How Do You Want Your Family to Remember You?

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Do you want to he remembered as the guy being attacked by the dog, or as the guy controlling the dog?

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about ugly government. Comparisons with the Gestapo have been increasingly prevalent, but other parallels have dominated my own thoughts.

When I was in seminary, before the fall of the Berlin Wall, I got to know a West German pastor who was at my US seminary for continuing education. Eberhart also had connections with his East German colleagues, who at that time were leading a growing resistance movement in Berlin, and their chief opponents were the East German Stasi. The Stasi, the secret police, were legendary for their data files. Their work was based on instilling fear, and they induced stunningly amazing numbers of East Germans into informing on their neighbors. Something along the lines of 1 in 6 East Germans were informants, whether out of fear or out of approval of what the East German government was doing.

When I read Marcy’s post about Hannah Natanson, I could not help but think of the Stasi.

In the course of my ministry, before South Africa abandoned apartheid, I came to know a South African Lutheran pastor named T. Simon Farishani. Farisani ran afoul of the legendarily violent South African Police, and was not simply arrested for making statements about equality but imprisoned and subjected to torture not once or twice, but four times. US Lutheran leaders who knew of his plight raises a huge international stink, which ultimately led the South African regime to release him and expel him from the country, allowing him to be treated at the Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis-St. Paul. The night before he was released, he told me that he prayed to die, so that he would be spared more torture the next day.

When I heard the news today of yet another killing by ICE in Minneapolis, I could not help but think of Farisani.

As I’ve watched the news from Minnesota, where I have more than a few clergy friends, I could not help but fear for them. More and more clergy are stepping away from benign statements of peace and love, and taking a pro-active stance against what is happening in their midst. I thought of them, and at the same time though about Archbishop Oscar Romero. Romero was appointed archbishop by Pope John Paul II based on his relatively conservative views, but as he watched what the Salvadoran government was doing to the poor and needy, he became increasingly vocal in challenging the regime. His sermons were broadcast on nationwide radio, and when he preached that the members of the Salvadoran military should refuse to do the dirty work of the government, the government decided that Romero had to be stopped. The next day, as Romero was holding the chalice at the celebration of Holy Communion, a government death squad burst into the sanctuary and shot him as he stood at the altar.

When I heard about the arrests of dozens of clergy in Minnesota, I could not help but think of Romero.

In the course of my ministry, I became friends with Bob and Jeannie Graetz. Bob was a white Lutheran pastor who took a call in Montgomery, Alabama, shortly after another young pastor came to town. Maybe you’ve heard of him: Martin Luther King Jr. Graetz had a choice between joining the white ministerial alliance as befitting his race, or the black ministerial alliance as befitting his congregation. He chose the black alliance.

Rosa Parks was a neighbor and a friend, and Bob and Jeannie were staunch supporters of the Montgomery Bus boycott that followed her refusal to give up her seat on a Mongomery bus. Bob and Jeannie joined their black neighbors in their protest work. They offered rides to people who were boycotting the buses.  When the Montgomery City Council passed an ordinance against this, calling it an illegal taxi service, Bob continued offering rides, using the language of the ordinance that allowed giving rides to “friends.” Because to Bob and Jeannie, every black person in Montgomery had become one of their friends.

At one point, the black community decided to invite more arrests as a strategic move, so that the white community would look even worse in the eyes of the rest of the world. Bob volunteered to join his black clergy colleagues in this action, but they adamantly refused to let him. “Bob, if *we* get arrested,” meaning the black pastors, “they will throw us in cells on the black side of the jail. To our cellmates, we will be heroes. But if *you* get arrested, they will throw you in the cells on the white side of the jail. To your cellmates, you will be a traitor, and you know what happens to traitors. You don’t have to prove anything to us, so leave this kind of protest to us, and you keep up the work outside the jail.”

Bob and Jeannie Graetz paid a price for their support of the black community. They dealt with ostracism from the white community in Montgomery, and they had their home bombed not once but twice. And yet, they persisted.

I see the white community of Minneapolis, standing up to support their neighbors of color against the abuses of ICE, and I remember Bob and Jeannie Graetz.

My dad grew up in a bilingual German/English household, and when the family moved from Nebraska to central Missouri in 1943, his mom warned the kids not to speak German in their new town. “You can speak it at home, but not at school, not with your friends, and not around town.” And they didn’t. My dad, his older sister and his younger siblings, all kept their German to themselves.

