President Barack Obama artfully dodged a request from Chilean reporters Tuesday for an apology for CIA meddling in Latin America, but he caved in to another demand.
 
“President Obama, can you take a photograph with the Chilean press, please?” one reporter asked at the end of an Oval Office statement by Obama and Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.
 
“A photograph with the press?” Obama asked. “OK, why don’t we go outside?”
 
The U.S. leader was less forthcoming on the matter of apologizing for the CIA’s long history of meddling in the affairs of Latin American governments.
 
The CIA has denied direct involvement in the overthrow and death of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 but has acknowledged trying to prevent him from assuming the presidency three years earlier.
 
And it has acknowledged supporting the military junta that took control of country after the coup.
 
Bachelet, then a college student, was imprisoned and tortured following the coup, as was her mother. Her father, who had been an air force general in the Allende government, was imprisoned and tortured to death.
 
Asked if it was time for an apology for the CIA’s activities in Chile, Obama said, “I’m interested in going forward, not looking backward.”
 
“I think that the United States has been an enormous force for good in the world. I think there have been times where we’ve made mistakes,” he said. “But I think that what is important is looking at what our policies are today, and what my administration intends to do in cooperating with the region.”
 
That said, he did manage a chuckle at U.S. expense — over the old joke that there’s never been a coup in the United States because it has no American Embassy.
 
Someone else told the joke, Bachelet insisted after it was attributed to her.
 
“I just said it was a good joke,” she said.
 
“Yes, it is,” said Obama, laughing.
 
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Photo credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque (Obama, Bachelet pose with Chilean traveling press)

                                      There was political theater, drama, but no surprise ending on Thursday on a topic involving spies, torture and truth in the Democratic-led U.S. House of Representatives.

Republicans again ripped into Speaker Nancy Pelosi for accusing the CIA of misleading Congress — and her fellow Democrats quickly blocked their bid for a bipartisan probe into her truthfulness. The vote was 252-172.

“The Republicans … have been focused on the politics of personal destruction,” House Democratic leader House Steny Hoyer said afterward.

Hoyer also accused Republicans of trying to divert attention from the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners as well as Democratic efforts this year to revamp healthcare and move the nation toward energy independence.

Democrats rushed to Pelosi’s defense earlier this week, saying they believe her statement that the CIA did not inform her at a September 2002 briefing that it had used waterboarding, simulated drowning widely denounced as torture, during interrogations of suspected enemy combatants.

Prior to the House vote, Republican leader John Boehner, who has pounded Pelosi for saying the CIA had misled Congress, said, “Getting to the bottom of this quickly is important.”

“The speaker has made a very serious charge,” Boehner told reporters. He added it has had “a chilling effect on our U.S. intelligence officials around the world.”

Hoyer fired back by citing what he said were remarks by a number of Republicans, including Boehner, in recent years critical of the CIA.  On Wednesday, Senator Arlen Specter, a former Republican who recently switched to Democrat, defended Pelosi — known as one of the most liberal Democrats in the House and a favorite target of conservative critics.

“The CIA has a very bad record when it comes to — I was about to say ‘candid;’ that’s too mild - to honesty,” Specter, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told members of the American Law Institute.

REUTERS/Stephen Hird (House speaker Nancy Pelosi at No. 10 Downing Street after meeting British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on May 12)

CIA Director Leon Panetta is no stranger to Washington political drama, and he showed on Friday that he wasn’t going to watch from the sidelines while Congress threw stones at his spy agency.

No names were used, but Panetta left no doubt he was responding to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s charge that the CIA misled Congress about interrogation tactics such as waterboarding that were used on terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11 attacks.

In a publicly released note to CIA employees headlined “Turning Down the Volume,”   Panetta said the political debate on interrogation “reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress.”

“Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values,” said Panetta, a former congressman and President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff.

