Chris Wallace is interviewing House Intelligence Committee members Pete Hoekstra and Jane Harman. Wallace is doing his typically thorough job, but he has let something go which has been bothering me throughout the reporting on the tape destruction. Hoekstra says the CIA failed to tell the committee about both the creation and the destruction of the interrogation tapes. Harman says she warned the CIA against destroying tapes. So, if the committee wasn’t told about the tapes, how did Harman know to warn the Agency against destroying them?
Also, I think Harman is sharp and should have been made the committee chair (rather than the less impressive Silvestre Reyes) when the Democrats took control of the House. But, she looked mindlessly wedded to Dem talking points this morning. Wallace ran some tape of a former CIA interrogator explaining that waterboarding broke Abu Zubaydah in less than a minute, after which the terrorist gave skads of information which the Agency was able to use to break plots, nab other terrorists, and save lives. Asked for a reaction, Harman said she agreed with John McCain that waterboarding is torture and it doesn’t work. Reasonable people, of course, differ on whether waterboarding is torture, but how can you argue that it never works … especially seconds after someone in a position to know has explained that it worked spectacularly?