Will Senator Burr's Attempt To Bury CIA Torture Report Actually Make It More Likely The Report Leaks?

from the action,-reaction dept

We already wrote about how Senator Richard Burr has demanded that the White House return all copies of the full, unredacted CIA Torture Report, which Senator Dianne Feinstein distributed to various department heads last month. As we noted in our article, this seemed like an effort to stuff the full report down the memory hole to make sure that no one could ever do anything with it at all and to make it more difficult to access in a series of FOIA lawsuits. Those lawsuits are demanding the report, as well as the internal Panetta Review that is supposedly the smoking gun, involving an internal CIA analysis that mostly agrees with the Senate Intelligence Committee's analysis in the full report.

Reporter Jason Leopold of Vice News (and one of the people suing the government, under FOIA, for the documents) has some more details about Burr's action, including a copies of the letter [pdf] Burr sent the White House, and the letter that Feinstein sent in reply. As Leopold notes, Burr's decision seems specifically designed to try to do a legal two-step to make the document immune from FOIA lawsuits:

By advising the White House to cease entering the full torture report into an executive branch system of records, Burr is saying that the document is a "congressional record," which is exempt from FOIA, as opposed to an "agency record," which is subject to the provisions of the law.

Feinstein's response shows that she disagrees, and that the report can properly be handed over to the Executive Branch. The reason for the letter, obviously, is for it to be used in killing off the FOIA attempts, and the DOJ wasted no time in making just that argument:

Tonight, the government filed a response in our long-running lawsuit and asked a judge to dismiss our case. A CIA lawyer said in a 31-page declaration that the redactions in the executive summary were justified and the Panetta Review is properly classified and should not be released. The government also responded to the ACLU's FOIA lawsuit for the full torture report. The government said the full torture report is not an agency record subject to FOIA, it is a congressional record. The government cited Burr's letter to support its case.

You can see that filing here [pdf], with this being the relevant portion:

Congress retains control over the Full Report for at least five reasons. First, the conditions under which the report was created reflect that SSCI as a whole asserted complete control over not only drafts, but also the final product. Second, throughout the years-long process of creating and finalizing the Report, both SSCI and the CIA handled the Report in accordance with SSCI’s instructions and strict limitations on access. Third, SSCI voted, in accordance with Senate Rules, to seek declassification and release only of the Executive Summary, Findings and Conclusions – not the Full Report. The then-SSCI Chairman’s decision to provide the Full Report to certain Executive Branch agencies for nonpublic use does not amount to a Committee decision to seek to declassify and release the Full Report. Fourth, the current Chairman of SSCI has reiterated SSCI’s intent to retain control of the Full Report. Finally, the defendant agencies have treated the Full Report, received in December 2014, as a congressional record, sequestering it in secure storage space appropriate to its classification and carefully limiting its dissemination and use. Because the Full Report remains a congressional record as opposed to an agency record, this Court lacks jurisdiction over plaintiffs’ FOIA claim seeking its release, and plaintiffs’ claim should be dismissed under Rule 12(h)(3) or 12(b)(1).2

This is not all that unexpected, even if it's fairly ridiculous. However, it's possible that the whole thing could backfire badly. Feinstein knew what she was doing in distributing the report to a number of people within the administration. While all of whom have access to it have the proper clearance, at least some have to agree that this report is an important historical document, detailing incredible misdeeds by the CIA -- and some of them may view it as important to have that information shared with the public to make sure such events never happen again.

Senator Burr's rather obvious move here to demand all copies be "returned" is seen by many as an attempt to bury the report entirely. As Senator Ron Wyden points out, returning the report would "aid defenders of torture who are seeking to cover up the facts and rewrite the historical record." Given that, it seems more likely that at least someone with access to the document is going to realize that this important review of history is at risk of being shredded. Hopefully there is someone in the government with the courage to stand up and get a copy out to reporters in some manner or another, before Burr has a chance to succeed in wiping it off the face of the earth.

Filed Under: cia, cia torture report, congress, dianne feinstein, doj, foia, jason leopold, leaks, richard burr, senate, senate intelligence committee, whistleblowing

CIA Internal Review Clears CIA Of Senate Hacking Allegations; Claims Senate Improperly Accessed Classified Documents

from the CIA-says-CIA-did-nothing-wrong.-No-news-at-11. dept

Now that the long-delayed CIA Torture Report has been released, it's time to find someone to blame. Not for the torture, of course. There will apparently be no punishments handed down for the abuse uncovered by the Senate Intelligence Committee. (Also, apparently, there will be no huge international fallout. Remember just a few short weeks ago when we were promised increased terrorist activity if the report was released? Still waiting…) But there will be some noise made about the Senate's alleged impropriety.

