Hopefully you didn’t miss Jane Mayer’s latest article in The New Yorker, dated June 22, 2009 (next Monday).

In an interview with Mayer, CIA Director Leon Panetta revealed that when he first took the reins of the CIA, he had asked then-CIA Inspector General John Helgerson to conduct a review to make sure that there was nobody left at the CIA that should be prosecuted for torture or related crimes.  Helgerson was the author of the 2004 classified report questioning the legality and effectiveness of the agency’s secret detention and brutal interrogation program.  Panetta says that Helgerson, who retired in May, assured him that there were no officers currently with the CIA that had violated the legal guidelines established during the Bush years.  He did, however, tell Panetta that ”continuing work was being done.”

But that doesn’t mean Panetta has managed to extricate himself from involvement with high-level officials who are connected with the torture program.  Many of his top deputies “worked closely” with former CIA Director George Tenet.  Even Panetta’s number 2, Stephen Kappes, was part of the torture regime.  Ironically, Kappes’ continued stay at the CIA was demanded by Democrats who refused to support Panetta’s nomination otherwise.  Mayer explains that:

During the first term of the Bush Administration, Kappes was a top official in the Directorate of Operations. This group oversaw the agency’s Counterterrorist Center, which, in turn, managed the secret detention-and-interrogation program. Few doubt that he was aware that the C.I.A. was engaging in brutality. One former officer recalls that Kappes voiced qualms, warning that the program amounted to “torture.” According to the former officer, once Kappes was overruled he went along; Kappes was “the brains” of the directorate, the former officer says. (Kappes, through a spokesman, denied having had a direct role in the interrogation program, or having called its tactics torture.) Another former C.I.A. operative says, “It would be hard to say someone so involved could be robustly objective” in advising Panetta.

Another torture holdover is Jonathan Fredman, the former Chief Counsel to the Counterterrorist Center, who famously proclaimed that “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”  His former boss, CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo, was the man many of the Justice Department’s torture memos were addressed to.  Rizzo remains at the agency while the search for a replacement continues.  The current head of the Counterterrorist Center, an undercover officer, ran the torture program during Bush’s second term.  Mayer also says that “[s]everal current station chiefs and division chiefs were also deeply involved in brutal interrogations, as were pilots, logistical experts, medical personnel, and others.”

And don’t forget former Tenet’s former chief of staff John Brennan, who is now advising President Obama as a senior official on the National Security Council.

Mayer notes that with all of these former Bush-officials still involved in top-level decision-making, no CIA officer has been charged with criminal acts relating to torture.  This, despite the fact that at least three prisoners have died as a result of enhanced interrogation:

In the first case, an unnamed detainee under C.I.A. supervision in Afghanistan froze to death after having been chained, naked, to a concrete floor overnight. The body was buried in an unmarked grave. In the second case, an Iraqi prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi died on November 4, 2003, while being interrogated by the C.I.A. at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad. A forensic examiner found that he had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs. Military pathologists classified the case a homicide. A third prisoner died after an interrogation in which a C.I.A. officer participated, though the officer evidently did not cause the death

The program was so out of line that German car salesman Khaled el-Masri was tortured for 149 days due to a case of mistaken identity by the CIA… oops.  The officer responsible for Masri’s suffering has received two promotions since then.

So what news did Mayer have to offer?  For one:

Helgerson, the former inspector general, forwarded the crucifixion case, along with an estimated half-dozen other incidents, to the Justice Department, for possible prosecution. But the case files have languished. An official familiar with the cases told me that the agency has deflected inquiries by the Senate Intelligence Committee seeking information about any internal disciplinary action. (Helgerson told me, “Some individuals have been disciplined. And others no longer work at the agency.”)

Regarding the closed-door investigation into the torture program by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Panetta told Mayer that some 10 million documents had been found.

While there’s little chance that CIA officials will be prosecuted, some remain hopeful that some of the private contractors involved will be held accountable.

