MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" Interview With Rep. Joe Sestak, Rep Dan Lungren
Interview
MSNBC "Hardball With Chris Matthews" Interview With Rep. Joe Sestak, Rep Dan Lungren
Interviewer: Chris Matthews
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MR. MATTHEWS: Joining us right now is U.S. Congressman Joe Sestak. He's a Democrat of Pennsylvania. He sits on the Armed Services Committee. And U.S. Congressman Dan Lungren has been with us so often. He's a Republican of California who sits on Homeland Security and on Judiciary.
Congressman Sestak, you first. Now, this is a tricky situation. You weren't in those briefings. But is Nancy Pelosi being dragged into this story? Is she being made to share the blame for the torture?
REP. SESTAK: You know, I really think what we have to do is what I said when this all began -- stop this "He said, she said" stuff and establish a commission, an outside commission, because we are too partisan, that actually begins to learn what occurred.
For example, Chris, back when you worked for Senator Church, as you were leaving his staff, they established a Church commission because of the CIA abuses of assassinations. What happened was the recommendation that we have Select Intelligence Committees that were established. And let's find out, why did it occur that evidently some were briefed (or some weren't ?).
So my point of all this is, let's -- I understand President Obama does want to go forward, but if we don't clean up what occurred and find out, we'll just be the Hatfields and McCoys, you know, coming back at each other. We won't learn anything for the public good.
MR. MATTHEWS: Yeah, actually, I didn't work for Senator Church, but I did respect him. Let me go to this other question --
REP. SESTAK: But we did establish the Intelligence Committees. Let's find out why --
MR. MATTHEWS: Oh, I know all about that. I was a student of that. I did watch closely what they tried to do to clean up the mess over there.
Let's take a look at Speaker Pelosi here and what she says about that CIA briefing and how she said she was, well, lied to -- if not her word, certainly her meaning here.
HOUSE SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): (From videotape.) I'm telling you that they talked about interrogations that they had done and said, "We want to use enhanced techniques, and we have legal opinions that say that they are okay. We are not using waterboarding." That's the only mention, that they were not using it. And we now know that earlier they were. So, yes, I am saying that they are misleading -- that the CIA was misleading the Congress.
MR. MATTHEWS: Wow. Let's go -- here's House Minority Leader John Boehner today on this very topic as well, jumping in on this story.
HOUSE MINORITY LEADER JOHN BOEHNER (R-CA): (From videotape.) It's hard for me to imagine that anyone in our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress. I don't know what motivation they would have.
MR. MATTHEWS: It's hard to keep up with this all, Congressman Lungren, but here he goes. I know everybody has a political point of view. I'm trying to follow the narrative here. The first account from the speaker was that she was told they had authorization to use these enhanced interrogation techniques -- waterboarding, et cetera -- but they hadn't used them yet. We found out later that they had used them.
Then we find out from her staffer several months later, or she does as well, that they are using them. And now we find out in this most recent statement that they explicitly said they were not using waterboarding. I don't know; it's hard to keep up. Your thoughts, your assessment?
REP. LUNGREN: Well, it just proves that it's tough to be a Monday morning quarterback when you were actually on the field the previous Saturday. I mean, the fact of the matter is she was the representative of the Democratic Party on the Intelligence Committee that got the top-flight briefings.
I previously served on the Intelligence Committee, although I was not a ranking member. I've sat through briefings from the CIA and other intelligence agencies. It is beyond belief -- at least you have to be pretty naive, in my judgment, to think that the top person of either party would sit there with the briefing and not ask questions and accept the fact that they'd had explained to them some enhanced interrogation techniques and never believed they were going to be used. Why would they be informing them that they were going through the process for it? I mean, you know, you've been around the block here in Washington, D.C. Does that sound credible to you?
MR. MATTHEWS: It seems to me that if they briefed her -- both of you, gentlemen -- if they briefed her, they did so with the purpose of getting her tacit approval, and that's what they thought they got. Maybe they didn't get it.
Here's Porter Goss, by the way. He was the top Republican. He was the chairman at that time. Here's his account of that briefing, which he shared with Nancy Pelosi at the time. "I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed, or that specific techniques such as waterboarding were never mentioned."
