A QUESTION DEMOCRATS CAN'T AFFORD TO HAVE ANSWERED:

Nominee Pulls Out as Role at CIA Is Studied: Interrogations of Suspects Are Cited (Peter Finn and Walter Pincus, 6/06/09, Washington Post)

A longtime CIA official chosen by President Obama to be the intelligence chief at the Department of Homeland Security withdrew from consideration yesterday after it became apparent that senators examining his nomination planned to scrutinize his role in the agency's interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Philip Mudd, a former deputy director at both the CIA's Office of Terrorism Analysis and the National Counterterrorism Center, was scheduled to appear next week before the Senate as the nominee for undersecretary of intelligence and analysis at Homeland Security. [...]

Over the Memorial Day recess, Mudd met with senior staff members of the Homeland Security panel whose interest was primarily how he would handle issues of intelligence sharing with state and local police units. When, near the end of a two-hour session, they went over Mudd's CIA positions from 2001 to 2005, it became apparent that questions about harsh interrogations, renditions and allegations that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda would have to be explored, according to a person at the session who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

"Since he was deputy director of the counterterrorism center, he was going to be asked whether interrogation produced useful intelligence, and if it didn't, why didn't he stop it?" the source said.