Here is a clip of Dick Cheney discussing the secret-but-becoming-unsecret Other Plan To Kill Muslins (OPTKM) with CIA Field Ops head Eric “The Hulk” Bana, who simply must not tell Congressional leaders about these things. Now the Guardian has new information about OPTKM, and by golly something just seems to be missing. MORE »

Nancy Pelosi reiterated during a press conference this morning that when she received a CIA briefing on “enhanced interrogations techniques” in the fall of 2002, she was not told about waterboarding, but she was told that everything else they were doing was LEGAL, backed by LEGAL OPINIONS. This contradicts a CIA memo released last week showing that Pelosi knew about waterboarding and loved it so much. Pelosi and the CIA are each calling each other terrible liars. They’re both right! MORE »

The new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran “concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.” No word yet on whether this will affect Bush’s plans to invade Iran for working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb. [NYT]

Mike McConnell, the national intelligence director, said today that he will not release any of the key findings from the upcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iran to the public. Because of the terrorists and the Iraq and 9/11 or something… with us or against us… shut up. [CNN]

So, this guy? He is your Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Donald Kerr, and he would like you to trust him and all the nameless, faceless bureaucrats reading your e-mail, listening in on your phone calls and checking your financial accounts. Because, see, while it’s fine for them to be anonymous, he needs you to understand that you really don’t need to be, because “privacy” has nothing to do with anonymity anymore! MORE »

Diplohater Condi Rice and more than a dozen intelligence officials “must testify about their conversations with pro-Israel lobbyists, a federal judge ruled Friday in an espionage case.” Two former American Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbyists are being tried for passing on classified Pentagon information to Israeli people. But we assume the judge won’t rule against them, because that would be anti-Semitic. [AP via WP]

The NSA, the domestic intelligence agency that really wishes you still hadn’t heard of it, was frustrated by their growing inability to keep their close-kept secrets out of the newspapers. So between 2002 and 2004 they held some off-the-record “media seminars” where they explained to reporters that they really shouldn’t report anything they know about the NSA and its many probably unconstitutional programs. And then, a couple years later, the New York Sun is reporting the details of those seminars. Meta! MORE »

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The CIA has decided to declassify a number of its most terrible secrets. “The family jewels” is the name given to a folder — a literal folder, because government malfeasance is occasionally hackily cinematic — prepared in the ’70s when then-CIA head James R. Schlesinger wished to know what else, exactly, Sy Hersh would end up revealing about his own agency.

Later Gerry Ford wished to know the same thing, and though Henry Kissinger advised him to just forget it, he insisted on seeing the terrible secrets for himself. Then he was so depressed about the huge mess he’d inherited that he pardoned Nixon and lost the election to Mr. Rogers.

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Valerie “Plame” Wilson worked for the CIA for exactly “20 years, 7 days,” with “six years, one month and 29 days of overseas service,” according to the CIA via the Congressional Record. MORE »

* America’s mayor took some pretty shiny payola from America’s team. [Political Wire]
* Lack of a major league club in Jersey just means they hand him an envelope stuffed with electoral delegates instead. [Atlantic Online]
* James Sensenbrenner: still the biggest asshole on The Hill. [TPM Muckraker]
* Tom Tancredo’s failures as a presidential candidate contribute to already substantial failures as a congressman. [Denver Post]
* Terrorists continue to target nations’ hand-release infrastructure. [Passport]
* Intelligence agencies maintain “it’s easier to get forgiveness than permission.” [Secrecy News]
* Fox News wrongly accused Hillary Clinton of only recently starting to dress badly. [Media Matters]

The long, slow roll-out of George Tenet’s self-serving, Cheney-trashing book/60 Minutes appearance continues with the requisite Times advance copy-based front page story. MORE »

George Tenet’s book will undoubtedly be self-serving bullshit, but the best kind of self-serving bullshit: the kind that’s full of hilarious attacks against everyone he used to work with! MORE »