Among Massachusetts pols of a certain age—an age which I, alas, have finally attained—the John F. Kennedy School of Government is fondly referred to as Loser U, a reference to the institution’s regular habit of providing landing pads to politicians who lost their last election. The heart of Loser U is the Harvard Institute of Politics, which offers fellowships to various luminaries from the worlds of politics and journalism. Ordinarily, this wouldn’t have anyone in the shebeen looking up from their pints, but the IOP has made a real three-ring circus out of its fellowship program this time around.

First, it brought aboard both Joe and Mika, which has established in me a terror that I might run into one or both of them on the Red Line. I have had many interesting experiences on the T. Several of them involved loud disputes over Communist space aliens. That’s one I might rather avoid. But things got even more interesting over the past couple of months.

The roster of IOP fellows in 2017 includes Benghazi faker Jason Chaffetz, professional political thug Corey Lewandowski, professional bad liar Sean Spicer, and run-of-the-mill wingnuts Mary Katherine Ham and Guy Benson. (You should keep all these names in mind the next time you read conservative whinging about how oppressed they are. This is a nice gig here.) And, while I was contemplating what Lewandowski could possibly “impact” on students other than a seminar on how to go goon on female reporters, the really heavy shoe dropped.

They announced that Chelsea Manning would be joining these folks for the semester.

And, yes, there was hell to pay. From, with profound apologies, Fox News.

“I'm loyal to Harvard, but I think I'll forego IOP events this fall. (I'd feel the same way if Chelsea Manning were still Bradley Manning.)” pundit Bill Kristol said. Manning replied: “Awesome ! can you ask @seanspicer to do the same ? #WeGotThis.”

(As you can see from the link, Leprechaun Bunny is also irate. No Bill Kristol and no Leprechaun Bunny. Life along the Charles must somehow go on.)

The most dramatic reaction came from former Bush CIA deputy director Michael Morell, who had been comfortably ensconced at Loser U himself. (Again, the Ivy League Liberal Elitist SWAT Teams fail in their mission.) Morell resigned and sent a noisy letter explaining why.

"Unfortunately, I cannot be part of an organization—The Kennedy School—that honors a convicted felon and leaker of classified information, Ms. Chelsea Manning, by inviting her to be a Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics."

Morell used to have a much stronger stomach than this. He was at CIA when the Bush Administration made the United States a country that tortured. (That he was kept on by the Obama administration is a stain on its reputation and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign should have ducked his phone call when he endorsed it.) He has continued to defend these crimes against humanity to this day. From the AP (via PBS):



While Morell says he is personally troubled by the harshest technique the CIA used on detainees, water boarding, he makes a case that agency leaders had no choice but to use what many consider torture in the years after the 9/11 attacks. He said such techniques saved American lives.

Staffers in the U.S. Senate made it clear that they considered Morell’s memoir of his time in the torture factory considerably dishonest. From the AP via Military Times:

But the Senate document challenges Morell's command of the facts. It says that when he was in charge of the CIA's response to the study, he asserted in a meeting with Feinstein that "I'm not in the weeds" when challenged on specific details. It adds that he told Feinstein he had not read the full, classified report. For example, Morell refers to Abu Zubaydeh, the first detainee who was waterboarded and brutalized, as a "senior al Qaeda figure." But that characterization is disputed by the CIA's own experts, who in 2006 published an intelligence assessment explaining that the CIA had "miscast Abu Zubaydah as a 'senior al-Qa'ida lieutenant.' " In his book, the Senate report argues, Morell conflated various terror plots attributed to al Qaida figures. For example, Morell wrote that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded and otherwise tortured by CIA interrogators, "was also planning to. send a team of Pakistanis to smuggle explosives into New York to target gas stations, railroad tracks, and bridges." The Senate report's fact-check responds: "Morell appears to be conflating several separate accounts," and it lays out various unconnected plots outlined in CIA records, some of which were dismissed by CIA analysts as wildly implausible. Of Morell's waterboarding contention, the Senate report cites a CIA interrogator who wrote that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah "held back" despite the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, adding "I'm ostracized whenever I suggest those two did not tell us everything. How dare I think KSM was holding back," the interrogator said.

Crises of conscience come at you fast.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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