A writer at Vanity Fair's group blog calls out Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts for acting like a creep on the subject of the CIA's torture of terrorism suspects.
CIA records that emerged last week show that Roberts, as chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, knew that the agency's "enhanced interrogation techniques" had been captured on video. Roberts "winced" when he learned of the methods.
As Andrew Cohen tells it at VanityFair.com, Roberts "regained his
composure long enough to do two things that will forever
taint his reputation and ought to lead to its own investigation."
Roberts' reputation-scarring actions: He assented to the CIA's plan to
destroy the evidence and he discontinued the efforts of the
Intelligence Committee's previous chair, Bob Graham of Florida, to
investigate the harsh treatment of terror suspects.
Cohen speculates that Roberts missed an opportunity to prevent the
abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. He goes on to suggest that the three-term senator compounded the errors of his past when he threatened to shut down the Senate after the Obama administration announced its intention to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay.
Writes Cohen: "The man who collaborated with the C.I.A. (in private) and then turned against it (in public) now wants to bully the Obama administration into
acquiescing to a military-commissions program that has been an abject
failure."
Through a spokeswoman, Roberts disputes the suggestion that he OK'ed the destruction of the torture videos.
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