Boehner hypocrite on CIA accusers' burdens of proof

[creeksneakers2]

This morning, Boehner repeated the current GOP talking point:

"If the speaker is accusing the CIA and other intelligence officials of lying or misleading the Congress, then she should come forward with evidence and turn that over to the Justice Department so they be prosecuted. And if that's not the case, I think she ought to apologize to our intelligence professionals around the world."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/17/pelosi.torture/

But where was Boehner when a key member of the GOP contradicted the CIA's accounts of briefings on the destruction of interrogation tapes?

NY Times 12/07/07

In his statement, General Hayden said leaders of Congressional oversight committees had been fully briefed about the existence of the tapes and told in advance of the decision to destroy them. But the two top members of the House Intelligence Committee in 2005 said Thursday that they had not been notified in advance of the decision to destroy the tapes.

A spokesman for Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, who was the committee’s chairman between 2004 and 2006, said that Mr. Hoekstra was “never briefed or advised that these tapes existed, or that they were going to be destroyed.”

The spokesman, Jamal Ware, also said that Mr. Hoekstra “absolutely believes that the full committee should have been informed and consulted before the C.I.A. did anything with the tapes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/07/washington/07intel.html

Gingrich and others are making the case that its outrageous to say the CIA lied. But in Hoekstra's case the GOP did the same thing. And how can the GOP claim that the CIA is so honest about what occurred concerning torture, when we know the CIA destroyed the interrogation tapes? We also know those tapes were requested by the 9/11 Commission and weren't provided.

So the CIA lied and the GOP called them liars. Why the different standards now?

[PDJane]

1. Excuse me. Let me get this straight.

You pay the CIA to lie. That's what they do. All over the world, they run black sites and black ops and shoot people.

Then, you claim they aren't going to lie to congress or the American people. Isn't that just a tad naive and unrealistic?

[rschop]

2. Pelosi and the CIA

Pelosi has hosted herself on a petard of her own making. She and the rest of the US Congress had known that the CIA had lied to Congress for years, and let them get away with it with no retribution. The most obvious example of this are the attacks on 9/11. It is now clear from the record that the CIA knew about Mihdhar and Hazmi 21 months before September 11, 2001, but never gave this information to the FBI until August 23, 2001, when it was almost too late for the FBI to find them. The congress even knew that at that point when this information was sent over to the FBI, that the CIA had then forced the shutdown of FBI investigations that could have found Mihdhar and Hazmi in time to prevent the attacks on 9/11, in effect intentionally allowing the attacks on 9/11 to take place that killed almost 3000 people. She and Congress knew that the CIA then lied about this to hide their culpability in the attacks on 9/11, a fact that must have been an open secret in Washington DC for years. So now when the CIA has lied yet once again, she is stuck with the monster she and the rest of the US Congress has created!