One-man transparency army Jason Leopold reports at Vice that the Senate allegedly stole documents from the CIA -- documents they weren't supposed to have access to. But the credulity of this assertion really depends on how much you trust the source.

Contrary to accusations leveled by the Senate, a 38-page report has found that the CIA did not breach the computers of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers and spy on them while they were investigating the CIA's torture program.

The report was released today by the CIA. And is based on a review conducted by a CIA accountability board.

What the accountability board's review did find, however, is that Senate Intelligence Committee staffers stole documents from the CIA and violated an agreement it entered into with the agency over the use of a classified computer network. On several occasions between 2009 and 2013, while the committee was writing its report, committee staffers allegedly gained access to CIA documents they were not authorized to see — such as a spreadsheet that contained a list of videos apparently related to the torture program — and admitted as much when confronted by agency officials.

So, the CIA took it upon itself to perform an investigation no one asked for in order to clear itself of allegations that it had spied on Senate staffers. Chalk that one up to active disinterest by the administration in pursuing any allegations of wrongdoing associated with the Torture Report. Several months ago, the Senate claimed the CIA had hacked its computers and accessed Torture Report work-in-progress but the DOJ declined the invitation to investigate further.

Now, the CIA is claiming it was blameless (you know, other than the torture), based on its own internal investigation. The OIG report alleging CIA abuse of Senate computers was reviewed by the CIA's in-house Accountability Board and determined to be "riddled with errors."

The CIA's accusations against the Senate boil down to a bundle of classified internal CIA documents known as the "Panetta Review."

The Intelligence Committee made a formal request to the CIA for the Panetta Review in November 2013 — but unbeknownst to the CIA, the Senate already had a copy. According to the accountability board's report, the request set off alarm bells at the CIA, leading the agency to believe that the committee may have already accessed the Panetta Review. At that point, the Senate had already completed a draft of its torture report and was battling the CIA over the veracity of the findings and conclusions — that the CIA's program had been ineffective.

According to the CIA accountability board, the agency went back and reviewed the draft copy of the Senate report and the Panetta Review and found the language in both documents to be "remarkably similar," meaning that the Senate probably relied on the Panetta Review to draft its report.

If the CIA didn't want the Senate to access these documents, it's left unexplained as to how it failed to prevent this. The CIA supposedly had "walled off" space for the Senate to work within its network and actively monitored staffers' activity. In fact, it was this active monitoring that led to the Senate's accusations of CIA impropriety in the first place.

[CIA Director John] Brennan later revealed to Feinstein that he authorized the CIA employees to conduct a search of Intelligence Committee computers at the secure facility to determine how they obtained the Panetta Review. A CIA review of computer "audit logs" concluded that no one at the CIA had voluntarily turned over the Panetta Review.

That disclosure led Feinstein to make a dramatic speech on the Senate floor last March in which she accused the CIA of unlawfully monitoring Senate staffers' computers and attempting to sabotage the committee's investigation, which "undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function."

The agency determined that no one on its side had handed over the forbidden Panetta Review, so somehow the Senate had managed to thwart the CIA's secured system and access documents it wasn't supposed to see. Now, the CIA is pressing the DOJ to investigate the Senate. If this push is successful, the only people to be punished for years of unlawful torture will be Senate staffers. This won't do anything to salvage the CIA's reputation, but it may deter further investigations and oversight by the Congress and Senate. There's really only one reason the CIA wanted to keep the Panetta Review out of the Senate's hands, and it has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with self-preservation.

[T]he Intelligence Committee had found the findings of the Panetta Review — which had been conducted internally by the CIA — to be very different from what the CIA was telling the Intelligence Committee in response to the committee's torture report.

The fact that the CIA wants to punish the Senate for the Torture Report has provoked some heated responses from Senate Intelligence Committee members. Dianne Feinstein issued this short statement late Wednesday:

"Let me be clear: I continue to believe CIA's actions constituted a violation of the constitutional separation of powers and unfortunately led to the CIA's referral of unsubstantiated criminal charges to the Justice Department against committee staff," Feinstein said. "I'm disappointed that no one at the CIA will be held accountable. The decision was made to search committee computers, and someone should be found responsible for those actions."

Ron Wyden issued a longer statement in response, one that shows his irritation at the CIA being so willing to let itself off the hook:

"Both the CIA Inspector General and the review board appointed by Director Brennan have now concluded that the CIA's unauthorized search of Senate files was improper. It is incredible that no one at the CIA has been held accountable for this very clear violation of Constitutional principles. Director Brennan either needs to reprimand the individuals involved or take responsibility himself. So far he has done neither.