In April, Panetta fired all the C.I.A.’s contract interrogators, including the former military psychologists who appear to have designed the most brutal interrogation techniques: James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen. The two men, who ran a consulting company, Mitchell, Jessen & Associates, had recommended that interrogators apply to detainees theories of “learned helplessness” that were based on experiments with abused dogs. The firm’s principals reportedly billed the agency a thousand dollars a day for their services. “We saved some money in the deal, too!” Panetta said. (Remarkably, a month after Obama took office the C.I.A. had signed a fresh contract with the firm.)

According to ProPublica, the investigative reporting group, Mitchell and Jessen’s firm, which in 2007 had a hundred and twenty people on its staff, recently closed its offices, in Spokane, Washington.

Pressure is also coming through less talked about avenues.

A grand jury is currently considering an indictment of CIA officials for destroying 92 video tapes documenting interrogations of detainees, including Abu Zubaydah.  There is also reason to believe that the inquiry may extend to determining if the interrogations occurred before the authorization was given.  In Italy, two dozen CIA officials are being tried in absentia for a rendition that occurred in 2003.  Spain has opened an investigation of high-level Bush officials that authorized torture.  And Binyam Mohammed is still using the British courts to try to get information about his rendition.  Other lawsuits are also working their way through the United States court system.

Mayer also notes that earlier this month, “Philip Mudd, Obama’s nominee for a top Homeland Security post, withdrew from consideration after it became clear that his Senate confirmation would turn into a fight over his previous role in the C.I.A.’s interrogation program.”

It looks like the Obama administration will have to confront this problem sooner rather than later.

House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) refused to make any further comments on the ongoing interrogation briefings saga today at her weekly press conference.

Pelosi said she continued to stand behind her comments last week when she said she was misled by the CIA on the harsh interrogation methods used against suspected terrorists.

“I don’t have anything more to say,” Pelosi said.

The speaker said at a heated press conference last week that CIA briefers in September 2002 did not inform her that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002. She said adviser Michael Sheehy was at a February 2003 briefing where he learned about the actual use of waterboarding on detainees. Pelosi also divulged at the press conference last week that she was informed of the February 2003 letter sent from Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) to the CIA general counsel that questioned the interrogation methods.

Since her comments last week, CIA Director Leon Panetta rejected Pelosi’s accusation, and House Republicans pushed Pelosi to prove or retract her claims. The House also tried to pass a resolution yesterday that would have established a bipartisan panel to investigate Pelosi’s claims.

“What we are doing is staying on our course and not be distracted from it,” Pelosi said.

In a Gallup poll released yesterday, more Americans disapproved than approved of Pelosi’s handling of the interrogation matter.

It has become clear that enhanced interrogation techniques were used on Abu Zubaydah before the first legal memos authorizing their use had been written by the Office of Legal Counsel.  Zubaydah entered U.S. custody on March 28, 2002.  The Justice Department issued its first memo on torture on Aug. 1, over 4 months later.

In April and May, which fall between the capture of Zubaydah and the Bybee memo, “contractors had to keep requesting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods.”  That quote is from former FBI agent Ali Soufan’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary administrative oversight and the courts subcommittee last week.  Soufan testified that many of the techniques authorized by the Bybee memo were used during this period, including nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and extreme temperatures during interrogations.

Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff received an e-mail last month from a CIA spokesperson saying that:

The Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Department of Justice wasn’t the first piece of legal guidance for the [interrogation] program.

So where was the CIA getting this legal guidance?

Well, Ari Shapiro at NPR reports that:

One source with knowledge of Zubaydah’s interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, [psychologist James] Mitchell [the aforementioned CIA contractor] would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA’s counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration’s legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

A new document is consistent with the source’s account.

The CIA sent the ACLU a spreadsheet late Tuesday as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The log shows the number of top-secret cables that went from Zubaydah’s black site prison to CIA headquarters each day. Through the spring and summer of 2002, the log shows, someone sent headquarters several cables a day.