So, I mean, this is so hard for you gentlemen. Congressman Sestak, again, it's tough. Neither one of you gentlemen were in that briefing. But we're hearing a "He said, she said." On the one side, you've got the "he's" in this case -- I think they're all "he's." The CIA briefer, I assume, maybe just because they're mostly "he's" over there -- who knows -- he says that she was briefed; in fact, briefed on the fact that waterboarding was used and had been used, period, simple as that. "Here it is, Congresswoman. Waterboarding's been used."
The ranking Republican, who was the chair at that time, Porter Goss, who later joined the Intelligence Committee itself, he said that she was briefed very directly on the use of waterboarding in the past tense. Now she says continually how she was never told it was used, only that it was authorized.
Stick to this point if you can, Congressman Sestak. Is this fighting over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or are we really into a problem here of testimony?
REP. SESTAK: Yeah, we are into an issue of accountability. I believe that's the most dire issue we have here in Washington, D.C. is congressional-executive branch accountability, whether it's by an individual or whether we have a commission that looks into this.
Look, it is just -- it is a thousand angels on a head, to some degree. We aren't going to know how to improve it. Did her secrecy oath prevent her from saying it or not? There's only one way, Chris, to get to this, and we've got some debris in our wake. And before this ship of state can continue on, we have got to have a nonpartisan -- that is, a bipartisan -- but it should be retired judges or someone, keep it out of Congress because of all this fighting you hear, and have people investigate this and look into it so we can apply lessons learned for the future. Can Congress -- should it, how could it, do better? That's the issue --
MR. MATTHEWS: Okay, your question --
REP. SESTAK: -- besides the executive branch.
REP. LUNGREN: Chris --
MR. MATTHEWS: You want to have a commission? Do you want witnesses speaking under oath --
REP. SESTAK: Yes, they should have it --
MR. MATTHEWS: -- Mr. Sestak?
REP. SESTAK: Here's what they do -- two things.
MR. MATTHEWS: Including the speaker?
REP. SESTAK: Two things --
MR. MATTHEWS: Including the speaker?
REP. SESTAK: Two things. The way it is in the military, if an airplane crashes, there's two investigations -- one criminal, court- martial, to see if something should be done.
MR. MATTHEWS: Right.
REP. SESTAK: And the Justice Department should turn that over to the court. On the other hand, we give immunity to everyone, the same people, to come before the commissions to say, "What can we learn so that we don't crash again?" And we can't crash again like this in the United States.
MR. MATTHEWS: Well, if there's immunity in the second case and the first one is a criminal matter, then they have to be under oath in both cases, right?
REP. SESTAK: Yes.
REP. LUNGREN: Chris --
MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Sestak, you would put the speaker under oath here as well -- the speaker?
REP. SESTAK: I'd put anyone in America under oath if we can help improve good governance and accountability.
REP. LUNGREN: Hey, Chris -- Chris --
MR. MATTHEWS: Mr. Lungren, would you put these people under oath, including the speaker, in this regard --
REP. LUNGREN: If we're going to --
MR. MATTHEWS: -- in this truth commission?
REP. LUNGREN: If we're going to go down this line -- I don't believe in a truth commission, but if we're going to go down this line, it's got to be the legislative leaders as well as the executive branch leaders to know what they're doing -- know what they did.
But actually, what we ought to be thinking about is the context in which these decisions were made. We forget what we were at. We were within a year of 9/11. We were having attacks around the world. There were people dying in other countries, allies of ours. We were trying to obtain the best information we had at the time. Now, all of a sudden, people have forgotten that and they want to make judgments outside the context of what happened at that time. And I think that leads us to erroneous conclusions.
Secondly, remember what happened with the Church commission. Yes, we had recommendations that came forward with respect to intelligence committees, but we also had a decimation of a whole generation of operatives in the CIA HUMINT -- human intelligence. And when the 9/11 commission pointed out that that was one of the great failings of our intelligence prior to 9/11, we lost a generation of people that could get us information.
MR. MATTHEWS: Okay.
REP. LUNGREN: And I fear we could have that same thing happen again. And that will not only affect us; it will affect our children and our grandchildren.
MR. MATTHEWS: Okay. Well, I agree with you on many points here. But again, let's not lose the truth here. Denying a person oxygen is torture.
Thank you very much, U.S. Congressman Joe Sestak and U.S. Congressman Dan Lungren.
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