Free Republic

You would think the identification and arrest of sleeper agents working for al Qaeda mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), and operating on U.S. soil in 2003, is a success story our intelligence and law enforcement agencies can rightly trumpet, no? Not according to Peter Bergen, who is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a national security analyst for CNN. Writing about the inspector general's report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program and two other CIA analyses released on August 24, Bergen wrote the following on CNN.com: Of the terrorists, alleged and otherwise, cited by the CIA...

President Obama's reluctance to investigate the CIA's Bush-era treatment of terrorism suspects — and his insistence that the nation look forward, not back — has long infuriated his most ardent supports: those on the liberal left who view the president's inaction as electoral betrayal.This week, it became clear that it will take more than a newly launched Justice Department inquiry into the CIA's post-Sept. 11 interrogations of terrorism suspects to convince those restive supporters that Obama has the political will to follow the facts wherever they lead. We shouldn't kid ourselves: This has real serious political implications. It would be...

My dear Mr. President, I've just finished reading the formerly top-secret, classified CIA memos detailing interrogation techniques used in the aftermath of 9/11. And frankly, Barry honey, I'm shocked. Positively shocked that any President of the U.S.A. would make such documents public knowledge. As a mother, who has invested blood, sweat, tears and every last vestige of my natural hair color into raising my children, I am appalled at the apparent casualness with which you are handling your #1 duty, protecting the lives of American citizens. At this very minute, I'm considering forming a new organization, Mothers Against Wimpy Defense....

Obama’s DNI reminds Obama that “enhanced interrogation” worked April 22, 2009 by Ed Morrissey Barack Obama’s top man in the intelligence community sent the President a memo defending the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which the White House edited before releasing to the press de-emphasizing that defense. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, pointed out that most of what we know about al-Qaeda came from using those techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, countering leaks last week from the Obama administration that claimed the methods produced no data... In other words, the Obama administration covered up the...

Nancy Pelosi insisted today that she did not know waterboarding was happening. Via Politico: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing back on GOP charges that she knew about waterboarding for years and did nothing. Pelosi says she was briefed by Bush administration officials on the legal justification for using waterboarding — but that they never followed through on promises to inform her when they actually began using "enhanced" interrogation techniques "In that or any other briefing…we were not, and I repeat, we're not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell...

Barack Obama continues his record as the Teflon President. A new Rasmussen survey reports that America is not happy with the President's release of the CIA memos but they think that that he is doing a great job in foreign policy. The study reflects the public's perception the memo release will hurt national security and will NOT help the United State's reputation abroad. But the big news is that by a 58-28% margin, Americans do not want the Obama administration to waste time on an investigation of the Bush administration's treatment of terrorists:

Jay S. Bybee has been the forgotten man among the legal architects of the torture policies of the George W. Bush administration.But the release Thursday of several additional memos by the Justice Department puts Bybee, then an assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, front and center. He is the author of an August 2002 memo, to CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, concluding that waterboarding, among other enhanced interrogation techniques, did not meet the legal definition of torture.The 18-page memo authorizes such methods in language that is stunning for its detail and detachment. As the New York Times...

President Obama released legal memos revealing our interrogation methods of terrorists, essentially referring to the Bush years following 9/11 as a "dark and painful chapter in our history." Thus we found out that: Prisoners could be kept awake for more than a week. They could be stripped of their clothes, fed nothing but liquid and thrown against a wall 30 consecutive times. In one case, the CIA was told it could prey on one prisoner's fear of insects by stuffing him into a box with a bug. When all else failed, the CIA could turn to what a Justice Department...

In a two part interview airing tonight and tomorrow night on FOX News Channel’s Hannity (9-10PM ET), former Vice President Dick Cheney shared his thoughts on the CIA memos that were recently declassified and also revealed his request to the CIA to declassify additional memos that confirm the success of the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics: CHENEY: “One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the...

The U.S. Justice Department released four memos last week that show the agency’s lawyers approval of the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of such techniques as sleep deprivation, slapping, nudity and waterboarding. The memos also discussed how far interrogators are allowed to go. Almost an outline of what terrorists have to train for. It has been reported the release was made over the objections of CIA director Leon Panetta. The purpose of the interrogation methods has nothing to do with gaining confessions for some military or civilian trial. The CIA used those methods to get information and prevent future terror attacks....