When I hear about families in Minnesota not sending their kids to school, or sending them with proof of citizenship in their little pockets, or sending them with documents allowing their teachers to take custody of them if the parents were suddenly seized by ICE, I think about my dad.

As a teenager, I was an exchange student in West Germany. The dad in my host family was a kid during WWII and had been a member in the Hitler Youth as a kid, in the same way that thousands of US kids were Cub Scouts. It’s what you did at that age. He wasn’t old enough to have been pushed into military service during the war, but every one of his older relatives – dad, uncles, cousins, etc. – were. He and I talked not so much about the war as about the post-war occupation. He had some hilarious stories about clueless American soldiers (mostly 2nd lieutenants who were too filled with their own self-importance), as well as powerful stories that expressed his delight that his town was occupied by the US rather than the Soviet Union.

I remember all these folks, and am struck by how these memories are not about past events, past struggles, and past oppression. I remember all these folks, and how their stories about then are the stories we are living through right now.

I think of the Stasi then, and think of databases at the DOJ, databases built by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and databases no doubt built by Peter Thiel and Palantir.

I think of the unaccountable South African Police then, and think of the unaccountable ICE and CPB today. If an ICE officer utters the magic words “I feared for my life,” they seem to be as free as bloodthirsty and vengeful and unaccountable old South African Police. Lock up those alleged terrorists, beat them and torture them, mock them and abuse them, and no one can stop you.

As I go about my work as a pastor, and see my colleagues doing the same — speaking up more and more loudly about the abuse being dished out by ICE and CPB — I wonder when the Archbishop Romero moment will come. Not if, but when. The shooting of a suburban mom a couple of weeks ago has escalated to the shooting today of an ICU nurse from a VA facility, and I cannot help but wonder when a shooting akin to Archbishop Romero will happen. Not if, but when.

No one who has heard me preach would ever accuse me of ignoring what is happening in the news. My parishioners might not agree with my politically, even as I challenged their own political views, but they have accepted my willingness to be the pastor of *everyone* in my congregation, not just those who shared my political stances. One member once put it like this, in the midst of a huge churchwide debate about gays and lesbians in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: “Pastor, I’m probably as far on the conservative end of the spectrum as you are on the liberal end, but I am honored to have you as my pastor.”

No comment about my pastoral work since then has ever warmed my heart more.

The stories of the Stasi are not simply remembrances of the past.
The stories of apartheid-era South African Police are not simply remembrances of the past.
The stories of Bob and Jeannie Graetz are not simply the remembrances of the past.
The stores of Archbishop Romero are not simply remembrances of the past.

These stories are playing out again today, in our midst, on the streets of the United States of America in 2026.

I remember these stories. I see Stephen Miller, and remember harangues of Hermann Goering and the departure of trains to concentration camps. I see Kash Patel and Greg Bovino, and remember Petrus Coetzee and brutality of the South African Police. I see ICE assailing the protesters of Minneapolis, and remember Bob and Jeannie Graetz. I see Kristi Noem, and remember my dad and his German-speaking siblings in central Missouri.

Surveillance-induced fear. Brutality-induced fear. The potential for governmental death squad-induced fear. This is our world today, and anyone who says otherwise is living with their head in the sand.

Between now and January 31st, Congress will be considering the appropriation bill for the Department of Homeland Security, including ICE and CBP, and the main battle will be fought in the Senate. My senators are Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt — two of the most knee-jerk Trump supporters around — but I am not about to let them off the hook.

Do you want to be remembered like the Stasi? Then keep doing what you are doing.

Do you want to be remembered like the apartheid-era South African Police? Then keep doing what you are doing.

As things continue to escalate, do you want to be remembered like the killers of Archbishop Romero? Then keep doing what you are doing.

Ordinary Germans had a choice in how they reacted to the Stasi. Ordinary South Africans had a choice in how they reacted to the South African Police. Ordinary Americans had a choice in how they reacted to Bob and Jeannie Graetz and how they reacted to my bilingual dad, his parents, and his siblings.

Forget about how history will remember Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, and Donald Trump, I will tell my senators. How do you want history – your neighbors, your kids, and your descendants — to remember you?

 

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Dick Cheney, Gone But Not Forgotten

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I had been wondering if Dick Cheney were unwell given Liz Cheney’s silence.

He died yesterday.

