded yesterday, saying, “Nothing I have seen — including the two documents to which former Vice President Cheney has repeatedly referred — indicates that the torture techniques…were necessary.” Now, in a letter to the National Archives, CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator Delores M. Nelson, “rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.” Read more of Nelson’s letter here.
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Delores M. Nelson, “rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.”
– - Twist in the wind, Dick. That was the excuse your administration used ad nauseum to protect your criminality.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:44 pmThat is kinda funny… heh…
May 14th, 2009 at 1:48 pmObviously, he never read any of the documents (like the August 2001 memo about Bin Laden ready to attach the US) when he had the authority to read them so why should we allow him to read them now?
May 14th, 2009 at 1:49 pmOh, SNAP! Someone check Chainys’ pace maker!
May 14th, 2009 at 1:51 pmGood – Cheney is so full of crap. He had ample time to get copies of whatever documents he needed or wanted while in office. He’s been proven a LIAR and nothing he says can be trusted.
May 14th, 2009 at 1:51 pmAh the Dickster!!! The gift that keeps on giving. How very patriotic and generous the benevelent dictator is. Too bad Mayday has come and gone, I’d be pole dancing right now to show my gratitude. Does he still qualify for the Home, God and Country Award??
May 14th, 2009 at 1:59 pmright wingers support torture because they think it works
they think it works because it would work on them
it would work on them because they are cowards
May 14th, 2009 at 2:00 pmTo me that
Those who enjoy bathing in bullshit have never made one iota of sense regarding anything to anybody.
NEXT…
May 14th, 2009 at 2:04 pmhahahahahahahaha — what goes around, comes around — “we cannot comment or do anything transparent regarding matters currently under investigation or in litigation.” Choke on your own words Mr. Former Vice.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:04 pmOnce again ConProg makes two hairs where there was only one.
These tactics don’t work. Period. They were designed to elicit false confessions. They do that very well.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:07 pmWake up, conpug.
Note that Conservative for Progress carefully didn’t say that he spends every waking moment searching for Obama’s Secret Birth Certificate(tm). That, to me, suggests that he’s a psychotic “Birther” who really believes that he can overturn last November’s election and make John McCain (who was born in Panama) our President.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:08 pm…con-prog more like it
May 14th, 2009 at 2:09 pmI dont see any mention of the ACLU T-Five.
The link, to WeakTea Standard says:
May 14th, 2009 at 2:14 pm
See how Republicans split hairs. If he never “said anything at all about it”, clearly he doesn’t believe it.
And since he “never said anything at all” about sitting up all night sobbing in rage when he heard that Obama had mustard on his cheesburger, clearly it never happened.
Becuase he’s the one and only member of the Republican party who isn’t a shrieking psychotic moron. You betcha.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:16 pmI am sick and tired of hearing the ‘yeah but they worked’ meme. It was illegal. Efficacy has no bearing on that. It was illegal when they thought it up, remained illegal throughout the implementation and is still illegal today.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:18 pmCFP:
Actually, he did NOT carefully construct his language to avoid saying anything — he carefully constructed his language to make it clear that these were TORTURE techniques (NOT “harsh interrogation”), and that they were unnecessary.
His determination that they were unnecessary indicates, FAR more probably than your inference, that there is evidence that he is in possession of that indicates that whatever information that was gained could have been gained without the use of TORTURE. Or even that inaccurate information was gained by the torture, which is what is the most common case in the use of torture.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:19 pmThese documents were not requested by th ACLU. They requested photos. Cheney wanted these released to prove torture worked and to use in his book. Keep up.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:26 pmSay…. why is the Cheney request over 2 documents? Is that ALL there are? How many documents are there that disprove whatever it is Cheney wants these to prove? I suspect that there are more than 2 documents that pertain to torture…..
Again… what is the sample that these 2 documents are representative of?
May 14th, 2009 at 2:34 pmStupid Dick.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:38 pmTo me that is an admission that valuable information was in fact obtained, and the only debate is over whether or not the detainees would have provided the same information in the absence of harsh interrogation.
