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Torture report pits senator vs CIA chief yet again

Central Intelligence Director (CIA) Director John Brennan gestures during a news conference at CIA

By BRADLEY KLAPPER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Their disputes over who spied on whom and censoring the Senate's scathing torture report are history. But the personal feud between Sen. Dianne Feinstein and CIA Director John Brennan may only be getting worse.

Relations between the outgoing Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman and America's top spy appeared to hit a new low Thursday as Feinstein live-tweeted comments contradicting Brennan as he publicly addressed her panel's sweeping allegations of CIA wrongdoing. While Feinstein later praised Brennan for accepting many of her inquiry's conclusions, the damage was done.

"#ReadTheReport" was the refrain from Feinstein as Brennan held a rare news conference at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. She berated the CIA chief for suggesting, contrary to her report, that the agency's "enhanced interrogation techniques" were legal and may have helped lead to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Brennan acknowledged CIA officers did "abhorrent" things and were unprepared to run a detention program after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Yet he was hardly praiseworthy of Feinstein and fellow Democrats, calling it "lamentable" they interviewed no CIA personnel to ask, "What were you thinking?" He called the investigation "flawed."

For the two main protagonists in this week's drama, bickering is nothing new.

In an extraordinary scene nine months ago, Feinstein took to the Senate floor to accuse the CIA of interfering with her investigation and trying to intimidate the committee's staffers by referring them to the Justice Department. The California senator suggested criminal laws and the Constitution were being violated.

Brennan fired back, denying his personnel spied on Senate investigators and indicating they may have committed a crime by improperly accessing sensitive CIA documents. On Feinstein's allegations, he said, "We wouldn't do that."

Months of testy back-and-forth ensued.

Feinstein seemed to emerge the victor as the Justice Department refused to launch a criminal probe. An internal CIA review then faulted five employees at the agency for hacking into the intelligence committee's computers and emails. Brennan apologized to Feinstein and her colleagues.
But that was as far as the spat went. Democrats who wanted Brennan reprimanded or even fired were rebuffed by the White House, which stood by one of President Barack Obama's closest and longest-serving aides.

And the CIA fared significantly better in a concurrent battle over what to black out in the torture report's 500-page executive summary and conclusions. Feinstein's plea for Obama to intervene fell on deaf ears.

The bad blood between the pair was there for all to see Thursday.

After Brennan credited detainees subjected to harsh interrogations with producing information used in the operation to find bin Laden, Feinstein said her report proved definitively that waterboarding and the like provided no such help.

When he declared it "unknowable" whether harsh interrogations were responsible for valuable intelligence, she wrote: "CIA had info before torture."

Also among her two dozen tweets was a question to Brennan about a waterboard and buckets found at a site where the near drownings never officially happened. When asked by a reporter on that point at the news conference, Brennan said he was aware of no undeclared waterboarding.

By the end of the day, Feinstein struck a more conciliatory tone, conceding in a statement that Brennan's remarks "were not what I expected."

"They showed that CIA leadership is prepared to prevent this from ever happening again — which is all-important," she said.

Revolutionary war-era time capsule found in Massachusetts state house

Crews worked carefully on Thursday to remove a time capsule dating back to 1795 from the granite cornerstone of the Massachusetts statehouse, where historians believe it was originally placed by Revolutionary war luminaries Samuel Adams and Paul Revere among others.

The time capsule is believed to contain items such as old coins and newspapers, but the condition of the contents was not known and the Massachusetts secretary of state, William Galvin, speculated that some could have deteriorated over time.

Originally made of cowhide, the time capsule was believed to have been embedded in the granite cornerstone of the building when construction on the state Capitol began in 1795. Adams was governor of Massachusetts at the time.

The time capsule was removed in the mid-19th century and its contents transferred to a copper box, Galvin said.

Paul Revere, American patriot and silversmith, is believed to be among those who placed the time capsule. Photograph: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

It is being removed now because of an ongoing water filtration project at the building.