Amid the chaos of the Trump Administration, implementing all of Cheney’s dreams of unitary executive on Chicago’s residents and Latin American fishermen, his death didn’t even make it above the fold of the NYT.

This blog has written probably 500 stories on Dick Cheney — about torture, about illegal surveillance, about drone strikes, about outing Valerie Plame.

But the most recent are telling for his legacy:

Tulsi Gabbard’s NIE Lies Make Dick Cheney Look Honest by Comparison

John Yoo’s Old Trash and the South Shore Apartment Invasion

Dick Cheney’s Apprentice Strikes (on John Bolton’s refusal to testify in impeachment)

Child Rapist George Nader Introduced Dick Cheney and Ahmad Chalabi

We never did recover from the things Dick Cheney did to the United States. And now the precedents he established have empowered a madman.

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One of Dianne Feinstein’s Greatest Legacies: Documenting CIA’s Torture

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Over forty years ago, I voted to make Dianne Feinstein a Senator. Multiple news outlets report that she has passed away, a Senator to the end.

I was only her constituent for a matter of months before I left the state. But her influence on US policy — good and bad — has been national in scope.

Amid what are sure to be many tributes, one part of her legacy deserves close focus: the SSCI Torture Report.

The US has still not fully atoned for the crimes it committed as part of an effort to gin up war on terror scares. It was just over a month ago, after all, that a judge threw out the post-torture confession of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. It was just days ago that a different judge ruled Ramzi bin al-Shibh incompetent to stand trial. We’re still discovering that even after the torture, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was deprived of legal counsel.

America’s crimes of torture remain very much unresolved, much less punished.

Dianne Feinstein wasn’t always right. But she used her tenure as SSCI Chair to ensure there was a document of the torture done in our name. That legacy deserves respect.

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“Piker:” Donald Trump Rants as if Robert Menendez’s 22 Ounces of Gold Were as Big as Jared’s $2 Billion

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The former President went on one of his classic rants of projection last night, demanding that every Democratic Senator resign because of the alleged corruption of Robert Menendez.

“They all knew what was going on,” Trump said, “and the way [Menendez] lived.”

All Trump’s rants are, at their core, at least partly an attempt to use projection to cast attention away from his own similar or worse corruption.

This one is a doozy, though.

Start with the fact that Trump was suspected of getting $10 million from Egypt in September 2016, money he used to stay in the Presidential race. That suspected bribe was investigated for several years, with the Egyptian state-owned bank suspected of making the payment fighting a subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court. The investigation was then closed in summer 2020, without ever subpoenaing Trump Organization, during a period when Bill Barr was shutting down all Mueller-related investigations of Trump. The allegation that, like Menendez, Trump was on the take from Egypt — a key prong of the Mueller investigation — has been ignored by most outlets, so I may return to describe what we know of it.

Then consider that Trump told a comedian posing as Menendez, John Melenedez, that he believed Menendez had gotten a raw deal in his corruption prosecution. “Congratulations on everything,” Trump told the guy he thought was Menendez not long after DOJ dropped the first bribery prosecution. “We’re proud of you. Congratulations! Great job! You went through a tough, tough situation, and I don’t think a very fair situation. But congratulations!”

“They all knew what was going on, and the way [Menendez] lived,” Trump wailed. But so did Trump when he congratulated someone he thought was Menendez for getting away with accepting alleged bribes.

In fact, Trump even commuted the separate Medicare fraud sentence of Menendez’ first co-defendant, Salomon Melgen (like Menendez, the jury hung on bribery charges against Melgen). When Trump claims that Senate Democrats knew what was going on? Unlike Senate Democrats, Trump reviewed Melgen’s conduct closely enough to save him from most of a 204-month prison sentence. Trump specifically said that “the ends of justice do not require [Melgen] to remain confined until his currently projected release date of August 2, 2031.” There’s no question Trump doesn’t care about Menendez’ corruption because he used his presidential authority to eliminate most punishment against Menendez’ co-defendant.

Finally, the craziest part of Trump’s attempt to project his own corruption on Democrats: a key allegation in the Menendez indictment alleges that Menendez did exactly what Jared Kushner did, only for a tiny fraction of the payoff that Jared got.

As I noted in this post, most of Menendez’ Egypt-related corruption came before he and Nadine were married, and most of the payment was laundered through Wael Hana’s halal company, at which Nadine had a no-work job. That may make it hard to prove was a quid pro quo.

