AP
picks up on the ABC story about those White House torture meetings, noting that the participants "took care to insulate President Bush". Furthermore, the executive meetings synch up with the legal memos:
"If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former intelligence official said.
In other words, Cheney and Rumsfeld gave the thumbs-up to the CIA, then told their DOJ lackeys to go and make it all legal.
The former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.
At times, CIA officers would demonstrate some of the tactics, or at least detail how they worked, to make sure the small group of "principals" fully understood what the al-Qaida detainees would undergo. The principals eventually authorized physical abuse such as slaps and pushes, sleep deprivation, or waterboarding. This technique involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.
The small group then asked the Justice Department to examine whether using the interrogation methods would break domestic or international laws.
"No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about," said a second former senior intelligence official. "People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command."
