All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

On “Washington Unplugged” today, Newsweek investigative reporter Mark Hosenball said people at the CIA are "freaking out" over Attorney General Holder’s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate interrogation practices during the Bush adminstration.

“I was just speaking to some people [at the CIA], they’re really freaking out over this; it is going to cause them to start giving them second thoughts about doing risky things or creative things in the future and maybe that’s good, maybe that’s bad. It is tying them down,” he told CBS News’ Bob Orr .

Hosenball also weighed in on comments made by former Vice President Dick Cheney’s yesterday on Fox News when he said the techniques used by the CIA were valuable.

“It is true that the CIA program to interrogate and detain high value al Qaeda detainees produced a lot of intelligence,” he said.

The interrogation, Hosenball said, “produced the kind of intelligence that was like totally central to the CIA’s intelligence gathering about al Qaeda.“ But he added that the question is whether the enhanced interrogation techniques revealed reliable intelligence, and the recently released documents do not answer this question.

Hosenball said the documents also do not contain any " assessment of the ratio of good information to bad information."

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A White House spokesman on Monday said former Vice President Dick Cheney had his facts wrong when he criticized the Obama administration's decision to investigate allegedly abusive CIA interrogation techniques.

Cheney on Sunday called the Justice Department investigation an "outrageous political act" that will do significant long term damage to the nation. (Watch more about Cheney's comments here.)

At his regular press briefing Monday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs brushed aside the criticism as "the same song and dance we've heard since literally the first day of our administration."

"I'm not entirely sure that Dick Cheney's predictions on foreign policy have borne a whole lot of fruit over the last eight years in a way that have been either positive or, to the best of my recollection, very correct," Gibbs said.

Cheney said on Sunday that the harsh interrogation techniques used on terrorist suspects were "directly responsible" for the fact that there have been no further mass casualty attacks against the United States since Sept. 11, 2001.

"I think the (former) vice president, if you watched some of his interview, clearly had his facts on a number of things wrong," Gibbs said Monday.

Gibbs contrasted Cheney's statements with Republican Sen. John McCain's comments on CBS's "Face the Nation." Though McCain said it was a "serious mistake" to investigate the interrogations, he said the interrogation techniques of the CIA under the Bush administration were harmful to the U.S.

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney is once again taking aim at the Obama administration in the wake of yesterday's news over CIA anti-terror interrogations during the Bush administration.

In particular, Cheney said new investigations and possible prosecutions into past CIA interrogations and the creation of new unit within the FBI to handle future interrogations both were "a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration's ability to be responsible for our nation's security."

Cheney has become one of the Obama administration's most persistent critics, especially when it comes to anti-terror policies and their criticism of interrogation and detention tactics taken during the War on Terror.

In this statement, the former vice president also zeroed in on the 2004 CIA report on interrogations, which was declassified yesterday. The report revealed more details of the interrogations of terror suspects, including threats made to kill the children of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, other detainees who were threatened with a handgun and power drill and allegations that another suspect was told his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him.

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Former Bush administration counselor and CBS News Analyst Dan Bartlett told The Early Show this morning that Attorney General Eric Holder's investigation into CIA interrogation practices will "pull the rug out from under" CIA agents currently in the field.

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Democrats in Congress today praised the Obama administration for taking steps to revamp procedures for interrogating suspected terrorists and called the Justice Department's investigation into past interrogation methods the first step towards justice. Meanwhile, Republicans called the creation of the new interrogation unit and the investigation politicized power grabs and distractions from critical anti-terrorism efforts.

The Obama administration is assigning a veteran U.S. prosecutor to begin a criminal probe of CIA questioning of terror suspects during the Bush administration, it was announced Monday. The White House also confirmed it is creating a new terror suspects interrogation unit that it will directly supervise. The developments came on the same day a 2004 report from the CIA inspector general was released revealing interrogation techniques like threatening the suspects' families.

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the inspector general's report provides "conclusive evidence" that interrogators overstepped the legal boundaries in place and that their techniques of "torturing detainees in U.S. custody did not make us safer."

"The conduct that is documented in this report illustrates the perils of the dark road of excusing torture down which the Bush administration took this nation," he said. "I also believe it underscores why we need to move forward with a Commission of Inquiry, a nonpartisan review of exactly what happened in these areas, so that we can find out what happened and why. Who justified these policies? What was the role of the Bush White House? How can we make sure it never happens again? Information coming out in dribs and drabs will never paint the full picture."

