Almost immediately after taking office, President Obama signed an executive order barring “the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods beyond those permitted by the U.S. military.” Critics, such as former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, have argued that Obama’s order has cost U.S. interrogators “any tools at our disposal” to “compel” information out of terrorist captures. But in a talk at Fordham University last week, Michael Sulick, the director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service, said the U.S. hasn’t “suffered at all” because of the decision to ban waterboarding:

Sulick followed his lecture with a lengthy question-and-answer session, although he prefaced it by saying he would not comment on any issue that might influence policy. Questions were submitted by Fordham students in advance and read aloud by USG members. When asked if the Obama administration’s ban on waterboarding has had serious consequences on the war against terror, Sulick answered in general terms.

“I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint,” he said, “but I don’t want to talk about [it from] a legal, moral or ethical standpoint.”

The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein writes that Sulick is in charge of “the CIA’s spy handlers, counterspies and covert action specialists — the so-called ‘dirty tricks’ people- — along with some elements of the FBI and Defense Intelligence Agency.” Spencer Ackerman notes that “for the record, it was the Bush administration that actually banned waterboarding after using it to horrific effect, a fact that has caused no end of cognitive dissonance in conservative torture advocates.”

Despite the backlash from prominent conservative lawyers against Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe’s “al Qaeda 7″ ad that questions the loyalty of Justice Department lawyers who worked on behalf of detainees, some on the right have risen to Cheney’s defense. On Monday, torture advocate Marc Thiessen dedicated his new Washington Post column to defending the ad, saying that Cheney asked “legitimate questions about Obama administration lawyers who defended America’s terrorist enemies.” Keep America Safe subsequently referred reporters to Thiessen’s column when asked to comment on the conservative criticism.

Today, Thiessen is up with another defense of the Cheney-led attacks, writing on the Washington Post’s PostPartisan blog that defenders of the Justice Department lawyers are wrong to invoke John Adams’ defense of British soldiers after the Boston massacre:

Defenders of the habeas lawyers representing al-Qaeda terrorists have invoked the iconic name of John Adams to justify their actions, claiming these lawyers are only doing the same thing Adams did when he defended British soldiers accused in the Boston Massacre. The analogy is clever, but wholly inaccurate.

For starters, Adams was a British subject at the time he took up their representation. The Declaration of Independence had not yet been signed, and there was no United States of America. The British soldiers were Adams’ fellow countrymen — not foreign enemies of the state at war with his country.

Thiessen’s argument that Adams was defending “fellow countrymen” and “not foreign enemies” is clever, but it’s undermined by the fact that some of the lawyers Thiessen and the ad impugn did work on behalf of American citizens. In a National Review blog post promoting his PostPartisan column, Thiessen directly attacks a lawyer who advocated on behalf of a detained American citizen:

Eric Holder vs. John Adams [Marc Thiessen]

I have a piece up for the Washington Post explaining why the al-Qaeda lawyers are wrong to wrap themselves in the mantle of John Adams. Thanks to the spade work of Bill Burck and Dana Perino, we now know why Holder was stonewalling on the identities of the “Al Qaeda 7” — he was one of them! If Holder and co. are simply carrying on the traditions of John Adams, why were they hiding their roles in seeking the release of enemy combatants? If they are proud of their work, why don’t they stand up and say so?

Yesterday, Perino and Burck published an article on National Review Online detailing how Holder contributed to, but neglected to tell the Senate about, an amicus brief to the Supreme Court supporting Jose Padilla, an American citizen who was held as an enemy combatant. Another one of the lawyers smeared by the ad, Joseph Guerra, now Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General, worked on a brief urging that the Supreme Court hear Padilla’s case. Another DoJ lawyer, Assistant Attorney General Tony West, worked on the case of “American Taliban” Johh Walker Lindh, an American citizen.

The discrepancy between Thiessen’s PostPartisan argument and the facts is indicative of his arguments in general. In discussing another one of Thiessen’s inconsistent arguments, Time’s Michael Scherer — who considers Thiessen’s vocal crusade to defend the Bush administration’s torture policies “a good thing” — remarked that he was “disappointed with the quality of Thiessen’s arguments, which seem to be designed more for cable news soundbites than for serious discussion.”