Republicans Claim Top Lawmakers Were in the Loop on Interrogations - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

 

Republicans, hoping to turn the tables on Democrats who are open to prosecuting Bush-era lawyers for justifying "enhanced" interrogation techniques, are seeking to reveal the names of those lawmakers who were briefed on the tactics as much as seven years ago.

FOX News has learned there were more than 30 meetings and briefings with members of Congress on the subject since 2002.

The first such briefing dealt with the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the Al Qaeda operations chief who ran the training camps in Afghanistan where the Sept. 11 hijackers were trained. Sources said California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, now the speaker of the House, attended the meeting with then-Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla. (who later became CIA director), and she did not raise any objections.

The briefings were given to the chairmen and ranking members of the intelligence committees in the House and Senate until 2006. That could cover Sen. John Rockefeller, W.Va., and Rep. Jane Harman, Calif., both Democrats, as well as Sen. Pat Roberts, Kan., Sen. Lindsey Graham, S.C., Sen. Richard Shelby, Ala., and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, Mich., all Republicans.

Defenders of the interrogation program note that if Congress had wanted to kill the program, all it had to do was withhold funding, which didn't happen.

Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has personally requested from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair an unclassified list of names of all members of Congress who attended those briefings, complete with dates and locations.

He told FOXNews.com the list will probably show many members were briefed "early and often."

Republicans Claim Top Lawmakers Were in the Loop on Interrogations - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com