There’s one glaring exception to that: The 22 one-ounce bars of gold that, the indictment suggests, Menendez and Nadine received days after Menendez helped shield Egypt from repercussions tied to their role in the Jamal Khashoggi execution.

As the indictment explains, after Nadine’s relationship with Egyptian Official-4 had blossomed over time, the two of them set up a meeting between Menendez and a senior Egyptian intelligence official on June 21, 2021, before the same official would meet with other Senators.

On or about June 21, 2021, NADINE MENENDEZ and Egyptian Official-4 organized a private meeting between MENENDEZ and a senior Egyptian intelligence official (“Egyptian Official-5”) in a hotel in Washington, D.C. prior to a meeting between Egyptian Official-5 and other U.S. Senators the next day. On the day of the private meeting, MENENDEZ provided NADINE MENENDEZ with a copy of a news article reporting on questions that other U.S. Senators intended to ask Egyptian Official-5 regarding a human rights issue. NADINE MENENDEZ then sent that article to Egyptian Official-4, who responded, “Thanks you so much, chairman [i.e., MENENDEZ, the Chairman of the SFRC] also raised it today, we appreciate it.” The next day, NADINE MENENDEZ texted Egyptian Official-4 that she hoped the article she had sent was helpful, and stated, “I just thought it would be better to know ahead of time what is being talked about and this way you can prepare your rebuttals.”

A Michael Isiskoff story posted the same day explained what Egypt would need to “rebut:” Egypt’s Intelligence head, Abbas Kamel, was set to be grilled about Egypt’s role — providing training and drugs — in the execution of Jamal Khashoggi.

A just-released Yahoo News “Conspiracyland” podcast series about Khashoggi’s murder [] revealed that the Gulfstream jet carrying a so-called Tiger Team of Saudi assassins to Istanbul made a middle-of-the-night stopover in Cairo for the purpose of picking up a lethal dose of undetermined “illegal” narcotics.

The drugs were injected hours later by a Saudi Ministry of Interior doctor into Khashoggi’s left arm inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul — an operation that the CIA has concluded was authorized by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, often known as MBS.

Abbas Kamel, the chief of Egyptian intelligence, is visiting Washington this week to meet with U.S. intelligence officials as well as members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Staffers told Yahoo News that a number of senators are preparing to ask Kamel about the Cairo stopover — the subject of a Washington Post editorial on Sunday — and whether Egyptian intelligence officials delivered or helped facilitate the delivery of the drugs.

[snip]

There is also evidence that Egyptian intelligence may have provided training for the Tiger Team as well as previous support for Saudi abductions ordered by MBS. A Saudi source familiar with the matter told Yahoo News that the Egyptians assisted the Tiger Team with the 2015 abduction from Italy of Saudi Prince Saud bin Saif al-Nasr. An outspoken foe of MBS, the prince was tricked into boarding a plane he thought was flying to Rome but ended up in Riyadh. He has not been heard from since.

The indictment implies that whatever Menendez did to blunt the accusations of his fellow Senators, it had some tie to the 22 ounces of gold that Hana purchased two days later, at least some bars of which were found at the Menendez residence when it was searched a year later.

On or about June 23, 2021—i.e., two days after the private meeting between MENENDEZ and Egyptian Official-5—HANA purchased 22 one-ounce gold bars, each with a unique serial number. Two of these one-ounce gold bars were subsequently found during the court-authorized search in June 2022 of the residence of MENENDEZ and NADINE MENENDEZ. During the relevant time periods, the spot market price of gold was approximately $1,800 per ounce.

In his rant, Trump accused Menendez of being “piker” compared to others, but he got the comparison wrong.

After all, Menendez sold out cheap. If he received all 22 of those gold bars in 2021 in recognition of having laundered the reputation of Egypt, it would have been worth roughly $40,000.

That’s a miniscule amount compared to what Jared got — $2 billion — for whitewashing Saudi’s role in the Khashoggi execution.

Trump, who knows better than Senate Democrats what was going on, is right: Menendez was a piker. But he was a piker when you measure him against the corruption of Trump’s own son-in-law.

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An Unknown Unknown Made Known Known

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[NB: Check the byline, thanks./~Rayne]

Others have already “eulogized” former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld who passed away today at age 88 — an age many victims of his war crimes and unlawful warfare will never attain. I really don’t think I can add something cogent at this time to others’ remarks on Rumsfeld’s passing.