This episode further illustrates the cumulative corrosive effects of the CIA's torture program. First, agency officers and contractors went far beyond the limits set out even in the Justice Department's torture memos. Then, top officials spent a decade making inaccurate statements about torture's effectiveness to Congress, the White House and the American people. Next, instead of acknowledging these years of misrepresentations, the CIA's current leadership decided to double down on denial. And when CIA officials were worried that the Intelligence Committee had found a document that contradicted their claims, they secretly searched Senate computer files to find out if Senate investigators had obtained it.

At a time when the CIA appears incapable of policing itself, the intelligence community needs more external oversight, not less.

Last June senior officials from the NSA, FBI and ODNI all testified that their agencies did not have the authority to conduct a search of U.S. Senate files without external authorization, but Director Brennan has refused to say what rules apply to the CIA. This is unacceptable in a democracy. It is time for the Director's stonewalling to end."

Now, let's suppose that all of the CIA's allegations are true. If so, should the Senate be held accountable for actions it took that resulted in the exposure of CIA wrongdoing? Obviously, the CIA feels it should. But the documents "improperly accessed" were internal CIA documents that showed the agency was lying to its overseers about its interrogation techniques. Without this "improper" access, it's likely the Torture Report wouldn't have been as devastating. Large amounts of CIA wrongdoing would have remained undisclosed.

What's included in the Panetta Review is information the Senate Intelligence Committee should have had access to in the first place. But the CIA deliberately and wrongfully withheld information that contradicted the narrative it was feeding to its overseers. If the Senate is to be punished for its wrongful access, then it follows that the CIA should be held accountable for its deliberate misrepresentation of its torture programs. Instead, there's now a chance the investigators will pay for their (mild in comparison) misconduct while the agency walks away clean.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, john brennan, ron wyden, senate intelligence committee, senate spying, spying, torture report

An Inside View On The Purpose And Implications Of The Torture Report

from the it's-about-facts dept

While some will, no doubt, be embarrassed by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program, as one of the staffers who helped make the case for the Committee’s investigation when it was initiated in 2009, I can tell you that was not its intention.

(For the record, all I did was help make the initial case for the investigation and maybe put out a press release or two. I am in no way taking credit for the tremendous work that Chairman Feinstein and her committee’s staff did on this report. By the way, I know those staffers did not trek out to the CIA site in Virginia — often in their free time — in search of our thanks and recognition, but I hope you will join me in giving it to them anyway. Because reports like this do not materialize from thin air.)

The dedicated SSCI staff — who spent tens of thousands of hours over the better part of five years researching, writing and editing this report — did so in order to ensure our nation’s interrogation programs would be grounded in what has, for too long, been missing from our nation’s interrogation debate: facts.

The interrogation techniques the CIA developed during the Bush Administration were not devised by behavioral experts with experience turning detainees into "long-term strategic sources of information." Rather, as the Department of Justice’s 2008 Inspector General’s report revealed, the FBI’s interrogation experts — with that experience — repeatedly refused to sign off on proposed interrogation plans, calling them "deeply flawed" and "completely ineffective."

The CIA’s interrogation program, instead, grew from the post-9/11 mentality that the U.S. would be best kept safe by those willing to go to the greatest extremes to protect it, or as former CIA agent Glenn Carle put it in his 2011 book The Interrogator, "Interrogating terrorists was no place for goddamn candy-asses."

FBI officials have described the interrogation-strategy sessions they observed as "circus-like."  I’ve personally been told by individuals who participated in high-level discussions of U.S. interrogation policy that — as disturbing as it sounds — these conversations were more often than not informed by the participants’ recollection of episodes of the TV show 24 than by an understanding of the psychology of interrogation. Meanwhile, defenders of the CIA’s Bush-era interrogation activities continue to cite the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001 as justification for their actions.

As Senator Feinstein writes in her introduction to the report:

The major lesson of this report is that regardless of the pressures and the need to act, the Intelligence Community's actions must always reflect who we are as a nation, and adhere to our laws and standards. It is precisely at these times of national crisis that our government must be guided by the lessons of our history and subject decisions to internal and external review.

The SSCI’s report was written to provide those lessons.

While some have and will likely continue to argue that President Obama settled the issue when he, as the president said in his statement today, "unequivocally banned torture when [he] took office," one might have argued that George Washington actually settled the issue 234 years earlier when he ordered that any American soldier who brought "shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country" by causing injury to a British prisoner could be put to death.  Our "new country in the New World," Washington declared, "would distinguish itself by its humanity." And yet, two centuries after Washington gave that order, agents of the U.S. government subjected "at least five CIA detainees…to 'rectal rehydration' … without documented medical necessity."