And all it took was repudiating 50 years of settled international law. The debate over that has already ended, with the revelation that the prisoners gave info BEFORE THE WATERBOARDING BEGAN.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:42 pmWatch as Mr. Obama methodically and systematically takes the Republican party apart, piece by piece. Not for nothing, but I admire his political skills. He is a little slow for my taste but I didn’t just win the Presidency so I will give his wisdom admiration. America, you ain’t seen nothing yet! If nothing else Mr. Obama has shown us ‘REPEATEDLY” that he will do the right thing. He has also demonstrated, continually, that there is a method to his madness. After watching his ways I have begun to see , as Michael Steele might say, “How he rolls” He’s not letting Bush and Cheney get away. He’s simply taking his time. We Democrats need PATIENCE. We also need to stop jumping off the cliff every time things are not going just the way we want them to go—at the moment! This man did not win the primary and the presidency by accident nor by luck. He used a brilliant shrewd strategy and he is doing the same thing now. As a result of watching him operate I have learned that he never lays all of his cards on the table and he has the world’s best “poker face”. There are a few republicans who notice that, too. One who sees it very clearly is the one man you would expect to miss it: George W. Bush. That is the reason he is now in the “undisclosed location”. Cheney has missed it and come out of hiding placing a bulls- eye on his forehead. Mr. Obama has a plan, that we can take to the bank. It is going to be very interesting to watch this thing unfold. My advice to everybody concerned: Go buy some popcorn-lots of popcorn because when he strikes it will be a display of brilliance that will literally knock our collective socks off. Don’t forget this man loves his country and he is a Constitutional Professor, our Constitution has been violated! He will not let that violation stand…………PATIENCE-PATIENCE PATIENCE–PATIENCE!!!
May 14th, 2009 at 2:44 pmNow, in a letter to the National Archives, CIA Information and Privacy Coordinator Delores M. Nelson, “rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.”
_____________________________________________________________
Which I’m sure Cheney knew would happen. The CIA isn’t about to jeopardize their court battle just to prove an old irrelevant has-been wrong, and Cheney knows it.
Now, Cheney gets to continue prattling on about how those documents will prove his claims — if only they were declassified, which he tried to have happen.
He’s probably banking on the probability that by the time those documents are declassified, he’ll be dead.
May 14th, 2009 at 2:52 pm#25 – dhampton100 Says:
I sincerely hope you are right.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:00 pmAll the documents that disprove his case went in the shredder he had backed up to his house.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:05 pmHoodathunktick Says
May 14th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
I am sick and tired of hearing the ‘yeah but they worked’ meme. It was illegal. Efficacy has no bearing on that. It was illegal when they thought it up, remained illegal throughout the implementation and is still illegal today.
___________________________________________________________
Yes, torture is illegal, and has been throughout this whole mess. But we need to do more than just say “it’s illegal”, as that won’t settle any debates. Can you imagine claiming that what Rosa Parks did on a Montgomery bus was wrong because “it was illegal”?
Laws change. And they change when they get challenged successfully. And many times these successful challenges happen when the law in question is deliberately broken.
This has formed the strategy of wingnuts and the torture yeehaws. They’re not arguing the legality of it as much as they’re arguing that it was (and is) the right thing to do. It’s for this reason that we need to counter their blather with more than just “it’s illegal” — we need to speak up for what’s wrong about it.
But as long as I’m using a Rosa Parks analogy, I find it necessary to point out that when Rosa Parks broke a law (even though the law was wrong), she was arrested for it. Which is more than I can say for the torture enablers today.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:05 pmVIVA LA VIDA Cheney use to rule the World Cheney would roll the dice and see the fear in Democrats eyes. Never an honest word when Cheney ruled the World. Just a few words of the Cheney legacy and now the Power is gone and the Mighty Darth Cheney will fall and those who followed him will fall to.
May 14th, 2009 at 3:22 pmJackie Says:
VIVA LA VIDA Cheney use to rule the World Cheney would roll the dice and see the fear in Democrats eyes. Never an honest word when Cheney ruled the World. Just a few words of the Cheney legacy and now the Power is gone and the Mighty Darth Cheney will fall and those who followed him will fall to.
