Here's House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-CA) statement about what she knew about CIA's treatment of detainees from her time on the House intelligence committee:

"On one occasion, in the fall of 2002, I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for the both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.

"I had no further briefings on the techniques. Several months later, my successor as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, was briefed more extensively and advised the techniques had in fact been employed. It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred."

So, couple things here.

One: Pelosi isn't saying that she knew how detainees were interrogated. She's saying she was told that all techniques used in those interrogations were considered legal. So did she know what those techniques were, and what they entailed? We'll find out, or get stonewalled trying.

Two: Never mind the brief mention of Jane Harman's protest. Pelosi just threw Harman under the bus. It's no secret that the two Californians don't get along. But she didn't need to put the blame on her committee successor in her statement on this controversy.

The Justice Department and the Central Intelligence Agency's internal watchdog began a joint effort on Saturday to determine whether a full inquiry into the destruction of hundreds of hours of videotaped interrogations of top al-Qaeda operatives is needed. White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the CIA in 2003 against destroying tapes of interrogations of two al-Qaeda operatives, government officials said Friday. (New York Times)

Rudy Giuliani stuck to his guns, affirming on Sunday that the client list of his old security company, in which he still holds a financial stake, will be kept secret. Giuliani also defended the work of his company in Qatar, where al-Qaeda sympathizers in the Qatar government in 1996 helped the man who would be the orchestrator of the 9/11 terrorist attacks escape U.S. arrest. (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal)

What happens when one is released from Guantanamo Bay after being held for five years? The Saudi citizen Jumah al-Dossari has returned home where he has been treated like a VIP with a monthly stipend, a job, and food and lodging. The government’s “reintegration program” will also help him find a wife. (Washington Post)

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Add this to our list of legislators who knew about the CIA's recording of interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees: in September 2002 and again in 2003, the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees were briefed on what goes on in those interrogations. That means ex-Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), and ex-Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) knew about waterboarding prisoners like Abu Zubaydah, leader of al-Qaeda's military committee. Publicly, The Washington Post reports, they said nothing, because privately, they didn't object -- until waterboarding became public knowledge, and some of the lawmakers expressed outrage. But some are disputing that account, though they're not giving specifics. From the Post:

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "

That U.S. official is clearly engaging in pushback. The revelation that the CIA videotaped interrogations in 2002 and then destroyed their recordings in 2005 threatens to lead to the agency's nightmare scenario: prosecution for potential war crimes. On Saturday, the Justice Department, along with the CIA's inspector general, opened an investigation into the destruction. The agency wants to make clear that it thought it had legal cover from the White House and Justice Department in 2002 to torture detainees -- and political cover from the relevant leaders of the intelligence committees in Congress. On the former point, President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and then-Justice Department official John Yoo made sure of it. And on that latter point, it's clear from the Washington Post story that Congress did indeed sign on. As the investigations proceed, the agency will argue that they were not in this alone.

Bob Graham, who left the Senate in 2005, has said he has no recollection of the briefings. So that's one denial. Porter Goss, who became CIA Director in 2004, says all involved knew about the interrogations. Jay Rockefeller's story is complicated -- he began public objection to waterboarding in 2005 -- and is liable to change. Jane Harman says she won't discuss anything classified: a cynic might say that at least she's consistent. Pat Roberts didn't return my Friday phone call.

So what did Pelosi know? From the Post:

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Ramona Cunningham's job was to help unemployed Iowans. Instead, she and other executives of the Central Iowa Employment and Training Consortium (CIETC) are charged with stealing millions of taxpayer dollars targeted toward the effort. That may seem an egregious crime. But really, who better to teach wayward job seekers how to seize opportunity when it comes?

Cunningham was the chief executive officer at CIETC, a non-profit that used to be the primary state-funded job training organization in central Iowa. During its heyday, it ran on millions in federal, state, and local grants. But a state audit in the spring of 2006 revealed that between $1.3 and $1.8 million in taxpayer funds designated to train unemployed Central Iowans were instead used to inflate the salaries and bonuses of the three top CIETC executives. Cunningham's salary during the 30 months that public money was being pilfered was $795,384, three times that of Iowa's governor. Four CIETC officials were indicted and two have pleaded guilty.

