Daily News Channel
Actress Leah Remini has severed ties with the Church of Scientology, a source with knowledge of her decision said on Thursday, making her one of the most high-profile members to quit. Remini, best known for her role as Carrie Heffernan in the sitcom King of Queens, issued a statement following press reports that she had decided to leave the church.
I once met an old Vietnamese revolutionary in Hanoi by the name of Le Quynh Van. “My sight is poor,” he told me, “because Frenchmen shone bright lights into my eyes during interrogations.” It turned out that Van led a jailbreak from Con Son island 62 years ago.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that he does not believe Saddam Hussein was involved in the planning or execution of the September 11, 2001, attacks. He strongly defended the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, however, arguing that Hussein’s previous support for known terrorists was a serious danger after 9/11
The most successful interrogation of an Al-Qaeda operative by U.S. officials required no sleep deprivation, no slapping or “walling” and no waterboarding. All it took to soften up Abu Jandal, who had been closer to Osama bin Laden than any other terrorist ever captured, was a handful of sugar-free cookies
He’s the special agent who came in from the cold — and waded straight into the debate over the use of harsh interrogation techniques.
Top Bush administration officials gave the CIA approval to use waterboarding, a controversial interrogation technique, as early as 2002, a Senate intelligence report shows. On July 17, 2002, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, who later became secretary of state, said the CIA could proceed with “alternative interrogation methods,” including waterboarding, when questioning suspected al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah. The decision was contingent on the Justice Department’s determining the method’s legality.
In the wake of the release of the CIA torture memos, the Obama Administration already has its hands full with critics on the left who want senior Bush Administration officials prosecuted for the use of harsh interrogation techniques like water boarding. But thanks to former Vice President Dick Cheney, it has to deal with a different line of attack from the right. The growing chorus claims the Administration selectively chose which CIA memos to declassify, deliberately holding back documents that show “the success of the effort…specifically what we gained as a result of this activity,” as Cheney put it in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity Monday.
For a handful of CIA operatives who were on the frontlines of the war on terror in the early months and years after 9/11, it’s the stuff of nightmares. After all, they did their job as their political masters defined it, using tools and techniques approved by their lawyers
The Senate Intelligence Committee is preparing a review of the CIA’s controversial interrogation programs under the Bush White House, a Senate Democratic aide told CNN. The committee would look at how the agency carried out interrogation tactics and whether they provided useful information, the aide said.