From Countdown April 24, 2009.
Olbermann:The Pentagon's top lawyer was told by the Americans responsible for defending Americans from torture by other nations no later than July 2002 said what he wanted to do to detainees was torture...We today also learned that the paper trail of the C.I.A. torture documents lead directly to Vice President Cheney's office.
From the Washington Post article Document: Military Agency Referred to 'Torture,' Questioned Its Effectiveness:
The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."
The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week.
And the latest on Dick Cheney's request for documents as reported by The Plum Line: Obtained: Cheney’s Request Form Detailing The Two CIA Torture Docs He Wants.
I’ve just obtained from the National Archives the actual request form that Dick Cheney submitted for CIA documents he claims will prove that torture worked.
Cheney requested all of two CIA documents, a total of 21 pages.
You can look at Cheney’s request form right here. They open the window a bit on the scope and direction of his request, which he has claimed will prove that Bush’s torture program yielded worthwhile intelligence.
Cheney requested two CIA reports, both of them from the “detainees” folder, which suggests that the docs detail the interrogation of suspects.
One is dated July 13th, 2004, and numbers eight pages.
The other is dated June 1st, 2005, and numbers 13 pages.
The CIA has redacted the detailed description of the documents because they’re classified. In total, Cheney requested all of 21 pages to support his claim that torture worked.