He had some blunt advice for employees of an agency that has come under increased public scrutiny since the Sept. 11 attacks over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that were never found and for its handling of terrorism suspects: ”Ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst (Panetta at swearing-in ceremony at CIA headquarters Feb. 19)

President Barack Obama’s decision to release memos on the CIA’s use of “enhanced” interrogation methods on terrorism suspects appears to have started a trend in some unexpected quarters.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney,  who used to have his own “undisclosed location” and seemed to thrive on secrecy, is joining the bandwagon to let the sun shine in.

Cheney told Fox News that what bothered him about the disclosure of the legal memos was that they didn’t put out the memos that showed that the interrogations produced a successful result.

“There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified,” Cheney said.

“I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify these memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was,” he said.

Yes that’s right… Cheney is asking that secret documents be released to the public.

But wait, this train is still adding cars.

Congresswoman Jane Harman is calling on the Justice Department to release all transcripts and material, unredacted, involving her, after media reports that the FBI or NSA secretly wiretapped her conversations while she was on the House Intelligence Committee.

Conspiracy buffs better watch out. If the government declassifies enough material, those theories on JFK, Elvis, and Roswell may well be doomed.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama and CIA director Panetta at CIA), Reuters/Jason Reed (Cheney and Bush in January)

Who gets the billions?

The incoming Obama administration is preparing a major overhaul of the $700 billion financial bailout amid rising complaints in Congress that the payouts are not going to the right people.

The Washington Post reports that Treasury Secretary nominee Timothy Geithner and top Obama economic adviser Larry Summers have been looking at ways to broaden the bailout to include more help for homeowners facing foreclosure as well as to generate loans for municipalities, small businesses and consumers — and not just the financial giants that helped to create the mess.

Obama, meanwhile, is expected to formally announce his picks for top intelligence posts at a news conference around 10:45 a.m. EST. Obama’s choice to head the CIA, former chief of staff in the Clinton White House Leon Panetta, has drawn fire from some security insiders who complain that he lacks experience on intelligence matters.

Obama’s choice for labor secretary, California Rep. Hilda Solis, begins her confirmation hearing in the Senate, which may give clues on how unions — which largely backed Obama in the Nov. 4 election — will fare in the new administration.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mark Blinch (crumpled dollar bill)

WASHINGTON - It’s not a secret: the top two U.S. spies are offering to stay on for at least a while under president-elect Barack Obama.
 
What remains a mystery, however, is whether the offer by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden, will be accepted, given their identification with controversial Bush administration policies on electronic spying and treatment of terrorism suspects.
 
The Washington Post reported this week that McConnell and Hayden expected to be replaced early in the Obama administration.
 
McConnell — who gave Obama his first full intelligence briefing last week — told an awards ceremony in Washington on Wednesday that U.S. spy agencies would be in good hands under “the new guys.”
 
“Universally, very-well informed people, very smart, very strategic,” is how he described Obama’s team. “All the signs, at the moment, are positive,” he said.
 
Then came the pitch: “The message that both General Hayden and I have delivered to the incoming administration is, we view ourselves as professionals — as apolitical professionals — and we are available to serve at the pleasure of the president,” McConnell said.
 
“If they ask us to stay for some reason, for a period of time, we would stay and assist them in the transition,” he said.
 
“If they choose others, that’s fine, we’re happy with that; we have other things to do,” he said.
 
McConnell’s position as the U.S. spy chief is new, created under a post-Sept. 11 intelligence reorganization, and like other political jobs has no fixed term. There is, however, some precedent for CIA directors to serve overlapping administrations. George Tenet, a Bill Clinton appointee, remained in office under President George W. Bush until 2004.
 
Hayden has said little about his plans, but also noted in a letter to employees last week that he serves at the pleasure of the president.
 
The Post said influential congressional Democrats opposed McConnell and Hayden’s staying on because they publicly backed Bush policies on interrogation and electronic surveillance.
 
It said, however, other Democrats and many intelligence experts gave high marks to the intelligence leaders for restoring stability and professionalism, and that the Obama camp had given no signs of its plans.
 
McConnell said the Post article had an “alarming headline” but delivered a “reasonable message.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Larry Downing (McConnell, left, and Hayden at a Senate panel hearing Feb. 5)