White House Apparently Doing Everything To Stop Release Of CIA Torture Report

from the the-fight-is-on dept

Thu, Nov 20th 2014 2:23pm — Mike Masnick

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.

"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."

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...

Either way, it looks like this stupid political fight is ongoing...

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Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, torture report

32 Comments

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That One Guy (profile), 20 Nov 2014 @ 1:48pm

Some people never learn
Neither the WH, nor the CIA, will allow the report to be released in any real sense, with any important details, ever, as long as they have any say in the matter.

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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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 2:30pm

No fucking redactions.

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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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 2:49pm

Couldn't the CIA guys have sat down with the Senate guys and shown, through the use of charts and hand-puppets or something,how to actually identify someone from the report? The idea sounds plausible; that the CIA didn't pull a dog-and-pony show just makes their argument look like bullshit.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 3:05pm

Yes, PLEASE read it into the record.
This report is the property of the American people, and we are fully entitled to every word of it.
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Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 20 Nov 2014 @ 3:10pm

Are Republicans More Trusting Of Government?
Why should they be willing to believe stories that Democrats won’t?
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 3:19pm

Re: Are Republicans More Trusting Of Government?
Just remember that 'Small Government' is more of a dog whistle than anything else to them. No love for Dems but they do not stake their entire platform on those two words.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 3:33pm

Oh noes
So the dems are holding out the report. How surprising.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 3:35pm

We can't let people read the report because terrorism is scary and this is all about terrorism... and also Al-queda.
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That One Guy (profile), 20 Nov 2014 @ 3:44pm

Re: Oh noes
And the incoming republicans have indicated that they have no interest in revealing it either. Shocking I know, it's almost as though it's not a democrat vs republican issue, but since everything can be boiled down into democrat vs republican, surely that can't be it. /s
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 4:25pm

Whoa they lied again? How could they? Noone expected them to do it again!
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 5:02pm

I know it's been repeated a lot, but let's give credit where credit is due:

THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION IS THE MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION IN HISTORY!
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That One Guy (profile), 20 Nov 2014 @ 5:10pm

True
... just not in the way most people would interpret the phrase.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 5:50pm

This is about a dog and pony show. Government doesn't thrive to get smaller. Nor does it like it's dirty laundry exposed. Neither party is serious about getting this report out. This is the pap for the public.

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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tracyanne (profile), 20 Nov 2014 @ 7:10pm

Of course, that only increases the chance that Mark Udall reads the report into the record.
Don't get your hopes up, I still say it won't happen
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bgmcb (profile), 20 Nov 2014 @ 8:02pm

If you think Sen. Mark Udall should submit it
sign here:
http://releasethetorturereport.com/

Maybe it'll make a difference.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 8:18pm

Re: Re: Oh noes
Agreed. I generally just skip over any comment as soon as I read the word "Democrat" or "Republican" now.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 9:23pm

Re: If you think Sen. Mark Udall should submit it
I'm a cynic, and I doubt it'll help. On the other hand, I also seem to get things wrong... a lot. So I signed. Thanks for the link.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 20 Nov 2014 @ 9:30pm

Re: True
They're very transparent about their lack of transparency.
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Coyne Tibbets (profile), 20 Nov 2014 @ 9:52pm

Avoiding blame
It's not hard to understand why, if you think about it: You know Obama is going to be blamed for all this torture.
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tracyanne (profile), 20 Nov 2014 @ 10:11pm

Re: If you think Sen. Mark Udall should submit it
Thanks, I've passed this on
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Nov 2014 @ 10:56pm

Re:
They just redefined 'transparency' in secret.
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Beech, 21 Nov 2014 @ 1:14am

I am confused. What exactly is the executive branch bargaining with? The way it looks to me, the Senate has complete power in this situation. They could have just released the whole unredacted thing AGES ago. But instead they tried to place nice, that's understandable.

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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Anonymous Hero, 21 Nov 2014 @ 4:50am

The [codeword] has landed!
> The White House and CIA were demanding that pseudonyms be redacted, even though they were already pseudonyms.

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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That One Guy (profile), 21 Nov 2014 @ 5:09am

Re:
You don't exactly need much leverage when you're dealing with spineless, self-serving cowards. The WH/CIA probably just gave them a stern look and they folded and promised to let the WH/CIA do what they wanted, and what little pushback they've managed is nothing more than their attempt to maintain at least some semblance of 'authority' on the matter.
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Reality bites, 21 Nov 2014 @ 6:50am

CIA = Criminals in Authority.. what else could be expected.
Like all rogue agencies staffed exclusively by traitors, retards and psychopaths, they are kept in check only by force.

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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Anonymous Coward, 21 Nov 2014 @ 7:25am

Spring a Leak
If there's any document that deserves a leak at this point it's this one.

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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Anonymous Coward, 21 Nov 2014 @ 7:54am

Re: Of course, that only increases the chance that Mark Udall reads the report into the record.
"Don't get your hopes up, I still say it won't happen"

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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Anonymous Coward, 21 Nov 2014 @ 8:08am

Privileges of the House [was Re: Re: Of course, that only increases the chance...]
"The question would be how much you could read before they grabbed you and hauled you off."

Tuesday, 4 January 1642
On 4 January 1642, King Charles I entered the House of Commons to arrest five Members of Parliament for high treason. . . .

No monarch has entered the House of Commons since then.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Nov 2014 @ 11:48am

Re: Re: Re: Oh noes
Who says bipartisanship is dead?
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Sam, 21 Nov 2014 @ 12:33pm

Any government that will torture will ENSLAVE.
Same-same ..... inflicting pain to get what you want.
Furthermore, we have granted LEGITIMACY to all the torturerers (ISIS).
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Nov 2014 @ 3:41pm

Does it matter if the torture report is actually released or not, given all the efforts to suppress the data I think we can just assume thousands must have been mercilessly tortured with hundreds of murders committed collectively by all those blocking the sunlight to truth including past and present.
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That One Guy (profile), 21 Nov 2014 @ 8:31pm

Re: Re: Of course, that only increases the chance that Mark Udall reads the report into the record.
It would take huge guts, but if they were really willing to stand up to the WH and CIA, they could have a string of people waiting to read the entire thing into the record, shifting to the next one when one got tired and/or was grabbed and removed from the room. Hauling off one politician would be one thing, a dozen or more? That would be a lot more difficult to just brush under the rug.
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