White House Apparently Doing Everything To Stop Release Of CIA Torture Report
from the the-fight-is-on dept
On Tuesday evening, Senator Dianne Feinstein had told reporters that the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House were finally close to an agreement to finalize the release of the declassified executive summary of the CIA torture report. As we've been discussing for months, back in April the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to declassify the 480-page executive summary of the 6,300-page report (which cost $40 million to put together). As we'd noted, the CIA and White House first offered up redactions that made the whole thing "incomprehensible" according to some in the Senate.The main fight had come down to pseudonyms. The White House and CIA were demanding that pseudonyms be redacted, even though they were already pseudonyms. The concern, from the CIA, was that by identifying which individuals are the same throughout the report, it would provide enough information for people to figure out who some of the people were. However, as Senator Wyden noted, this is both ridiculous and unprecedented, as plenty of previous such reports have used pseudonyms without a problem.
Either way, it appears that the Senators finally gave in and agreed to "meeting [the White House/CIA] more than halfway", and the response from the White House was to reject even this compromise.
Now even after Senate Democrats agreed to remove some pseudonyms at White House request, the Oval Office is still haggling for more redactions.It appears that many people are reasonably wondering if the White House is just trying to drag this out until the Republicans are in charge of the Senate and they can bury the report. Of course, that only increases the chance that Mark Udall reads the report into the record. However, I've seen some suggestions that if this is the real sticking point, he can just leak the pseudonyms...
"The White House is continuing to put up fierce resistance to the release of the report," said one knowledgeable Senate aide. "Ideally, we should be closing ground and finalizing the last stages right now so that we can release the report post-Thanksgiving. But, despite the fact that the committee has drastically reduced the number of pseudonyms in the report, the White House is still resisting and dragging this out."
Either way, it looks like this stupid political fight is ongoing...
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Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, torture report
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Some people never learn
The solution as such is simple: remove them from the equation. Given the subject of the report, they never should have been involved in the process in the first place, and handing them veto rights just made it worse, so the committee just needs to boot them out of the discussion, and release the report on their own.
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We must remember the depths we have sunk to, and the terrorism we have perpetrated for the cause of 'intelligence'. We must never forget what was done in our name, the horrors committed.
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Yes, PLEASE read it into the record.
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Are Republicans More Trusting Of Government?
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Re: Are Republicans More Trusting Of Government?
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Oh noes
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Re: Oh noes
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Re: Re: Oh noes
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Re: Re: Re: Oh noes
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THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS THE MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY!
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True
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Re: True
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Re:
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Congress has time and again chances to change the way the NSA operates but the only direction is more not less spying. Congress is not on it's own going to change this.
Nor are the tech companies going to change it. They were quite happy to do the government's bidding for sucking up boodles of money as long as it remained in the dark. Great for the bottom line. When it was exposed to the light, the only reason that any steps are being taken such as Google applying encryption between server centers, is that if people stop using their services then there goes the bottom line. Exposing the practices to light was the only reason the tech companies got religion over privacy.
Obama has shown his colors once more. Remember the statement he didn't know what went on in the security branches and had to read it in the newspapers? Damn, there's that transparency peeking out again.
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Of course, that only increases the chance that Mark Udall reads the report into the record.
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Re: Of course, that only increases the chance that Mark Udall reads the report into the record.
I agree.
"Rockefeller said Democrats were thinking creatively about how to resolve the dispute. "We have ideas," he said, adding that reading the report's executive summary into the record on the Senate floor would probably meet with only limited success. "The question would be how much you could read before they grabbed you and hauled you off.""
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/20/cia-torture-white-house_n_6195032.html
Yes, it's Huffpo. Can't help that, first report I saw that mentioned this.
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Privileges of the House [was Re: Re: Of course, that only increases the chance...]
Tuesday, 4 January 1642
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Re: Re: Of course, that only increases the chance that Mark Udall reads the report into the record.
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If you think Sen. Mark Udall should submit it
http://releasethetorturereport.com/
Maybe it'll make a difference.
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Re: If you think Sen. Mark Udall should submit it
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Re: If you think Sen. Mark Udall should submit it
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Avoiding blame
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But when the CIA and POTUS are being dickbags about trying to redact the whole damn thing, why wouldn't the Senate just redact the document any way they feel like and release it without any further input from the executive branch?
What leverage does the White House have here?
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Re:
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The [codeword] has landed!
Someone I know with a clearance once told me that some of the codewords they used to refer to projects became classified, so they had to come up with codewords for the codewords.
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CIA = Criminals in Authority.. what else could be expected.
Being unable to reason even on a dumb monkeys level, they are completely devoid of anything resembling humanity, just like skynet took over, except it was the gov psycho's.
More crime is committed by those in authority than by those under it.
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Spring a Leak
You know what, that's baloney. As others have pointed out, the public is entitled to know how its government acts, especially when it is contrary to public values. That's not a leak, that's accountable government.
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Same-same ..... inflicting pain to get what you want.
Furthermore, we have granted LEGITIMACY to all the torturerers (ISIS).
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