“At the very least, it’s clear that CIA headquarters was choreographing what was going on at the black site,” says Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who sued to get the document. “But there’s still this question about the relationship between CIA headquarters and the White House and the Justice Department and the question of which senior officials were driving this process.”

Gonzales did not respond to a request for comment through his lawyer.

It’s important to note that Gonzales was not Attorney General at this time, he was White House counsel to President George W. Bush.

You can watch Shapiro’s interview on The Rachel Maddow Show last night below:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) lashed out at the CIA for “misleading” her about the harsh interrogation methods used against suspected terrorists, admitting for the first time that she knew about the waterboarding of detainees several years ago, The Washington Post reported this afternoon.

Pelosi said she wants the CIA to release detailed reports on her September 2002 briefing, where she continued to maintain that she was not informed about the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah 83 times in August 2002, The Post reported. She said adviser Michael Sheehy was at a February 2003 briefing where he learned about the actual use of waterboarding on detainees, The Post said.

“At every step of the way the administration was misleading the Congress,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference.

She also said she was informed of the February 2003 letter sent from Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) to the CIA general counsel that questioned the interrogation methods, The Post reported.

“That is the proper person to send the letter,” Pelosi said at the press conference. “My job (as minority leader) was to change the majority in Congress.”

Ex-FBI interrogator Ali Soufan and a former State Department counselor Philip Zelikow told the Senate Judiciary administrative oversight and the courts subcommittee that the harsh interrogation methods used against terror suspects were abusive and did not help in the battle against al Qaeda.

Zelikow, who advised then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, questioned the legality of the harsh interrogations in a May 2005 memo to the Justice Department, which he claimed was lost by the Bush administration. He said at the hearing today that his memo has been found as he continued to stand behind the advice he gave to Main Justice.

“The U.S. government adopted an unprecedented program of coolly calculated dehumanizing abuse and physical torment to extract information,” Zelikow said before the subcommittee. “This was a mistake, perhaps a disastrous one.”

Soufan — who interrogated suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah — said harsh techniques including nudity and sleep deprivation were “borderline torture” that did not work. He added that he was not involved with the 83 times Zubaydah was waterboarded.

“These techniques, from an operation perspective, are ineffective slow and unreliable, and as result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda,” Soufan said from behind a curtain that concealed his identity.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) condemned waterboarding – that was also used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Republican said although Bush officials weren’t perfect, they did not break any laws when they authorized the harsh interrogation methods.

“They made mistakes,” Graham said. “They took a very aggressive interpretation of the law.”

Democrats present including Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) disputed the legality of the harsh interrogation methods.

Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the authorization of the interrogation techniques a “fundamental breakdown of the rule of law.”  Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Bush administration legal opinions on the methods were discounted in Supreme Court decisions.

Graham argued that the interrogations could have saved lives, and forcing the executive branch into compliance with the Army Field Manual when dealing with interrogations could have a chilling effect on the president. Interrogators were acting in compliance with the Army Field Manual at the time the harsh interrogations were conducted. A 2006 version of the guide prohibited waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods.

“If we restrict ourselves to the field manual, then shame on us,” Graham said. “It is a guide for soldiers on the field.”

Whitehouse, who chairs the subcommittee, said there is no evidence that harsh interrogation methods helped elicit pertinent information from suspected terrorists.

“We were told that torturing detainees was justified by American lives saved – saved as a result of actionable intelligence produced on the waterboard,” Whitehouse said. “This is far from clear. Nothing I have seen as a member of Intelligence Committee convinces me this was the case.”

In addition to Soufan and Zelikow, professors David Luban, Robert Turner and Jeffrey Addicott testified at the hearing. Only Turner, associate director of the Center for National Security Law, agreed with Graham that the Bush administration made mistakes, but did not break the law.