The time capsule will not be immediately opened but instead taken to Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, where it will be x-rayed to determine its contents.

Pamela Hatchfield, a conservator at the museum, slowly chiselled away at the cornerstone on Thursday to reach the box, a process that was expected to take several hours to complete. Galvin said the plan is to return it to the site sometime next year.

The excavation comes just months after another time capsule was uncovered from the Old State House, which served as the state’s first seat of government. That long-forgotten time capsule, dating to 1901, turned up in a lion statue atop the building and when opened, was found to contain a potpourri of well-preserved items including newspaper clippings, a book on foreign policy and a letter from journalists of the period.

Congress Passes Bill Which Grants “Unlimited Access to Communications of Every American”

by Paul Joseph Watson
December 11, 2014

According to Congressman Justin Amash, Congress just passed a bill which grants the government and law enforcement “unlimited access to the communications of every American”.

When the Michigan lawmaker discovered that the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2015 had been amended with a provision that authorizes “the acquisition, retention, and dissemination” of all communications data from U.S. citizens, he desperately attempted to organize a roll call vote on the bill.

However, the legislation was passed yesterday 325-100 via a voice vote, a green light for what Amash describes as “one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative”.

The bill allows the private communications of Americans to be scooped up without a court order and then transferred to law enforcement for criminal investigations.

The legislation effectively codifies and legalizes mass warrantless NSA surveillance on the American people, with barely a whimper of debate.

Read the full text of Congressman Amash’s letter below, which was sent out before the bill was passed.

*********************

Dear Colleague:

The intelligence reauthorization bill, which the House will vote on today, contains a troubling new provision that for the first time statutorily authorizes spying on U.S. citizens without legal process.

Last night, the Senate passed an amended version of the intelligence reauthorization bill with a new Sec. 309—one the House never has considered. Sec. 309 authorizes “the acquisition, retention, and dissemination” of nonpublic communications, including those to and from U.S. persons. The section contemplates that those private communications of Americans, obtained without a court order, may be transferred to domestic law enforcement for criminal investigations.

To be clear, Sec. 309 provides the first statutory authority for the acquisition, retention, and dissemination of U.S. persons’ private communications obtained without legal process such as a court order or a subpoena. The administration currently may conduct such surveillance under a claim of executive authority, such as E.O. 12333. However, Congress never has approved of using executive authority in that way to capture and use Americans’ private telephone records, electronic communications, or cloud data.

Supporters of Sec. 309 claim that the provision actually reins in the executive branch’s power to retain Americans’ private communications. It is true that Sec. 309 includes exceedingly weak limits on the executive’s retention of Americans’ communications. With many exceptions, the provision requires the executive to dispose of Americans’ communications within five years of acquiring them—although, as HPSCI admits, the executive branch already follows procedures along these lines.

In exchange for the data retention requirements that the executive already follows, Sec. 309 provides a novel statutory basis for the executive branch’s capture and use of Americans’ private communications. The Senate inserted the provision into the intelligence reauthorization bill late last night. That is no way for Congress to address the sensitive, private information of our constituents—especially when we are asked to expand our government’s surveillance powers.

I urge you to join me in voting “no” on H.R. 4681, the intelligence reauthorization bill, when it comes before the House today.

/s/

Justin Amash
Member of Congress

Reporter Challenges WH on Intel Report: Obama ‘Can’t Be a Simple, Casual Bystander’ | MRCTV

ABC's WNT Omits Grilling Over Soap Opera Producer’s Credentials for Ambassadorship

By Curtis Houck

On Monday, ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl grilled White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest on what exactly did Obama campaign donor and former soap opera producer Colleen Bell have in terms of qualifications for becoming the U.S. Ambassador to Hungary.

When it came to ABC’s World News Tonight with David Muir mentioning or playing video of that exchange on Monday evening, the program stayed silent. Instead, video of Karl’s exchange was relegated to ABC News’s website.