For some reason I can’t explain,
May 14th, 2009 at 3:36 pmDick still dreams of “President McCain”,
NorKorea got a nuclear bomb
but that was when Cheney ruled the world
And when these memos are released, they should be released in their entirety, not just the 2-3 pages of a 15 page document that Cheney wanted released.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:18 pmConservativeForProgress Says:
Note that Feingold carefully didn’t say that valuable information that saved American lives was not revealed during the use of harsh interrogation techniques. All he said was that nothing he has seen proved that the harsh interrogation techniques were necessary to gain that information.
You like your brethren will never get it. It doesn’t matter if torture worked or didn’t work. IT WAS ILLEGAL. That is what matters. But, then, to people like you the law is only applicable if it suits the way you want to use it. Otherwise, not so much.
May 14th, 2009 at 4:22 pmConservativeForProgress Says:
So, you obviously think that torture is a good thing. Tell me this. Let’s say your son was in the military and captured in Iran. They are calling him an “enemy combatant” and are torturing him trying to get information as to why he was in Iran.
Would this be OK by you? If not, why not?
May 14th, 2009 at 4:24 pmConservativeForProgress Says:
Note that Feingold carefully didn’t say that valuable information that saved American lives was not revealed during the use of harsh interrogation techniques. All he said was that nothing he has seen proved that the harsh interrogation techniques were necessary to gain that information. To me that is an admission that valuable information was in fact obtained, and the only debate is over whether or not the detainees would have provided the same information in the absence of harsh interrogation.
That is a debate in your mind?
May 14th, 2009 at 4:24 pmHuh?
“rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.”
BUT if they released the documents, wouldn’t that END the lawsuit and save us taxpayers a lot of lawyer budget in these tight economic times?
I have to say, that is the most BS excuse I’ve ever heard.
May 14th, 2009 at 5:15 pmTo argue over whether torture is legal, or whether or not it was useful in the ticking time bomb scenario, is to miss the point that people were tortured purely for political reasons—as “evidence” that the administration was doing something about the WOT, and to manufacture “evidence” that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Iraq to justify an illegal invasion that had nothing to do with the WOT.
If they had evidence that anyone they captured was a terrorist, then they should have had sufficient evidence to indict before these people were imprisoned. Most of the prisoners were chattel, sold for a bounty, and presumed guilty on the word of the people who received the bounty.
May 14th, 2009 at 6:32 pm#25
You are correct. Obama is a methodical and patient person. He is a thinking man’s lawyer — not quick to emotion and clearly not quick to rush to judgment — we could all learn a few lessons from him.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:01 pmSo true, Wiley, and now these people can’t even get a trial due to all the abuse. So what happens to them now after they’re transferred out of Gitmo? They’ll rot in American prisons at taxpayers expense meanwhile they’re innocent. And we, the sheeple, will be obliged to believe they’re guilty of plotting the 9-11 attacks, which is just nonsense b/c we know who the REAL mastermind behind 9-11 was. I am really SO sick of seeing his ugly face all over the news. I don’t even consider him a politician…he’s nothing more than a criminal who hijacked a political party to get rich.
May 14th, 2009 at 7:40 pmThe fact that waterboarding helped secure intelligence will be buried by the Obama administration as long as they can get by with it. There is no disputing it did. Was it illegal? No. It’s time to grow up kiddies.
May 14th, 2009 at 9:51 pmOk, just the facts, If the police finds you in the vicinity of a crime, they can waterboard you (torture you) to get information out of you regarding your involvement. Is that the way you want to live?
Moreover, other countries can do the same to us. Sorry, That’s not “grown up” behavior. In FACT, it’s just a display of sadomasochism.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:08 pmrightwing-leftwing-What do the police have to do with this? We are talking about terrorists and the military. The same laws do not apply. If a non uniformed individual engages uniformed military, they are considered to be an enemy spy, and rules of combat say it is legal to execute them on the spot. So we are civilized and don’t execute them, we take them into custody and interrogate them. We are not talking about someone being picked up for jaywalking here. Moreover, the terrorists do much more than waterboarding to us. Try beheading civilians, just to name one.
May 14th, 2009 at 10:52 pm