Obama picks waterboarding fan and liar as Director of National Intelligence

"I'm hesitating to set a standard here which will put in jeopardy some of the dedicated intelligence officers who checked to see that what they were doing was legal and then did what they were told to do," said Dennis C. Blair, nominated for the intelligence post, at his Senate confirmation hearing. He did declare, however, that "there will be no waterboarding on my watch. There will be no torture on my watch."

Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a member of the intelligence panel that held the hearing, said Mr. Blair's answer was "troubling" in comparison to Mr. Holder's clear statement last week.

Overall, senators expressed support for Mr. Blair, a retired admiral who spent 34 years in the Navy, and he is expected to be confirmed.

In a statement of solidarity with intelligence officers, Mr. Blair also said he didn't intend to "reopen the cases" of CIA officers who took part in an interrogation program that had been authorized by senior officials.

Mr. Blair was more vague when asked whether he would discipline senior officials who were involved in the CIA interrogation program or other activities that have come under criticism. "I intend to establish procedures and move forward, but there are some things in the past that have to be looked at," he said, making reference to an inspector general report that found fault with CIA's role in the shooting down of an airplane that was carrying Americans.

If confirmed, Mr. Blair will serve as co-chairman in an Obama administration review of interrogation techniques in the Army Field Manual. It is set to recommend changes to the manual with the goal of creating a unified policy for both military and intelligence interrogations. "If it has my way," Mr. Blair said, "it will be called the Manual for Government Interrogations."

The massacre took place on at the Liquica Catholic church in Indonesian-occupied East Timor two days before Blair met face-to-face with the Indonesian armed forces commander, Gen. Wiranto...

A classified US cable shows that rather than telling Wiranto to stop the killing, Blair invited Wiranto to be his guest in Hawaii, offered him new US military aid, and told the Indonesian general that he was "working hard" on his behalf, lobbying the US government to restore US military training aid for Indonesia....

Blair's support at that crucial April 8 [1999] meeting buoyed Wiranto, and his forces increased the Timor killings, which came to include new attacks on churches and clergy, mass arsons, and political rapes....

The Associated Press reported this month, in a January 9 dispatch: "Blair has said he only learned of the massacre a few days after the meeting."...

But now, contemporaneous records have emerged - from the US Embassy in Jakarta, and from the Catholic Church - showing that the massacre was publicly described by Timor's Bishop one day before the Blair-Wiranto meeting, and that while Blair was in Jakarta preparing for the meeting, US officials who were there with him were discussing the massacre in graphic detail.