Though he would ultimately like to see a nonpartisan commission formed to examine the interrogations, Leahy said in a separate statement that Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to investigate the issue should bring a measure of accountability to the American people.

"I am grateful that the Justice Department is finally being led by an independent Attorney General who is willing to begin investigating this dark chapter in our country's history," he said. "I had no doubt that he would put the interests of the law ahead of politics, and he has demonstrated that."

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Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions said Sunday that he believes it is not necessary to appoint a special criminal prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's interrogation policies.

Though President Obama has spoken against such an investigation, Attorney General Eric Holder is reportedly seriously considering making the appointment.

"We've had probably in my committees, Judiciary and Armed Services, thirty or more hearings on this," Sessions told CBS News Chief Washington Correspondent Bob Schieffer on "Face the Nation". "The Intelligence Committee has had great numbers of hearings and written reports on it. The military has done a series of independent reports. And I believe that that's sufficient. I don't believe a special commission is necessary.

"We were facing some real challenges, and our people tried to do the best they could," explained Sessions. "And I don't think I see the evidence yet to justify any prosecutions."

Vermont's Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy told Schieffer that while he prefers a commission of inquiry, he is "not going to interfere with a special prosecutor."

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Former President George W. Bush on Thursday defended his administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques against terrorist suspects, insisting interrogators were within the bounds of the law and gained valuable information.

Mr. Bush said that he consulted with his lawyers before deciding to use waterboarding on terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he was captured in March 2003.

"The first thing you do is ask what's legal?" Mr. Bush said, according to CNN. "What do the lawyers say is possible? I made the decision, within the law, to get information so I can say to myself, 'I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.' I can tell you that the information we got saved lives."

The former president also said his decision to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein will one day be vindicated as the establishment of democracy in the Middle East, the Detroit Free Press reported, and that "people will say, ‘Thank God they never lost faith.'"

Mr. Bush, in his biggest speech since leaving the White House, echoed the sentiments of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who last week also defended the administration's interrogation practices.

Unlike Cheney, however, Mr. Bush was careful to avoid criticizing the current president's policies.

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Colin Powell told Bob Schieffer he has "no idea" if the enhanced interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration were effective.

"I have no idea," he said on "Face the Nation" Sunday. "I hear that they were. I hear that they weren't. You see people from the FBI who come out and say, 'We got all of that information before any of that was done.' I cannot answer that question. And the problem is, I don't know what I don't know."

He said that he was aware that enhanced methods of interrogation were being considered in the aftermath of 9/11 but said he was "not privy" to the memos of legal documents that were being written.

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Objecting to the Obama administration's refusal to use waterboarding and other interrogation procedures put into place by the Bush administration, former vice president Dick Cheney said the policies were part of "an intelligent interrogation program," and that revoking them may cost American lives.

Unlike former President George W. Bush, who (like many of his predecessors) has demurred from making public comments or criticisms about his successor and his policies, Cheney has been vocal in his attacks on the new president.

"The reason I have been speaking," Cheney (left) said on CBS News' Face The Nation, is because "the issues that are at stake here are so important."

Cheney said that he fundamentally disagrees with many of the decisions of the Obama administration, including dismantling policies put into place by the Bush-Cheney administration which he credits with keeping the nation safe for nearly eight years following 9/11.

“Now we have an administration that has come to power that has been critical of the programs,” he said, citing calls by many to investigate and possibly disbar or prosecute the Bush administration lawyers who gave legal approval for the use of interrogation techniques like waterboarding, recognized to be torture.

He said that the Obama administration's actions to reverse some of these Bush policies is "deeply disturbing."

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Following disclosure by a Senate Armed Services Committee report that she gave verbal approval to CIA Director George Tenet to use waterboarding on detainees, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended herself in an impromptu interview (see the video below) with Stanford students at a campus reception on April 27.

Rice told the Stanford students that waterboarding is not torture, based on the authorization to use an extreme method that simulates drowning by President Bush and legal counsel. “I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency,” she said.

In other words, as Richard Nixon said in his interview with David Frost in 1977, "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal."

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