Instead of a “eulogy,” I’ll note this site published at least 50 posts tagged “Donald Rumsfeld,” nine more related to “Hamdi v. Rumsfeld“, and an entire category with more than 1,000 posts labeled “Torture” through which you can revisit Rumsfeld’s legacy, not to mention hundreds of posts under “torture tapes” and “torture tape.” (Obviously Rumsfeld leaves behind a mess of tagging and categorizing cleanup.) Don’t forget the Torture Tape Timeline.

For once I will heed the adage about saying nothing if you can’t say anything nice.

But this is nice:

Formez la deuxième ligne. Add your “eulogy” in comments below.

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The Chicks Are Owed An Apology

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Once upon a time, back when the United States was under the leadership of another fairly incompetent Republican President (yes yes, Bush and Cheney look a little better now compared to Trump and Pence, but only because they were actually semi-competent in their evil, but they were still very evil), there was was sensationally good crossover country/pop group known as the Dixie Chicks.

They were country, but never of the “stars and bars” Dixie kind. It was simply an appellation. In fact, they were all pretty forward and progressive thinking and talking. And man did they get in trouble for it. I guess the new term of the day is “cancelled”, which is kind of an idiotic term, but the howlers really did try to obliterate Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire. From Wiki:

On March 10, 2003, nine days before the invasion of Iraq, the Dixie Chicks performed at the Shepherds Bush Empire theater in London, England. It was the first concert of their Top of the World tour in support of their sixth album, Home. Introducing their song “Travelin’ Soldier”, Maines told the audience the band they did not support the upcoming Allied invasion of Iraq and were “ashamed” that President George W. Bush was from Texas. Many American country music listeners supported the war, and Maines’s remark triggered a backlash in the United States. The Dixie Chicks were blacklisted by thousands of country radio stations, and the band members received death threats. Maines issued an apology, saying her remark had been disrespectful; in 2006 she rescinded the apology, saying she felt Bush deserved no respect. The backlash damaged sales of their music and sales of their next album and tour.

In a September 2003 interview, Maguire told the German magazine Der Spiegel: “We don’t feel a part of the country scene any longer, it can’t be our home anymore.” She noted a lack of support from country stars, and being shunned at the 2003 ACM Awards. “Instead, we won three Grammys against much stronger competition. So we now consider ourselves part of the big rock ‘n’ roll family.” Some fans were dismayed, but the group made no clear response.

If you have forgotten, which is awfully easy to do in these pandemic days of Trump, this was a huge deal at the time. The United States government under the Bush/Cheney regime, and the entire country music scene hated on them and ostracized them. It was one of those kind of fulcrum moments. It was not just the Iraq war, it was torture, the unitary executive, free speech, protest…..everything was wrapped up, in a cultural way, in the actions of the Dixie Chicks. It was symbolic of the divide.

But Natalie Maines, Emily Strayer and Martie Maguire were bad ass and stuck to their morals and thoughts. They got hammered at the time, but they hung in and are still here bigger and badder ass than ever. They are now just The Chicks, having dumped the Dixie part of their original name. The Chicks are owed a debt of gratitude and an apology for the idiocy and bigotry they faced from the howlers during the Bush/Cheney years, and they are here to let you know they are still on the good side of the cutting edge.

The Chicks have a new song and video out. “March March”, and it is truly awesome. A song for this time. I saw it last night at Atrios’ joint, and it is really superb. Take a look. Expand it and watch it full screen, it is worth it. This is the music of protest, and in the best way. Music was key in the 60’s and it is key now. It spreads far and wide what people feel, whether they are in the streets or at home. The “at home” part seems even more pertinent now in the time of unabated pandemic at the hands of yet another evil Administration. And that is our trash talk for this weekend, get on it!

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Twenty Years of Continuity

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Last night, the US killed Qassem Suleimani in a targeted killing on Iraqi soil. DOD claimed they killed him in a “defensive” move to stop his plotting against US diplomats. Nancy Pelosi already made clear that Trump did not properly brief Congress (though Lindsey Graham says he got briefed while golfing at Mar a Lago).

Most experts fear this will escalate (indeed, recent events resemble a Colin Kahl think piece about how the US and Iran could escalate into a war without meaning to).  That’d be bad enough under a sane president, with competent advisors. But Trump has fired most of the experts in his White House and has been pardoning war criminals (and is thinking of pardoning more). Which means we may well be mobilizing service members to fight for a Commander in Chief they can’t expect to think through the use of force, but who has already demanded that his subordinates violate norms and laws partly because he has a temper problem and partly because he doesn’t understand how slow negotiation and strategy works.

