RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
The House Intelligence Committee gathers later today for a hearing on the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes. You'll remember those are the video tapes made in 2002 which showed harsh interrogation techniques being used on two suspected terrorists. The news that the tapes even existed surfaced last December along with the news that they had been destroyed in 2005.
We're going to take a few minutes now to talk about the role of Congress in overseeing intelligence. To do that, we called Representative Jane Harman. She was the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when the CIA first told committee members it was planning to destroy one of those interrogation tapes.
Congresswoman Harman, good morning.
Representative JANE HARMAN (Democrat, California): Good morning, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Now, I have in front of me, a letter that you sent shortly after you were briefed, and you urged the CIA not to destroy this tape. What exactly did you say to them?
Rep. HARMAN: Well, I said that it would be ill-advised. That even if there were no legal requirement to keep the tape, it would reflect badly on the agency. I had been briefed in my first weeks as ranking member - that means senior Democrat at that time - on the committee, and I thought the proposed plan was bad, and put in writing my objections.
MONTAGNE: Now, even though you protested this plan to destroy these videotapes, put it on paper, why in the end couldn't Congress stop the CIA from destroying the tapes?
Rep. HARMAN: Well, I wish we had been able to stop them. We didn't know they were being destroyed. I assumed that because I weighed in against it as did, according to his statement - then Chairman, Porter Goss - who later became the director of the Central Intelligence Agency at the time they were destroyed, I assumed they would not be destroyed. There was no hint of they're being destroyed. In fact, I believe looking back on the things that I heard when I was still ranking member on the committee, I think the committee was misled by the CIA about those tapes. And we'll have to - someone will have to go through the transcripts and figure that out. But I think what was done was wrong. It may well have violated the law. And if people deliberately frustrated the will of the committee, I think they should be accountable.
MONTAGNE: Give us a general sense, if you will, of what it's like to be in those briefings, of the kind we're speaking about. I mean, can you take notes? Can you ask questions?
Rep. HARMAN: Well, one size doesn't fit all. There are briefings regularly of the committee. Some are much more controversial than others. But nonetheless, as far as notes go, you - I suppose one could take some notes but they would have to be carried around in a classified bag, which I don't personally own. You can't talk to anybody about what you've learned, so there's no ability to use committee staff, for example, to do research on some of the issues that are raised in these briefings. And the whole environment is not conducive to the kind of collaborative give and take that would make for much more successful oversight.
MONTAGNE: How easy or how difficult is it to act - for a congressperson in one of these briefings to act on what's being said there, what you're told?
Rep. HARMAN: It's not easy. The administration holds more cards than Congress does. But it is certainly doable. I hope I did it reasonably well in my years on the Intelligence Committee for a member to do a lot of research and push back, and say I don't know enough about that. I insist on somebody more high-level coming in and explaining that again. Show me the legal underpinnings for these. Tell me who approved that. And I have seen some very good hearings, both classified and unclassified in the intelligence area, and I would cite as a high-watermark the so-called joint inquiry, which was a combined hearing by the Senate and House Intelligence Committees, much of which was in public session into what went wrong in 9/11. We published a very, very thoughtful, thorough report.
MONTAGNE: Thank you very much for joining us.
Rep. HARMAN: Thank you, Renee.
MONTAGNE: Representative Jane Harman was a member of the House Intelligence Committee during both the Clinton and the Bush administrations. She joined us from Capitol Hill.