Besides dipping into public funds, Cunningham went on trips to casinos across the state with favored CIETC employees who drank and gambled during business hours, time they claimed to be working. CIETC workers also skipped all or part of out-of-town training conferences to gamble in Las Vegas, Reno, St. Louis and Kansas City. All of those activities took place during times when government paperwork showed that the employees were working. One employee, who prosecutors characterized as Cunningham’s favorite, made more than 100 workday gambling trips between 2003 and early 2006 (if his co-workers who testified are to be believed). Victor Scaglione said he felt that the trips were kosher because he felt compelled by Cunningham to participate (and don't good employees always listen to management?). He will serve 16 months in a halfway house and home confinement for lying to the grand jury during its investigation of the misused funds.

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Earlier today, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) took to the Senate floor to explain why he thinks it's important to actively counteract the administration's continual exertions of executive power. A telling illustration of that continual effort is what they do "when they think no one is looking," he said.

He then went on:

For years under the Bush Administration, the Office of Legal Counsel within the Department of Justice has issued highly classified secret legal opinions related to surveillance. This is an administration that hates answering to an American court, that wants to grade its own papers, and OLC is the inside place the administration goes to get legal support for its spying program.

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I was given access to those opinions, and spent hours poring over them. Sitting in that secure room, as a lawyer, as a former U.S. Attorney, legal counsel to Rhode Island’s Governor, and State Attorney General, I was increasingly dismayed and amazed as I read on.

To give you an example of what I read, I have gotten three legal propositions from these OLC opinions declassified. Here they are, as accurately as my note taking could reproduce them from the classified documents. Listen for yourself. I will read all three, and then discuss each one.

1. An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous executive order. Rather than violate an executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.

2. The President, exercising his constitutional authority under Article II, can determine whether an action is a lawful exercise of the President’s authority under Article II.

3. The Department of Justice is bound by the President’s legal determinations.

Those three principles, he said, boiled down to:

1. “I don’t have to follow my own rules, and I don’t have to tell you when I’m breaking them.”

2. “I get to determine what my own powers are.”

3. “The Department of Justice doesn’t tell me what the law is, I tell the Department of Justice what the law is.”

You can read the entirety of his remarks here.

So much for that. From The Los Angeles Times:

A proposed initiative that drew national attention for its potential to affect next year's presidential election will not appear on the June ballot, organizers said Thursday.

Republican backers of the measure, which could have tilted the presidential contest toward the GOP nominee by changing how California awards electoral votes, conceded that they were unable to raise sufficient funds.

Sacramento consultant Dave Gilliard, the campaign manager, said that even if a financial angel were to shower the campaign with $1 million, there was not enough time to qualify the measure for June.

Take two! Senate intelligence committee chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) had said yesterday that the CIA told him about its destruction of videotaped interrogations in "November 2006." But oops -- in a new statement just released to the press, he says he spoke too soon. It turns out he knew about the tapes' existence in 2003, but only found out about their destruction yesterday. Rocky:

"Last night, the CIA informed me that it believes that the leadership of the Senate Intelligence Committee was told of the decision to destroy the tapes in February 2003 but was not told of their actual destruction until a closed committee hearing held in November 2006.

"The committee has located no record of either being informed of the 2003 CIA decision or being notified late last year of the tapes having being destroyed. A review of the November 2006 hearing transcript finds no mention of tapes being destroyed.

"While the existence of the videotapes was known to me in 2003 in my capacity as then-Vice Chairman of the committee, I was not told of the CIA’s decision to destroy the tapes and I was not aware of their destruction until yesterday’s press reports."

The CIA shares so much information with Rockefeller, he must have just been confused. Who can keep it straight? In any event, Rockefeller knew since 2003 that some interrogations were videotaped, and he kept his mouth shut. Here's what he said he did.

"In May 2005, I wrote the CIA Inspector General requesting over a hundred documents referenced in or pertaining to his May 2004 report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation activities. Included in my letter was a request for the CIA to provide to the Senate Intelligence Committee the CIA’s Office of General Counsel report on the examination of the videotapes and whether they were in compliance with the August 2002 Department of Justice legal opinion concerning interrogation. The CIA refused to provide this and the other detention and interrogation documents to the committee as requested, despite a second written request to CIA Director Goss in September 2005."

Let's see the release of these letters. And more than that: Rockefeller is pledging a full investigation in the Senate intelligence committee. Once again, Matt has it right. Rockefeller needs to start snitching.