But I also feel like this moment has been coming for twenty years, enabled by people who disdain Trump but nevertheless get treated as sane.

There’s our response to 9/11, which people on both sides of the aisles believed was license to break all the rules the US had claimed to adhere to since World War II. We embraced torture because some of the most experienced policy makers ever claimed to be at a loss to know how to respond to a threat they had been warned about. Yet those policy makers knew how to work the system, to have in-house lawyers write up OLC memos excusing the crimes in advance.

Then there’s the Iraq War, the forever stain. Those same experienced policy makers used the opportunity of 9/11 to launch a war of a choice, and then bungle it, in part out of the same impatience and imperiousness policy elites now criticize Trump for, in part by putting incompetent ideologues in charge of cleaning up the mess.

Along the way, we used tools meant to fight terrorism as a way to villainize Iran, in part because the Neocons wanted to avoid political negotiation with Iran at all costs and in part because figuring out a way to deal with Iran’s willingness to use proxies was too difficult otherwise.

It didn’t really get better with Obama. When faced with the challenge of an American citizen inciting attacks, Anwar al-Awlaki, he carried out a sustained effort to kill him using the same kind of targeted kill that Trump just used, excused by yet more shoddy OLC memos.

It seemed so easy, he did it again to take out Osama bin Laden, in a made-for-campaign-season strike that didn’t do much to address terrorism but did expand our claims to operate on other countries’ sovereign territory.

Then there was Libya, where the US made certain agreements to limit the action against Qaddafi, only to violate them and leave the country in chaos.

The Republicans’ cynical sustained response to Benghazi, yet another made-for-campaign-season event, made it their party line stance that any attack on the US must be met by a show of dick-wagging and force, regardless of the efficacy. Trump even made that stance a key part of his nominating convention. Benghazi-palooza made a response like yesterday’s targeted killing inevitable, even though a bunch of the same Republicans recognize that Trump doesn’t understand the fire he’s playing with.

Behind it all is a belief that the most powerful nation in the world shouldn’t have to tolerate any resistance to its power, and may break rules and norms — to say nothing of causing untold chaos in other places — to quash it. Purportedly sane mainstream politicians set the precedent that it was okay to commit war crimes as a misguided shortcut in defending America. A Nobel Prize winner normalized assassination. And both parties have enabled events and legal arguments that leave Trump with few restraints.

And yet the chattering classes will pretend this is something new with Trump.

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Brett Kavanaugh Called John Yoo His “Magic Bullet”

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And Bill Burck thinks American citizens should not know that fact before Kavanaugh gets a lifetime appointment.

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Gina Haspel Destroyed the Tapes in 2005 to Hide What She Destroyed in 2002

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When Gina Haspel was testifying on Wednesday, she confused those of us who know the history of the torture tapes well. She made two claims that didn’t accord with the public record of the tapes that were destroyed. First, she said that only one detainee was depicted on the 92 tapes that got destroyed. Additionally, she said she, “didn’t appear on the tapes, as has been mischaracterized in the press.”

Yet as an inventory of the tapes shows, two of the tapes depicted Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, though those tapes were taped over every day.

So there should have been two tapes depicting Nashiri’s torture, and given that she oversaw his torture, there’s a good chance she’d appear on them.

When Charlie Savage asked CIA about the discrepancy, they pointed to a CIA IG review done of the tapes that showed a number of the tapes had been altered before the review.

“Gina Haspel supervised the torture of al-Nashiri, which raises the stakes on the question of whether there were or were not remaining tapes of his torture,” said Hina Shamsi, the director of the A.C.L.U.’s national security project.

Asked about the apparent discrepancy, the C.I.A. pointed without comment to several pages of another document previously released under the Freedom of Information Act that discussed how the agency logged the contents of the 92 tapes before destroying them. It said 11 were blank, two were blank “except for one or two minutes of recording,” and “two were broken and could not be reviewed.”

In 2010, I noted that John Durham was clearly investigating two rounds of torture tape destruction: the second round, in 2005, when Gina Haspel helped her boss Jose Rodriguez destroy all the undamaged tapes. And the first round, in 2002 or 2003, when someone destroyed the evidence on what must be the most damning tapes.

