have that information and finally when president bush learned of the techniques he was uncomfortable with them. especially ones that included stress positions, forcing detainees to soil themselves and lots of other gruesome things that the president didn t know about until way after the fact. there s also reporting that vice president dick cheney, national security advisor condoleezza rice, they did know the details but they just kept the president out of the loop. they also kept rum rum, the secretary of defense and secretary of state colin powell out of the loop for over a year because they said, according to internal cia e-mails that powell would blow his stack if he knew about what was going on. that is an interesting, very interesting point. here s the thing, once the president was made aware, as you mentioned, he was uncomfortable. but did he do anything to actively change course? to make changes, to tell people know, this is not how we in america do things? in fact, quite
provided extensive inaccurate information about the program and the effectiveness to the department of justice, the cia inspector general, the media and the american public. this conclusion is somewhat personal for me. i remember clearly when director hayden briefed the intelligence committee for the first time on the so-called iets at that september 2006 committee meeting. he referred specifically to a tummy slap among other techniques. he presented the entire set of techniques as minimally harmful and implied in a highly clinical and professional manner. they were not. the report demonstrates that these techniques were physically very harmful and the constraints that existed on paper in
it was true and how that led to the authorization. reading from this senate report, they say prior to september 2006, the cia provided inaccurate information to the committee and they say later briefings after there was public disclosure also contained numerous inaccuracieinaccuracieg how the techniques were applied. finally, most importantly, the report notes doj didn t do independent analysis of the information they received from the cia and warned if the facts provided by cia were to change its legal conclusion, its supposed authorization for some of these activities might not apply. i think you re addressing one of the key parts here, is what did the senate committee know and when? we ve spoken to many people, both bob and i, who were involved in this program, who were senior officials at the cia. some of them who are listed in this report. and they say that time and time again the senate committee was briefed. and that the president was briefed.
information about the program and its effectiveness to the white house, the department of justice, congress, the cia inspector general, the media and the american public. this conclusion is somewhat personal for me. i remember clearly when director hayden briefed the intelligence committee for the first time on the so-called eits at that september 2006 committee meeting. he referred specifically to a, quote, tummy slap, among other techniques and presented the entire techniques as minimally harmful and implied in a highly clinical and professional manner. they were not. the committee s report demonstrates that these techniques were physically very harmful and the constraints that existed on paper in washington
bob menendez grew up in, that he mastered, that he climbed to the top of. it was the machine that he controlled. and when he was appointed to the senate, republicans honed in on all the negative associations that suburban new jerseyans have with the hudson machine. they decided they would make those associations stick to bob men menendez, every voter saw him as the product of the dirty, crooked world of hudson county machine politics. this was how they were going to beat him in 2006. so when that story broke, menendez, the state s new appointed senator, was under federal investigation, it threatened to ratify to the average voter everything republicans were saying about bob menendez. and then the second reason the story was such a threat to him, that federal investigation was being led by the u.s. attorney s office, by the office of chris christie, and in september 2006, there was probably no public figure in new jersey with a more sterling reputation for integrity and corruption busti