President Obama’s executive order only settles the issue insofar as he remains president. As long as the belief persists that torture is an effective means of interrogation and anyone who doesn’t support ‘enhanced interrogation’ is a "candy ass" who lacks the necessary stomach to keep Americans safe, there is no assurance that a future president won’t take a different position than our current president.

Some have and will undoubtedly continue to argue that we shouldn’t discuss the efficacy of torture as an interrogation technique — even if it’s to prove that torture doesn’t work — because it suggests that if torture worked, it would be ok to torture people. I believe these people have a point.

The United States is more than a mass of land defined by geographic boundaries, it is a nation of people united by certain, principled beliefs, many of which our forefathers laid out at our nation’s founding. It is not enough to simply protect the people of the United States, one must also protect the principles that define the United States as a people; otherwise, there is no United States to protect. When the CIA and the Bush Administration sanctioned the torture of captured terrorists — regardless of their reasons — they made the United States something George Washington said we’d never be: a nation that tortures. One might argue that made us a little less American.

Some have and may continue to argue that making the CIA’s actions known puts Americans — particularly those serving overseas — in jeopardy. It’s worth noting that these arguments were made by people who know Senator Feinstein in an effort to persuade her not to make the committee report public. I say this is worth noting, because you do not need to know Senator Feinstein very well to know that there is nothing she wants less than to jeopardize the lives of American citizens, particularly those serving in harm’s way, and if there is an argument that would have given her second thoughts about releasing this report, that most likely would have been it.

If Americans are at risk, however, they are not at risk because the Senate Intelligence Committee is publicly acknowledging that the CIA tortured people during the Bush Administration. They’re at risk because the CIA tortured people during the Bush Administration.

The CIA put Americans at risk when they undermined the international agreements that protect Americans detained by foreign powers and sacrificed the moral authority we’ve long used to advocate for the humane treatment of detainees. They put Americans at risk when they made it harder — if not impossible — to prosecute known terrorists and keep them locked up. I'd also argue that defending the CIA’s actions, while refusing to come clean about what was done during the Bush Administration, not only fueled Al Qaeda’s hatred of Americans and put them at risk, it undermines the Obama Administration’s argument that the CIA no longer engages in torture.

Some have and may continue to argue that putting out this report will undermine morale at the CIA and derail its necessary work. Again, I'd argue that any hit to the CIA’s morale began when its agents were ordered to torture detainees without clear parameters and a solid legal foundation.

Some have and will no doubt continue to argue that an act taken to "prevent a threatened terrorist attack" is not as bad as an act taken "for the purpose of humiliation or abuse." I’d argue that torture is defined not by the torturer but by the person being tortured and that the laws governing torture were put in place because most people who engage in torture think they have a good reason.

There are some who have and will no doubt continue to argue — as they do about all things pertaining to national security — that this report shouldn’t have been made public. To respond to that I will quote directly from page 8 of the unclassified report:

The CIA's Office of Public Affairs and senior CIA officials coordinated to share classified information on the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program to select members of the media to counter public criticism, shape public opinion, and avoid potential congressional action to restrict the CIA's detention and interrogation authorities and budget.

If the SSCI’s report demonstrates one thing, it’s that the CIA’s unfettered ability to keep information about it’s activities secret gives it virtually limitless ability to control everyone’s understanding of its activities: from the White House and Congress to Hollywood and the American people. I have no doubt they’d argue those actions were necessary to protect national security, because in their mind — it seems — national security is harmed by anything that could potentially limit their authority to do exactly what they want. Someone should really tell them that's not how we do things in the United States.

And finally there will be some who have and will continue to argue that the CIA’s actions were necessary to protect national security. Those people, I’m guessing, need to make those arguments to help them sleep at night. To them, I’d argue the path to redemption lies not in the perpetuation of that belief, but in its eradication.

Again, please thank the Senate Intelligence Committee.

---

Jen Hoelzer is the former Communications Director and Deputy Chief of Staff for Senator Ron Wyden.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, senate intelligence committee, torture, torture report

CIA Program Tortured Dozens To Produce Nearly Nothing In The Way Of Useful Intelligence

from the did-we-win-the-War-on-Terror-yet? dept

Perhaps the most disheartening aspect of the Torture Report [pdf link] is the fact that the CIA clearly knew the methods weren't producing usable intelligence but continued to use them anyway, all the while hiding the extent of its abuses from the rest of the goverment.