Here's Cookie Krongard's letter informing George W. Bush of his resignation. Long story short, he's very grateful for the opportunity to have... zzz. And lest there be any doubt about Cookie's legacy, he lets the president know that he's training a new generation of IGs:

I believe very strongly in the obligation of all good citizens to do public service at some point in their lives. I was pleased this year to create the Howard J. Krongard Scholars in the Nation's Service at Princeton University... I remain deeply committed to these objectives, but I fear that if the current environment in Washington persists, too many of the most qualified prospective public servants across the country will be dissuaded from serving.

Imagine the horror: the next generation of would-be investigators, making money up in investment banks when they could be looking the other way while contractors line their pockets with taxpayer money. A grateful nation turns its eyes to Cookie Krongard.

So that's what happened to Cookie Krongard's forthcoming perjury hearing. Today, the embattled State Department Inspector General faced reality and resigned.

Krongard, you'll recall, was accused of seemingly endless laxity in investigating State Department contractor fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan; and of retaliating against whistleblowers in his own office. Things got much worse when he denied knowledge, under oath, that his brother was on the advisory board of Blackwater, a huge State Department contractor. He quickly reversed himself. And after that, Cookie's brother contradicted him in an interview with TPMmuckraker.

Here's McClatchy's Warren Strobel:

In an e-mail to his staff, obtained by McClatchy, Krongard said that he plans to leave the government by Jan. 15.

In a reference to the upheaval in the inspector general's office in recent months, he told his staff: "I also ask you, frankly, to make an effort to reduce the static that interferes with the harmony we would like to achieve."

There was no immediate comment from the State Department.

Translated from the Cookiese, that reads, "Please don't leak anything even more embarrassing about me as I enter this new, humiliating phase of my life."

Update: Cookie's full email is after the jump.

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It's not easy keeping track of Rudy Giuliani's shag-related expenditures of taxpayer money while mayor of New York. For one thing, it's impossible to get a total of the amount spent guarding the mayor's then-girlfriend. And the available records are spotty at best. But we gave it the ol' TPM try. So here, without further ado, is our timeline.

5/99 -- Judith Nathan and Giuliani meet at Club Macanudo, a cigar bar on the Upper East Side.

7/3/99 -- NYPD Officers charge the city for gas to "accompany the mayor to Southampton."

7/31/99 -- Four officers accompanying Giuliani stay at the Atlantic Utopia Lifestyle Inn in Southampton for $1,016. Giuliani had no events in the area that day.

8/20/99 -- Giuliani visits Southampton, where Nathan has a condo. He brings along his aide Manny Papir, and Manny charges the city for a room at the Southampton Inn for $331.16. That same night, Giuliani's four man security detail charged $1,704.43 at the same inn. Giuliani had a fundraiser on the 21st.

Early 2000 -- NYPD officers start escorting Nathan around. Giuliani aides say that the protection at the time was "sporadic and did not include a full-time, round-the-clock detail." They cited previously undisclosed "threats" as the reason. But "former neighbors of Nathan's, as well as a law enforcement source, describe a full-scale valet service at Nathan's beck and call...."

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This just in from Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA). She says her letter to the CIA warning it against destroying the interrogation tapes is classified and can't be released:

CIA Director Hayden's public statement yesterday, that some members of Congress were informed about the existence of videotaped interrogations of high value detainees, prompts me to respond.

In early 2003, in my capacity at Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, I received a highly classified briefing on CIA interrogation practices from the agency’s General Counsel. The briefing raised a number of serious concerns and led me to send a letter to the General Counsel. Both the briefing and my letter are classified so I cannot reveal specifics, but I did caution against destruction of any videotapes.

Given the nature of the classification, I was not free to mention this subject publicly until Director Hayden disclosed it yesterday. To my knowledge, the Intelligence Committee was never informed that any videotapes had been destroyed. Surely I was not.

This matter must be promptly and fully investigated and I call for my letter of February 2003, which was never responded to and has been in the CIA’s files ever since, to be declassified.

So Harman had, in early 2003, at least generic knowledge of the tapes' existence and at least some indication that the CIA might have destroyed them. She felt restricted by classification from saying anything about this publicly, and now what she warned against has come to pass. There's every reason to suspect that the CIA has recorded more interrogations than we currently know of, and has destroyed even more evidence of such than we're presently aware.

Perhaps Harman can shed even more light here. The CIA may not look too kindly on her request to declassify the 2003 letter. As Matt Yglesias writes, it's time for Harman to start snitching. Dare the agency to seek prosecution.