Luban, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the memos authored by then-DOJ Office of Legal Counsel lawyers Jay Bybee, John Yoo and Steven Bradbury were “a legal train wreck.”

“Unfortunately, the interrogation memos fall far short of professional advice and independent judgment,” Luban said. “They involved a selective and in place deeply eccentric reading of the law.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told a packed Judiciary subcommittee hearing today on torture that he does not endorse the use of waterboarding in the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

The Republican maintained that the Bush administration did not break any laws when it authorized the harsh interrogation methods, but Bush officials weren’t perfect.

“They made mistakes,” Graham said. “They took a very aggressive interpretation of the law.”

UPDATE AT 11:57 a.m.

Ex-FBI agent Ali Soufan — who interrogated suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah — said harsh techniques including nudity and sleep deprivation were “borderline torture” that did not work. He added that he was not involved with the waterboarding of Zabuydah.

“These techniques, from an operation perspective, are ineffective slow and unreliable, and as result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda,” Soufan said from behind a curtain that concealed his identity.

House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was informed in 2003 that waterboarding was used against terrorism suspects but stayed mum out of consideration for proper lawmaking channels, a person with close ties to the California Democrat told Politico in an article published today.

We previously reported that Pelosi said she was only aware of the Bush administration’s authorization of the harsh interrogation methods, and was not informed of the actual use of the techniques. However, Pelosi aide Michael Sheehy and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, were briefed on the waterboarding used on alleged terrorist Abu Zubaydah, according to a document on the briefings released last week.

Harman wrote a letter to the CIA’s general counsel in 2003 to protest the waterboarding used, according to Politico. Sheehy notified Pelosi of the letter, and she said she supported the letter, but did not sign her name on the letter, the Pelosi insider told Politico.

“She felt that the appropriate response was the letter from Harman, because Jane was the one who was briefed,” said the person told Politico. Pelosi “never got briefed on it personally, and when Harman got a ‘no response’ from the CIA, there was nothing more that could be done.”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney continued to stand behind the the Bush administration’s authorization of waterboarding in the interrogation of suspected terrorists when he went on a conservative North Dakota talk show yesterday. The full transcript from the interview is here.

Cheney said waterboarding was a last resort and was limited to three people that have previously been identified as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The memos released last month outlining the harsh interrogation methods  stated that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah underwent the procedure about 83 times.

“We resorted … to waterboarding, which is the source of much of the controversy, with only three individuals. In those cases, it was only after we’d gone through all the other steps of the process,” he said on the show. “The way the whole program was set up was very careful, to use other methods and only to resort to the enhanced techniques in those special circumstances.”

Cheney also repeated calls for the Obama administration to release documents that he claims show the benefits of the interrogation methods.

“If anybody takes a look at the record, they’ll find that we had significant success as a result of these policies,” he said on the show. “One way to nail that down is that there are two documents in particular that I personally have read and know about that are still classified in that National Archives.”

House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) appears to have known more about the harsh interrogation methods used against terrorism suspects than she previously let on, ABC News reported last night.

Pelosi was told about the “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on alleged terrorist Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a Director of National Intelligence report sent to the Senate Intelligence Committee members among other members of Congress and obtained by ABC News. Although it is unclear what interrogation methods were discussed with Pelosi, one of the “torture memos” released last month said Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times.

The House speaker previously said she was only aware of the Bush administration’s authorization of the interrogation methods described as torture by many Democrats. She was, however, not aware of the actual use of the techniques, she said.

“In that or any other briefing . . . we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used,” Pelosi said at an April news conference. “What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel . . . opinions that they could be used, but not that they would.”

Pelosi spokesperson Brendan Daly disputed the report to The Los Angeles Times.

“As this document shows, the speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002,” he told the L.A. Times. “The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not been used.”

The L.A. Times went on to say there were 40 briefings with members of Congress including then-Senate Intelligence Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and then-Senate Intelligence ranking member Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) about the authorized interrogation methods.