Mike Levin: “the obstruction here should be directly laid at the feet of the administration which, for 1 year, refused access to an…”

“the obstruction here should be directly laid at the feet of the administration which, for 1 year, refused access to an FBI agent who wrote a critically important memo regarding detainee abuse at Guantanamo and whether Ms. Fisher had any knowledge of that and, if so, what she did relative to that knowledge. The FBI agent said in the interview that he recalled Ms. Fisher attended only one of the weekly meetings, which dealt primarily with the relationship between a particular high-value detainee and the 9/11 hijackers. He also stated that he had ``frequent conversations'' with David Nahmias, counsel to the Criminal Division's head, Mr. Chertoff. That is now the issue which comes before the Senate. Just a couple of months ago, it was finally provided to the Senate that an FBI agent says he had frequent conversations about the issue of interrogation techniques at Guantanamo with the counsel, the attorney to the head of the Criminal Division of which the current nominee was the deputy. This is the same David Nahmias named in that FBI agent's May 2004 e-mail regarding FBI concerns about aggressive DOD techniques. The FBI agent added that he specifically shared with Mr. Nahmias his view that interrogation methods used on one detainee were ``completely inappropriate.'' This is the same David Nahmias I have repeatedly sought to interview since May of 2005.…”