Charlie Savage’s avatarCharlie Savage’s Twitter Archive—№ 9,708

      1. I have updated this story with some nuggets from Gina Haspel's written answers to questions-for-the-record posed by Senators, which SSCI has just made public nytimes.com/2018/05/15/us/politics/gina-haspel-cia-torture-letter-senate.html
    1. …in reply to @charlie_savage
      Haspel says that both of the Nashiri tapes in the trove of 92 videotapes destroyed in 2005 were already not viewable in late 2002, which is why she said only one detainee was on them. So they were among the several that the CIA erased or broke early. She doesn't say who or how.
  1. …in reply to @charlie_savage
    Haspel also explains that when she said she was read into the interrogation program a year after it started, she meant a year after Bush's Sept. 17, 2001, MON (finding) that authorized the CIA to capture terrorists, not a year after it developed its EIT/torture policy.
    1. …in reply to @charlie_savage
      Finally, there's a new development: I am told that Senate Democrats have asked DOJ to provide to Congress a second, little-known Durham report about whether people investigated in the tape destruction matter committed grand jury perjury or made false statements. (cont'd)
      1. …in reply to @charlie_savage
        That report, which Durham wrapped up in 2012, has not been made available to the Senate and I don't know (neither do lawmakers) whether Haspel was under scrutiny for anything she said or did. Obviously even if she was Durham didn't end up charging her. (cont'd)
        1. …in reply to @charlie_savage
          The existence of this second Durham report was disclosed by Durham himself in a declaration in a FOIA lawsuit I brought some years ago, as spotted and remembered by @Krhawkins5. documentcloud.org/documents/1377395-doj-response-to-savage-durham-investigation-foia.html#document/p71/a423125
          oh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their API
          1. …in reply to @charlie_savage
            Haspel was also asked about people the agency detained and abused by mistake, mostly famously Khaled el-Masri. Here's what she said:
            oh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their API
            1. …in reply to @charlie_savage
              Torture dominated the confirmation hearing and lots of senators asked redundant questions, so Haspel never got asked about other big topics. There were some unrelated questions in the QFRs. Here she is on the Iran nuclear deal Trump just abrogated, for example:
              oh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their API
              1. …in reply to @charlie_savage
                And here she is on whether Russia committed election interference, another topic that could put the intelligence community at odds with Trump. Note she agrees with the 2017 IC assessment that said Russia was specifically trying to help Trump win, which Nunes/HPSCI GOP questioned
                oh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their APIoh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their APIoh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their APIoh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their API