The Political Chase

Rockefeller’s Misleading Answers on CIA Tapes

CBS’s Bob Schieffer asks Sen. Jay Rockefeller, “Why were the tapes destroyed?” Rockefeller takes a long pause, leans forward, begins to speak but stumbles. He then takes a deep sigh, and is obviously uncomfortable about what to say — there is no good answer — finally, he musters up, “You can speculate…”

Schieffer did not ask what he (Schieffer) could personally do. He asked why the CIA’s video tapes of detainee interrogations that included waterboarding were destroyed.

That’s how the rest of the five-to-six minute interview goes. Misleading. Dodging the simple questions. The plagued and disgraced Senator that had probably confirmed his appearance on Face the Nation well before he had any knowledge of what the Washington Post would throw in his face just hours before taping the show.

When Schieffer asked Rockefeller what “he planned to do now,” Rockefeller attempts to make himself look good by starting with what he has done in the past to allegedly deter the administration’s torture programs, but his answers are for public consumption only. They have nothing to do with his real objectives. Rockefeller begins in 2005 — three years after the committee was initially briefed on the CIA’s torture programs, which included waterboarding — and offers up a few activities, which to the public make him appear righteous and ethical. He tried to stop the Evil Doers three times in 2005, and more beyond that, but the asphyxiating, burdensome weight of Minority Party Defeats loomed everywhere. Although committee meetings were intolerable, nothing could have been more troublesome than the floor of the Senate. It was impossible to speak in the Dyspnoeic Senate Chamber.

Watch the highlights:

Indeed. Rockefeller is a true patriot and has demonsrtated profound courage. He fully supported the Bush administration’s illegal counterterrorism tactics and programs for two to three years before the media began the slow process of exposing him as a war criminal - guility of committing crimes against humanity. But Rockefeller knows he can dodge criminal prosecution by lying. Why shouldn’t he lie? Who is going to refute him? Nancy Pelosi and his other co-conspirators?

So, Rockefeller plays the secrecy card and begins his carefully planned evasive tactics. He tells the public he opposes, and has opposed all along, the administration’s programs. He alleges submitting a few proposals as ranking member of the intelligence committee, which he knew were doomed to fail along party lines. He’s safe. The public believes Rockefeller has tried because he submitted a few proposals, but the real substance of his integrity and ethics reside in his handwritten note to Dick Cheney. A true act of rebellion — the Boston Tea Party the Rockefeller Handwritten Note Rebellion.

Note: If you missed the seminal point of Rockefeller’s appearance — his lies that secrecy requirements kept him from rebuking illegal torturing — you can watch it here.