The Executive Summary is 525 pages of abusive activity, carried out under the pretense that no other approach would keep the US safe from further terrorist attacks. Dianne Feinstein's preamble addresses the incredible amount of work that went into the full report (which weighs in at over 7,000 pages). While it does point out that the CIA destroyed evidence and forced Senate staffers to work in a CIA-controlled environment while performing research, it curiously omits any mention of the CIA's spying on Senate staffers -- something that seemed to be a big deal a few months ago.

The introduction to the full report runs more than 20 pages, but even this limited sampling expands greatly on Feinstein's 6-page statement released in conjunction with the report. Contained within are more details of the futility of the CIA's torture program and the efforts it made to cover up both its extraterritorial rendition sites as well as the lack of usable intelligence it produced.

The thing is, the CIA's own records (what remains of them) point out the limited return on investment.

[A]ccording to CIA records, seven of the 39 CIA detainees known to have been subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques produced no intelligence while in CIA custody. CIA detainees who were subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were usually subjected to the techniques immediately after being rendered to CIA custody. Other detainees provided significant accurate intelligence prior to, or without having been subjected to these techniques.

Torture produced useful intel less frequently than other methods. Information was volunteered even without the use of torture. But some who might have volunteered useful information were never given the chance, as the CIA showed a predilection for torturing first and asking questions later. And those who were tortured did what they could to end the torment.

While being subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and afterwards, multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence. Detainees provided fabricated information on critical intelligence issues, including the terrorist threats which the CIA identified as its highest priorities.

A lack of useful intel wasn't enough to derail the CIA's torture plans. Agents ignored warnings from medical staff and continued to "break down" detainees. Medical personnel were asked to do whatever was needed to return detainees to torture-ready condition.

Detainees were subjected to waterboarding, ice water "baths," 180-hour stints of sleep deprivation, extended physical/mental abuse and being chained naked to cell floors. The CIA also made it personal, threatening detainees with a list of horrors their family members would be subjected to if they didn't cooperate.

CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families — to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to "cut [a detainee's] mother's throat."

Some of this behavior was exacerbated by the CIA's active disinterest in ensuring it didn't create a playground for problematic agents in its employ.

Numerous CIA officers had serious documented personal and professional problems—including histories of violence and records of abusive treatment of others—that should have called into question their suitability to participate in the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, their employment with the CIA, and their continued access to classified information. In nearly all cases, these problems were known to the CIA prior to the assignment of these officers to detention and interrogation positions.

The agency callously turned over detainees to these agents and continued with its unproductive "intelligence gathering." The program veered from merely useless to borderline psychopathy on several occasions. Detainees who should never have been detained were subjected to torture, including one who was held simply to coerce information out of undetained relatives.

Of the 119 known detainees, at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard in the September 2001 Memorandum of Notification (MON). These included an intellectually challenged" man whose CIA detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information…

In addition, the CIA apparently tortured its own, thanks to its torture-first policy.

...two individuals who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services and were former CIA sources...

And bad intel obtained via torture led to even more torture of individuals who never should have been detained.

...and two individuals whom the CIA assessed to be connected to al-Qa'ida based solely on information fabricated by a CIA detainee subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.

The program was such a fiasco that it actually harmed US counterterrorism efforts.

The CIA, in the conduct of its Detention and Interrogation Program, complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions of other Executive Branch agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the State Department, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The CIA withheld or restricted information relevant to these agencies' missions and responsibilities, denied access to detainees, and provided inaccurate information on the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program to these agencies.

But the agency still believed -- or at least wanted to believe -- it was fighting the good fight. The Office of Legal Counsel intervened on its behalf, redefining "torture" as acceptable "under the current circumstances."

Having reviewed information provided by the CIA, the OLC included the "necessity defense" in its August 1, 2002, memorandum to the White House counsel on Standards of Conduct for Interrogation. The OLC determined that "under the current circumstances, necessity or self-defense may justify interrogation methods that might violate" the criminal prohibition against torture.

Two consecutive CIA directors further insulated the program by pursuing actions to lock out the Office of the Inspector General. In 2005, CIA Director Goss requested that no further reviews be initiated until the faulty 2004 review was complete. In 2007, Director Michael Hayden vindictively ordered a review of the OIG itself, deterring it from pursuing further investigations of the CIA's interrogation programs. The "faulty" 2004 review was the direct result of the CIA feeding bad info to the OIG in order to cover up its rendition and interrogation programs.

Not only was the OIG eventually locked out, but the CIA's activities were so "dirty" and its gathered intel so questionable that the FBI and Dept. of Defense distanced themselves from the program, refusing to participate in any way. Anything usable was ignored along with anything useful the CIA obtained from its detainees. To further complicate things, the CIA denied requests for access from FBI director Mueller and compartmentalized its intelligence, walling itself off from other intelligence and investigative agencies.

