He had barely been seated at the witness table when a group of protestors bearing signs with pictures of children killed by U.S. drones and slogans saying “BRENNAN = DRONE KILLING” and “BRENNAN: A NATIONAL SECURITY RISK,” started kicking up a rumpus. “When you kill people, you are a threat to democracy,” one woman shouted. Looking straight ahead, Brennan took a drink of water and tried his best to look unruffled. For a fifty-seven-year-old hardened by twenty-five years in the C.I.A. and four years in the White House heading the country’s counterterrorism efforts, it can’t have been too hard.
Once the first set of demonstrators was ejected, it quickly became clear that most of the Senators on the panel were much more supportive than Code Pink had been. Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, who heads the Intelligence Committee, seemed to see her role as making sure Brennan got through unscathed. She began by claiming that during the past few years, the annual number of civilian casualties from drone strikes has been in the single digits—a figure many intelligence experts and monitoring groups regard as laughably low. As Feinstein was speaking, more demonstrators started hooting and hollering. When it happened for a fifth time, Feinstein ordered the Capitol Hill police to clear the room and invited Brennan to join her in a back room. “I speak for the mothers,” one of the protesters shouted as she was frog-marched out. “We are killing children… the children of Pakistan and Yemen. We are making more enemies.”
That was about the last serious note of dissension about drones for a couple of hours. Although a good number of Senators seemed exercised about the White House’s tardiness in turning over its legal rationale for assassinating American citizens, few, if any, of them appeared to have any more fundamental qualms about the drone program. Brennan didn’t express any, either. “The people who were standing up here have a misleading view of what it is we do,” he said, referring to the protesters. They “don’t understand the agonies we go through to avoid collateral damage.” Under questioning from Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, the most Brennan was willing to concede was that, on occasions when American drones did kill the wrong person, or people, the United States should fess up. “We need to acknowledge it to our foreign partners,” he said. “We need to acknowledge it publicly.”
That’s all right, then. With all parties agreed on the necessity of taking out potentially dangerous Islamists, even if that might involve the odd fatal error, the toughest questions revolved about Brennan’s role, or lack thereof, in the C.I.A.’s torture program following 9/11, when he was a top official at the agency. In previous public comments, Brennan has said he disapproved of the interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, that the C.I.A. used, and that he let colleagues know of his objections. Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican, appeared skeptical. Pointing out that Brennan had been cc’d on at least fifty internal memos about the interrogation methods, Chambliss asked him what steps he had taken to stop them. Brennan conceded that he hadn’t taken any, citing the pretty lame excuse that they were being used in another part of the agency.
That wasn’t his only lame answer. Twice, Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, asked Brennan whether he believed waterboarding was torture. Brennan wouldn’t be drawn in. “I have a personal view that it’s reprehensible,” he said, before adding, “I am not a lawyer, I can’t give an answer.” In a courtroom, a sharp-witted attorney would surely have asked Brennan how, then, he could be sure that using drones to kill Americans, or, for that matter, foreigners, was legal. But this was more of a courtship than a cross-examination.
About the only time Brennan was put on the defensive was when he was asked about some comments from 2007, when he said that so-called enhanced interrogation techniques had provided valuable intelligence that saved lives. Since then, he has backtracked on this statement. Several senators repeatedly asked him about an incredibly lengthy, classified report their committee has produced, which concludes that the torture techniques didn’t yield much, if any, valuable intelligence. Brennan said he’d read the first three hundred pages of the report and found them disturbing. He promised to read the other fifty-seven hundred pages sometime soon. “Now, I have to determine what the truth is,” he said. “I don’t know what the truth is.”
Senator Chambliss also drew attention to the fact that, back in 1998, when he was the C.I.A. station chief in Saudi Arabia, Brennan had opposed a raid intended to capture Osama bin Laden, going so far as to cable his objections to Sandy Berger, who was national-security adviser at the time. Brennan didn’t deny it. He pointed out that other senior officials at the agency, including George Tenet, the director at the time, had also been against the idea. “It was not well-grounded in intelligence … and its chances of success were minimal,” he explained. Other G.O.P.ers quizzed Brennan about suggestions that, deliberately or inadvertently, he had tipped off the media about an intelligence operation aimed at Ibrahim al-Asiri, a Saudi national who is believed to the main bomb-maker for Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. “I have never provided classified information to reporters,” Brennan averred. “I frequently work with reporters, and with editors, to keep out of the public domain some of the country’s most valuable secrets.”
Toward the end of the hearing, the Republican Susan Collins, of Maine, finally asked Brennan a couple of pressing questions about the drone program. Citing recent statements from Michael Hayden, a former C.I.A. director, and the retired General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded U.S. forces in Afghanistan, she asked the nominee if the targeted killings weren’t generating a backlash in Muslim lands and creating new terrorists. While acknowledging the need to be “very mindful” of such a development, Brennan insisted that the worries were unfounded. In many areas where drones have been used, he said, the locals “have welcomed the work the U.S. government has done to rid them of the Al Qaeda cancer that exists.” Perhaps because he was at pains to avoid coming across as a Dr. Strangelove figure, Brennan did concede that drones were but one aspect of effective counterterrorism. In Somalia, he pointed out, the U.S. government was also working with local organizations to root out Islamic extremists, and “good progress” has been made. “It’s not just a kinetic solution to this, by any means,” he added.
After that, it was largely a matter of glad-handing and welcoming the Jesuit-trained boy from Jersey to his new job. Even some of the Republicans joined in the lovefest: presented with a final opportunity to grill Brennan, Senator Richard Burr, of North Carolina, said, “I am going to be brief. I notice you are on your fourth glass of water, and I don’t want to be accused of waterboarding.” Senator Jay Rockefeller, a Democrat of West Virginia, said that, in his thirty years on the committee, he had never encountered a more open, forthright, and accommodating C.I.A. nominee. Finally, as six o’clock drew near, Feinstein closed the hearing by echoing Rockefeller’s comments. Turning to Brennan, she said: “I think you going to be a fine leader for the C.I.A.”
Original Article
Source: newyorker.com
Author: John Cassidy
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