Fact Checking
While I think that the CIA claims about their briefing of Congress was made up out of whole cloth, people need to stop making unverified claims based on information from their “friends” in the CIA.
Tonight Keith Olbermann claimed that the CIA didn’t coin the term “enhanced interrogation techniques” until 2006. That is a bit odd, as a Google search turned up on the first page:
Dana Priest, Sunday, June 27, 2004, Washington Post, Page AO1: CIA Puts Harsh Tactics On Hold
The “enhanced interrogation techniques,” as the CIA calls them, include feigned drowning and refusal of pain medication for injuries. The tactics have been used to elicit intelligence from al Qaeda leaders such as Abu Zubaida and Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
The “good guys” in the media need to learn how to fact check, like bloggers do. Screw ups like this just help the “bad guys”.
Update: Apparently, based on Digby repeating the claim, it came from TPM Muckraker, and they are the ones who don’t fact check, which is not exactly a surprise to me after their performance in the Democratic primary.
2 comments
TPM Muckraker is a “throw stuff out there and see whether it checks out” sort of web site. The whole point of stuff being on TPM Muckraker rather than on TPM proper is that it’s stuff that hasn’t been checked out yet, and the folks who read TPM Muckraker are supposed to check it out and see if it’s true. In other words, folks who quote TPM Muckraker don’t quite get the concept… until things check out and migrate over to TPM proper, they’re just speculation that hasn’t yet been fact-checked, and thus no more accurate than the MSM (heh).
– Badtux the TPM-readin’ Penguin
Anyone who accepts anything put out by the CIA is a fool. The people at the CIA who talk to the media are PR hacks/lobbyists who don’t have the clearance to know anything.
The CIA has always misled Congress to get more money allocated for their operations, and there is a long history to show it.