Further details contained in the report point to the fact that the CIA program was never properly documented nor was it ever under any proper oversight.

This program, which was hidden by its participants, lied about to multiple layers of supposed oversight (including the President), and produced little to no usable intelligence, is the same program that is now being defended by former officials as something that "saved" American lives. If it has, there's no evidence of it in here. What it looks like is a post-terrorist-attack reaction being allowed to indulge in its own excesses, using justifications like "under the current circumstances" and "ticking time bombs" to excuse the abysmal depths of its ultimately futile depravity.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, senate intelligence committee, torture, torture report

Feinstein's Summary Paper On CIA's 'Interrogation Program' Report Contains Plenty Of Torture

from the using-bullshit-ends-to-justify-the-means dept

The Senate Torture Report has officially been released. Accompanying it is a 6-page statement containing "highlights" from the 525-page "Executive Summary" of the (obviously much larger) full report. (We'll have more once we've dug through the larger report.)

The statement [pdf link], put together by Sen. Feinstein's office, opens with this quote from the Senate Intelligence Committee head:

This document examines the CIA’s secret overseas detention of at least 119 individuals and the use of coercive interrogation techniques—in some cases amounting to torture.

The delineation between "torture" and "coercive interrogation techniques" will be left up to many, many dissemblers. Those who defend the CIA's actions will opt for the former, presumably in long opinion pieces hosted at CIASavedLives.com, a website created solely for countering the negative press that will follow the release of the Torture Report. The site is still mostly dead at this point, occasionally humming to half-life with a bit of pre-emptive flag waving. (LITERALLY)


But the actions contained in this short summary certainly meet any reasonable definition of the word "torture."

In November 2002 a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor died from suspected hypothermia at the facility.

---

Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in painful stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads. The CIA led several detainees to believe they would never be allowed to leave CIA custody alive, suggesting to one detainee that he would only leave in a coffin-shaped box.

---

CIA detainees at one detention facility, described as a “dungeon,” were kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste.

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Contrary to CIA representations to the Department of Justice, the waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting. During one session, Abu Zubaydah became “completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth.” Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad as evolving into a “series of near drownings.”

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[T]he CIA instructed personnel that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah would take “precedence” over his medical care, resulting in the infection and deterioration of a bullet wound Abu Zubaydah incurred during his capture.

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At least five CIA detainees were subjected to “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” without documented medical need.

All of this (and there's much more documented in the full report) and for what? To save lives, as the URL goes? But there's no evidence this torture resulted in usable intelligence.

The committee reviewed 20 of the most frequent and prominent examples of purported counterterrorism “successes” that the CIA has attributed to the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques. Each of those examples was found to be wrong in fundamental respects. In some cases, there was no relationship between the claimed counterterrorism “success” and any information provided by a CIA detainee during or after the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques. In the remaining cases, the CIA inaccurately represented that unique information was acquired from a CIA detainee as a result of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, when in fact the information was either (a) acquired from the CIA detainee prior to the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques or (b) corroborative of information already available to the intelligence community from sources other than the CIA detainee, and therefore not unique or “otherwise unavailable...”

The CIA took these lies went all the way to the top.

In an attempt to justify the use of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, the CIA provided examples of supposedly “thwarted” terrorist plots and the capture of specific terrorists that the CIA attributed to the use of its techniques. The CIA representations were inaccurate and contradicted by the CIA’s own records. The CIA’s internal Panetta Review also identified numerous inaccuracies in the CIA’s effectiveness representations—including representations to the President.

And when the CIA wasn't lying about the techniques being necessary to stay ahead of "ticking time bombs," it was lying about its methods.

Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an “an open, non-threatening approach,” or that interrogations began with the “least coercive technique possible” and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary. Instead, in many cases the most aggressive techniques were used immediately, in combination and nonstop.

It's not just the US that will have to weather this debacle -- one that gives lie to the government's view that it holds itself to higher standard than its enemies -- it's every other country that participated in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program.

These are the countries that will be worried by the CIA 'torture' report http://t.co/xx9vii1aFZ pic.twitter.com/g23OHBK3Cw

— The Independent (@Independent) December 9, 2014

The real question following the release of this report is whether anyone will be held accountable for these deplorable actions. There needs to be meaningful punishments handed down. If not, then the rest of the world will know how much we're willing to let our agencies get away with during this neverending War on Terror. Failing to do so will only open the door for further abuse.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, senate intelligence committee, torture, torture report

Ridiculous: John Kerry Asks Dianne Feinstein Not To Release CIA Torture Report After Agreement Was Reached To Release On Monday

from the paging-mark-udall dept

Okay, this is just getting ridiculous. We've written plenty about the Senate Intelligence Committee's massive $40 million, 6,000 page torture report, detailing a variety of failures related to the CIA's torture program after 9/11. While the Committee voted (overwhelmingly) to release a redacted 480 page executive summary of the document, and the White House insisted it wanted to do so as well, since then it's become clear that the White House was going to do everything to block it from actually getting out.