The irony is getting out of control. For years, the Bush administration has sought to assure the interrogators who implemented its torture policy that they won't be prosecuted. But with the revelation that operations chief Jose Rodriguez destroyed recorded evidence of potentially-illegal interrogations, the CIA may have boxed even the Bush Justice Department into a corner. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the number-two Democrat in the Senate, is calling on DOJ to open an obstruction-of-justice investigation. You can read Durbin's letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey here.

So far, it's not clear what DOJ will do. "We have received and are reviewing Senator Durbin's letter," says Dean Boyd, spokesman for DOJ's national-security division. More as it develops.

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Faced with the inconvenient assessment that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, GOP Senators are running an old game plan: create a commission that will treat the truth and a lie as equal possibilities. However, Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, is unequivocally standing by the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

The Washington Post reports that GOP Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) want to create a commission on the NIE that will, inevitably, trash it. For some historical perspective on how frequently the right has gone after intelligence assessments that conflict with desired conservative policy preferences, read Ilan Goldenberg. His bottom line: "In all of these cases conservatives played with and disregarded intelligence to help make their cases for a particular policy. And in all of these cases the conservatives were wrong." But he might have added something else: in all of these cases the conservatives were successful, despite being, you know, wrong.

Meanwhile, others on the right see something more nefarious at work. Danielle Pletka of AEI smears the entire intelligence community to the Post without any evidence: "This NIE was presented with a clear intention to deceive..." Similarly, in The New Republic, Yossi Klein Halevi doesn't bother addressing the new intelligence that prompted the Iran volte-face, and simply says the U.S. has lost "the will to stop Tehran" from doing something that Tehran isn't doing.

The intelligence community isn't backing down in the face of the right-wing pressure. "We certainly stand by the product," says DNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines. "It represents the consensus of intelligence community. That was clear when we released it. … We stand by it as comprehensive and accurate." But don't expect the braying from the right about appeasement and betrayal to cease.

What about Hayden's boss, Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell? McConnell's been DNI since February. When did he learn about the CIA destroying videotaped interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees? How many tapes did the CIA tell him it destroyed? Does he believe what he's been told? What action, if any, will he now take?

Sigh. That's for McConnell to know and you not to find out. "We're not commenting on that at all," says DNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines.

What did Congress know about the CIA's 2002 torture tapes and their 2005 destruction of same? Senate intelligence committee chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV):

While we were provided with very limited information about the existence of the tapes, we were not consulted on their usage nor the decision to destroy the tapes. And, we did not learn until much later, November 2006 -- 2 months after the full committee was briefed on the program -- that the tapes had in fact been destroyed in 2005.

Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), then-ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, isn't clear about what or when she knew of either the tapes or their destruction. But she says she warned CIA against getting rid of the evidence.

Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of only four members of Congress in 2003 informed of the tapes' existence and the CIA's intention to ultimately destroy them.

"I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it," Harman said. While key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA's intention to destroy the tapes, they were not notified two years later when the spy agency actually carried out the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes' destruction in November 2006.

It seems as if the "four" congressional leaders Harman refers to as knowing about the tapes were the chairs and ranking members of the intelligence committees: Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL), and Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA). Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) took Goss' spot as chairman of the House intelligence committee that year when Goss became CIA director. Hoekstra told the AP that he didn't know a thing about either the tapes or their destruction. I'm calling Harman to ask her for her letter to the CIA about the tapes, and will bring it to you if and when I have it.

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A new report from the Pentagon's inspector general describes a massive failure in accounting for military equipment and services provided to forces in Iraq. More than $1 billion for military equipment like tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades is unaccounted for. (CBS News, New York Times)

Salon pushes beyond Bush’s obvious prevarications about the NIE and Iran’s nuclear threat and argues that “the real lie” is Bush’s claim that “his administration has made a serious offer to negotiate with the Islamic Republic, and that Iranian intransigence is the only thing preventing a diplomatic resolution. Negotiations over Iran's nuke program, which started in the fall of 2003, were initiated by Britain, France and Germany, not the U.S. “Contrary to Bush's statement at his press conference this week, the United States did not "facilitate" these negotiations.” (Salon)

The Nation reports that “bu$ine$$” for Blackwater has never been better. Despite the massacre of 17 Iraqis, Congressional investigations of tax fraud, and a federal lawsuit alleging war crimes, Blackwater, having launched a marketing campaign, still seems a favorite of the Bush administration. The company even managed to have its own paratroopers make an aerial landing – complete with Blackwater parachutes – in San Diego’s Qualcomm Stadium during a halftime show at the San Diego State/BYU football game. (The Nation)

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