CIA Finishes Its Torture Report Redactions As Relations With Senate Intelligence Committee Have Become 'Strained'

from the shouldn't-they-always-be-that-way dept

Tue, Jun 24th 2014 9:02am — Mike Masnick

As you may recall, back in April, the Senate finally voted to declassify parts of the executive summary of its $40 million, 6,300-page report on the disastrous CIA torture program. Of course, as part of that, the White House said it would let the CIA take a first crack at figuring out what to redact, with the expected answer being "a whole hell of a lot." The CIA has apparently now turned its first draft of redactions over to the White House, which is expected to further redact things, because the State Department is afraid that releasing the report might make people angry at US officials. While that may be true, it would seem that the proper response to that would have been to, you know, not torture people, rather than to hide the report under a bunch of black ink.

Of course, there's a separate meta-drama within all of this, which was the big fight between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee who wrote the report, after it came out that the CIA spied on the Senate staffers working on this report. That got even more messy, when the CIA then asked the DOJ to investigate those Senate staffers for possible crimes, while the Senate also asked the DOJ to investigate if the CIA had broken the law in spying on those staffers' computers. Needless to say, there's been something of a chill in "relations" between the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In the Politico report about the CIA handing the report over to the White House, it includes a tidbit at the end, suggesting that the chilly relationship has not thawed at all:

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), a former Intelligence Committee chairman, said the declassification process has strained relations between the committee and the administration’s intelligence apparatus. The CIA has accused the committee of removing an internal interrogation review from its facilities — and Feinstein has charged that the CIA erred in removing that document from the committee’s computers.

“There’s a code of silence. And it stems from the redaction of this enhanced interrogation, torture report,” Rockefeller said of congressional relations with the CIA.

While the "code of silence" seems stupid and petty, frankly, it's probably a good thing that the sides aren't too chummy. The whole point of the Intelligence Committees in both houses of Congress is supposed to be for oversight of the intelligence community. However, in recent years that's obviously changed into something entirely different, where those Committees seemed much more focused on being the intelligence community's cheerleaders and defenders, rather than overseers. The relationship here should be somewhat adversarial. No one's saying they need to hate each others' guts, but it's pretty clear that bad things happen when the relationship has become downright friendly.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: cia, redactions, senate intelligence committee, state department, torture, torture report, white house

19 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

DannyB (profile), 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:16am

Something needs to be done
The situation is out of control. The Senate Intelligence Committee is out of control and not getting proper oversight from the CIA.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
DannyB (profile), 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:24am

How to properly redact things
Dear CIA,

Here is the best advice on how to redact documents.

* Export the computer documents into PDF files.
* Use a PDF tool to paint black bars over the text to obscure the parts you don't want people to read.
* Save the modified PDFs.
* View them to ensure the redacted parts are black.
* Release the PDF documents.

This will ensure the best handling of redacted information in the best interests of the citizens of the United States.

Thank you
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael, 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:29am

State Department is afraid that releasing the report might make people angry at US officials

Were they expecting the report on the CIA's torture program to give people a warm-fuzzy feeling about US officials?

Yay! The US only used a little torture!? Unless your report about the US torture program is a single line that reads "There isn't one.", someone is going to be a little upset about the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave" also being the country that has people collected up and tortured for information. You know what could make it worse? CONTINUING TO LIE ABOUT IT AND COVER IT UP.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:32am

Hear hear!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael, 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:33am

Re: How to properly redact things
For any of you that do not have a pdf tool that will allow you to modify the documents, feel free to simply draw the black bars on your monitor with a marker.

Be sure to blow on the monitor to ensure the marker is dry before emailing the document - if the marker is still wet, it may rub off on the inside of the email envelope.

Once the email has been sent, you can wipe the bars off of your monitor with a soft, dry towel and a little rubbing alcohol. You will be ready to redact another once your monitor is clean again.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Roger Strong (profile), 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:51am

A modern take on an old question
"If a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?"

It's a philosophical thought experiment that raises questions like "Can something exist without being perceived?" "Can we assume the unobserved world functions the same as the observed world?" "What is the difference between what something is, and how it appears?"

To illustrate this in more practical terms, the Senate has produced a $40 million, 6,300-page report on the disastrous CIA torture program, and no-one is allowed to read so much as the executive summary.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:52am

Words Stamped on Administration Toilet Paper
The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears. Nondisclosure should never be based on an effort to protect the personal interests of Government officials at the expense of those they are supposed to serve. -- Barak Obama (2009)
[ link to this | view in thread ]
DannyB (profile), 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:56am

Re:
> Yay! The US only used a little torture!?

Whether they used a little or much is not as important as to whom it was applied.

The CIA can probably assure the Senate Intelligence Committee that the CIA did not torture anyone it did not wish to torture.

That should make people feel better.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Alien Rebel (profile), 24 Jun 2014 @ 9:59am

If Only
Maybe at some point we'll get a total meltdown, and the system will reset. Legislators and executive branch officials will be indicted for [redacted], found guilty because of [redacted] redacted], judges will be impeached and removed from the bench because of [redacted] [redacted][redacted].
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Binko Barnes (profile), 24 Jun 2014 @ 11:30am

Every single person who had a hand in authorizing or implementing an officially sanctioned torture program should face criminal charges. But our government officials have recently been doing a LOT of different things that are illegal and SHOULD lead to criminal charges, but don't.

One thing that everybody in government vehemently agrees on is that it would be unwise to open the door to the prosecution option even a crack. The fear being that the prosecution of one group of government wrong-doers would start the ball rolling towards the prosecution of others.

That's why nobody in government gets in trouble for anything any longer. It's a form of mutually agreed protection - much like the blue wall of silence that governs the police.

Unfortunately this attitude takes us a giant step further along the path to unregulated authoritarian fascism, towards which we are certainly drifting.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Michael, 24 Jun 2014 @ 12:23pm

Re: Re:
I'm pretty sure they tortured the wrong guy at least a few times.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
That One Guy (profile), 24 Jun 2014 @ 12:50pm

Re: Words Stamped on Administration Toilet Paper
While it may sound nice at first, once you realize that politicians truly and honestly think that their reputations and welfare is no different than the county's reputation and welfare, which makes anything that makes them look bad, or harms them, also make the country look bad, and harm the country, you see how empty such a statement really is.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jun 2014 @ 5:06pm

We only torture people that deserve it>

- Jack Bauer, CTU
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 24 Jun 2014 @ 6:47pm

Are Nuremberg principles the law of the land here?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Rekrul, 24 Jun 2014 @ 6:53pm

Why don't they just go out and buy a package of black construction paper and hand that out. It would save a ton of time and money and would probably contain just as much information as the actual report once they get done "redacting" it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Padpaw (profile), 24 Jun 2014 @ 11:50pm

Look on the bright side, when your country goes into meltdown mode and people rebel. All these criminals will be hanged, and there will be a lot of them.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Coyne Tibbets (profile), 25 Jun 2014 @ 12:32am

Black trees
I predict thousands of trees will give their lives to produces thousands and thousands of 6,300 page reports with solid black pages.

Maybe we could save time, effort, dye, and the usual tree-victims if we could find trees with black wood?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
John Fenderson (profile), 25 Jun 2014 @ 7:53am

Re:
Which is what makes Jack Bauer evil.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
DannyB (profile), 25 Jun 2014 @ 11:19am

Re: Re: How to properly redact things
Yours may be funny. But mine is serious. If the CIA follows the procedure I describe, it will truly be in the best interest of the citizens of the United States.
[ link to this | view in thread ]