Yesterday it came out that an agreement had finally been reached on the redactions and that it would finally be released on Monday. Apparently, the CIA/White House won the battle over the question of redacting pseudonyms -- which was a key fight. Basically, those who have seen the report say that if you redact the pseudonyms, important parts of what happened are greatly distorted (such as who is doing what). But apparently, that's what was agreed to anyway.

However, after everyone started gearing up for the release on Monday, Secretary of State John Kerry apparently called Senator Dianne Feinstein to argue that she should "delay" the release of the report, claiming that the timing is "sensitive" and that the US is worried it may mess up a variety of things:

“What he raised was timing of report release, because a lot is going on in the world -- including parts of the world particularly implicated -- and wanting to make sure foreign policy implications were being appropriately factored into timing,” an administration official told me. "He had a responsibility to do so because this isn’t just an intel issue -- it’s a foreign policy issue."

To put it simply, this is a complete bullshit argument. There's always going to be "a lot going on in the world" especially in areas who are going to be upset by the report. There's never going to be a "good" time to release a report that details just how screwed up the CIA's torture program is -- but it's the only way to actually start the process of making things right and making sure that we, as a country don't do that kind of thing again.

In fact, if the government is so damn concerned about the reaction to the release of the report, here's an idea: don't let the government do stuff that leads to a report that will create such a reaction!

Furthermore, the argument that a "delay" is necessary makes no sense either. Beyond the fact that there's always something going on in the world, in this case, they've known that this report was coming for months. To argue they haven't had enough time to prepare is clearly bogus. Back in April the State Department was whining about this as well, but now it's had months to prepare and it's still whining?

Finally, the claims by the State Department that it's just asking for a delay, rather than to shelve the whole report ring hollow. One of the reasons that it's coming out next week is because, after that, the Republicans are back in control, and they've indicated that they'll bury the report entirely. At this point, if Feinstein gives in to Kerry, it seems like the only viable option for getting the report out to the world is to have outgoing Senator Mark Udall release it himself on the floor of the Senate.

Filed Under: cia, cia torture, dianne feinstein, john kerry, mark udall, state department, torture report

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.

"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...

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, torture report

USA Freedom Act Fails To Move Forward... For Incredibly Stupid Reasons

from the onto-the-next-round dept

So, this evening the USA Freedom Act failed to get the 60 votes it needed for cloture to "advance" to a full floor vote. It ended up at 58 to 42. There was a short debate prior to the vote, and the debate was... stupid. Yes, there are some legitimate concerns with the USA Freedom Act, mostly in that it doesn't go far enough. But that's not what the debate was about at all. You had a bunch of bizarrely clueless Senators, many of whom insisted they were against the act because it would take the bulk collection out of the hands of the NSA and put it into the hands of the telcos -- with the claim being that the NSA could keep that data safer. Senators Susan Collins and Saxby Chambliss kept harping on that point. But it's flat out wrong. Because the whole point of this is that the telcos already have this data. The debate is between "telcos have the data" and "telcos and NSA have the data." Arguing that telcos-only is inherently more likely to lead to a privacy violation makes no sense at all.

Chambliss went further, repeating (over and over again) that it's okay for the NSA to have this data because only 22 people have access to it. Of course, as Marcy Wheeler points out, that's not true. 22 people can authorize a search based on "reasonable articulable suspicion" but many others can access the results. Furthermore, as Harley Geiger points out, the problem is not even at the point of access, but collection, and there's nothing in the law that says the limit is always 22. Frankly, the whole 22 people debate seems strange to me. Is Chambliss really arguing that it's okay to violate the 4th Amendment if only 22 people can do it?

Separately, Senator Dianne Feinstein very reluctantly supported the bill, noting that she's very afraid that if this bill doesn't pass, the whole Section 215 program will go away. Frankly, that actually sounded like a good reason not to support the bill. She also kept insisting that it wasn't being abused because there were only "288" searches last year on that data. First of all, 288 already seems like quite a lot to me, and again we go to Marcy Wheeler for the fact check, where she points out that it's not 288 searches, but rather 288 "selectors," which could be queried multiple times (and those selectors could scoop up lots of data).