Bell, who was a campaign bundler for the Obama campaign, had previously worked as a producer for the CBS soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. She was approved by the U.S. Senate on Tuesday with a margin of 52-42.

Karl asked Earnest:

If you can remind me, what are Colleen Bell’s qualifications for ambassador? Is it that she was a soap opera producer, is it that she gave hundreds of thousands of dollars–or helped raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for the Obama reelection campaign? Why was she chosen?

Earnest meandered in the first of many responses to Karl before saying that Bell “has the President’s confidence that she will do an excellent job of representing the United States and maintaining the important relationship that the United states has with the government and the people of Hungary.”

Clearly not satisfied with that answer, Karl pointed out that how “[i]n her confirmation hearing, she couldn’t even name a single strategic interest the United States had with Hungary.”

Fumbling again, Earnest said that “certainly, she is somebody, again, that – that is – has had a – her own distinguished private sector career” and “obviously has succeeded in, you know, in the business world.”

After being pushed by Karl how that has anything to do with becoming the Ambassador to Hungary and if it was because she had raised “hundreds of thousands of dollars for the President’s reelection campaign,” Earnest fired back how “frankly, I wasn’t part of the decision making process.”

He added that she was instead selected “because the President has complete confidence in her ability to represent the United States in that country.”

Instead of finding time to mention this story today, World News Tonight spent 1 minute and 29 seconds of airtime on a car chase in Los Angeles on Tuesday that ended with the suspect being arrested with the help of reality TV star Lou Pizarro from TruTV’s Operation Repo.

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President Barack Obama

2 FBI Agents Shot at Barricaded Home Near Ferguson

Two FBI agents have been shot in St. Louis County while serving a search warrant in an incident that isn't directly related to the Ferguson protests, according to an FBI spokeswoman.

The suspect is 33-year-old Major Washington, who is wanted for the murder of his mother and the shooting of another officer.

It is believed that Washington is still barricaded inside the home.

Fox News Insider will provide updates as they become available.

OPEC Policy Ensures U.S. Shale Crash, Russian Tycoon Says

By Will Kennedy and Jillian Ward

OPEC policy on crude production will ensure a crash in the U.S. shale industry, a Russian oil tycoon said.

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries kept output targets unchanged at a meeting in Vienna today even after this year’s slump in the oil price caused by surging supply from U.S shale fields.

American producers risk becoming victims of their own success. At today’s prices of just over $70 a barrel, drilling is close to becoming unprofitable for some explorers, Leonid Fedun, vice president and board member at OAO Lukoil (LKOD), said in an interview in London.

“In 2016, when OPEC completes this objective of cleaning up the American marginal market, the oil price will start growing again,” said Fedun, who’s made a fortune of more than $4 billion in the oil business, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. “The shale boom is on a par with the dot-com boom. The strong players will remain, the weak ones will vanish.”

Oil futures in New York plunged as much as 3.8 percent to $70.87 a barrel today, the lowest since August 2010.

At the moment, some U.S. producers are surviving because they managed to hedge the prices they get for their oil at about $90 a barrel, Fedun said. When those arrangements expire, life will become much more difficult, he said.

Photographer: Andrew Burton/Getty Images

Saudi Arabia

While some OPEC countries including Venezuela pushed for a reduction in output quotas at today’s meeting, Saudi Arabia, the group’s dominant member, argued for the status quo.

In Russia, where Lukoil is the second-largest producer behind state-run OAO Rosneft (ROSN), the industry is much less exposed to oil’s slump, Fedun said. Companies are protected by lower costs and the slide in the ruble that lessens the impact of falling prices in local currency terms, he said.

Even so, output in Russia, the biggest producer after Saudi Arabia in 2013, is likely to fall slightly next year as lower prices force producers to rein in investment, Fedun said.

“The major strike is against the American market,” Fedun said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Will Kennedy in London at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net