As you recall, when the CIA IG reviewed the torture tapes in May 2003 (that is, five months after McPherson’s review), there were 15 tapes in some state of damage or erasure.

OIG found 11 interrogation tapes to be blank. Two others were blank except for one or two minutes of recording. Two others were broken and could not be reviewed. OIG compared the videotapes to logs and cables and identified a 21-hour period of time” which included two waterboard sessions” that was not captured on the videotapes.

You see, John Durham is investigating two incidents of torture tape destruction: the first, when in 2002 or 2003 someone removed evidence of two sessions of waterboarding (and potentially, the use of mock burial that would be declared torture by John Yoo) from the videotapes. And the second one, on November 8, 2005, when someone destroyed all the tapes, which not only destroyed evidence of waterboarding that violated the terms of the Bybee Two memo, but also destroyed evidence of the first round of destruction.

And John McPherson is likely the only person who can pinpoint when the first round of destruction occurred, before or after November-December 2002.

Now, all that doesn’t tell us precisely what Durham is after or whom, though I’d suggest he’s at least as interested in the people in the loop of the first round of destruction as the second.

As I said, it was not clear who he was after, the names of the people who had destroyed the tapes in the second round or in the first round.

But it appears CIA has now confirmed that: Gina Haspel. The CIA appears to be saying that Gina Haspel was the culprit both of those times.

And when she testified under oath on Wednesday that she supported destroying the tapes because the faces off officers appeared on the tapes, she was only partly telling the truth. It appears virtually certain (particularly given the focus on declassifying the Durham report so people can read his conclusions), she also supported destroying the tapes to hide the first round of destruction she had carried out. If so, she may have done so to hide the fact that her own face didn’t appear on the tapes, if it once had.

One more point: This makes Haspel’s enthusiasm for keeping torture in 2005-2007 all the more damning. Over two years earlier, Haspel appears to have destroyed evidence of how bad torture was. But she was still pushing to keep it even after hiding what she had done.

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Gina Haspel Seems to Admit Knowing Jane Harman Opposed Torture Tape Destruction — Just Not Caring

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Gina Haspel provided two significantly different responses in questions for the record about her knowledge of Jane Harman’s opposition to torture tape destruction and Carl Levin’s proposal to launch a commission to investigate torture.

Here’s how she answered a Dianne Feinstein question about Harman, who first said CIA shouldn’t destroy the tape in 2003 while serving as Ranking Member.

Question: (U) At the time of the tapes’ destruction, were you aware of the request from Representative Jane Harman that the videos be preserved? Were you aware of CIA attorneys’ concerns that congressional investigators or a congressionally authorized commission might seek access to them? Were you aware of the White House Counsel’s and Director of National Intelligence’s instructions that they not be destroyed?

Response: (U) To the best of my recollection, at the time of the destruction of the videotapes, I was aware of concerns raised in several quarters about destroying the tapes, but I was told that there were no legal prohibitions to destroying the tapes. Ultimately, the decision to destroy the tapes was made by the former Deputy Director for Operations.

In response to a question about Harman, Haspel admits that she was aware of opposition to destroying the tapes (Harman’s opposition showed up in a number of internal reviews, so there was would have been a paper trail documenting her knowledge). Her response suggests Congressional opposition to destroying the tapes did not affect the legal question.

Compare that to her answer about Carl Levin’s initial efforts to conduct an inquiry into torture just days before the tapes were destroyed.

Question: (U) Were you aware that legislation had been introduced in the U.S. Congress to review detainee issues when you drafted the cable authorizing the destruction of detainee interrogation videotapes on November 8, 2005? Please describe all conversations you had regarding congressional oversight of this matter prior to the destruction of the videotapes.

Response: (U) To the best of my recollection, I was not aware of this proposed legislation and I do not recall any discussions pertaining to congressional oversight of detainee videotapes prior to the destruction in November 2005.

Here, she offers a “do not recall” answer, probably because she and Jose Rodriguez did not memorialize any discussions of the possibility that Congress might shortly demand that CIA retain the tapes, if they had any discussions, so there was no proof she knew of it. She’s also discounting Harman’s objection as something other than “congressional oversight of detainee videotapes.”

Ultimately, it all comes down to not giving a shit what Congress thinks, though, while carefully protecting herself against claims that they destroyed the tapes in response to Levin’s actions, as opposed to the public reporting on the torture program that also immediately preceded the tape destruction.

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