Hopefully, it turns out that Senator Feinstein's "fears" on this bill were accurate, and that it leads to the end of Section 215 altogether. But, the completely bogus debate over this effort just highlights how ridiculous the idea is that the Senate has any sort of "oversight" over the NSA, or that it has the interests of the Constitution or the public in mind.

Filed Under: bulk data collection, dianne feinstein, nsa, patrick leahy, privacy, saxby chambliss, senate, surveillance, surveillance reform, susan collins, usa freedom act

Part Of CIA Torture Report May Finally Be Released Next Week, As More Details Leak

from the it's-a-start dept

Jason Leopold has a big article at Vice detailing some more of what's in the Senate Intelligence Committee's CIA torture report, but the bigger news is that the long fought over, somewhat redacted executive summary may be released next week:

... the Senate committee is hoping to release its report as early as next week, when the US sends a delegation to Geneva, Switzerland where it will submit a report on compliance with the International Convention Against Torture. The release of the executive summary would be an effort to show "some form of accountability," one person familiar with the declassification negotiations said.

Of course, it also notes that the fight over redacting pseudonyms still isn't settled, and that may muck things up. And, really, why wouldn't the CIA keep pushing back? Now that the GOP has won the Senate, it knows that if it can just stall until January, the whole report may get buried.

As for the other leaks about the report, many of them confirm what had previously leaked about the report, but also go deeper into each of those areas. For example, earlier leaks had already talked about how the torture techniques used by the CIA went beyond what was approved, how the CIA tortured more people than previously admitted (and then hid those details), and then lied to Congress claiming that the torture was effective when it was not. Leopold has some more details about all of those, including how the CIA is responding to and challenging some of those findings.

However, Leopold also highlights a variety of ways in which the report does appear to fall short, choosing to pull punches and avoid blaming top administration officials like former Vice President Dick Cheney (despite his previous admissions that he okayed the program), and also carefully avoiding placing any blame on a high-ranking CIA official who is described as "Feinstein's boy":

Although he is identified in the Senate report, the committee did not level any criticism against Stephen Kappes, who was deputy director of the CIA while the interrogation program was up and running. Kappes allegedly played a role in covering up the death of a detainee who froze to death in 2002 at a CIA operated prison in Afghanistan called the "Salt Pit." The death of the detainee is highlighted in the Senate report.

Kappes had been Feinstein's choice to head the CIA after Barack Obama was sworn in as president in 2009. Feinstein is on record stating she would not support Panetta's nomination unless Kappes was named as his deputy, a position he served in until 2010. One former CIA official said Kappes is "Feinstein's boy," suggesting that he was spared criticism because of his close relationship with the Intelligence Committee chairwoman.

As for Cheney:

The Senate report promotes the narrative that the CIA deceived the Bush White House into permitting the agency to use the controversial interrogation techniques against certain captives. This, despite the fact that former Vice President Dick Cheney admitted in 2008 that he personally "signed off" on the waterboarding of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other high-value captives because he "thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do."

"This is why the SSCI [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] report is flawed and is not a full historical overview of the EIT program," said one person familiar with it. "Who in their right mind would believe that Dick Cheney does not bear any responsibility here?"

Perhaps even more troubling is that the report does not say that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" were actually torture. We've questioned in the past why Senator Feinstein won't call torture "torture" and apparently that linguistic game continues in this report:

However, the Senate report does not conclude that the CIA violated any domestic or international laws prohibiting the use of torture, contradicting Feinstein's public statements. People familiar with the document say the Senate didn't even use the word "torture" to describe the techniques to which detainees were subjected.

In fact, Leopold claims that the report focuses on the "efficacy" of the torture program and doesn't even touch the questions of legality (or morality).

The report also, apparently, skips over George Tenet's leadership in the CIA, but instead focuses a lot of Michael Hayden:

The committee's executive summary, however, singles out Michael Hayden, who became CIA director in 2006 and is a staunch defender of the use of EITs. He is accused of lying to the panel during a briefing nearly a decade ago when he sought to revamp the CIA's interrogation program.

People familiar with the executive summary said the committee obtained records about Hayden's briefings and carefully reviewed what he told committee members. The report concludes that the former CIA director erroneously told the committee that there were fewer than 100 detainees held captive by the CIA when in fact that number was higher. (The committee's full report says the CIA detained 119 men). Hayden is also criticized for telling the committee that the enhanced interrogation program was "humane." The committee's report concludes that Hayden misrepresented the scope of the program and was not being truthful.

This probably explains why Hayden has been the most vocal and stringent critics of this report. He claimed that Feinstein was "too emotional" to judge the CIA's torture program, and also insisted that it was just a partisan attack.

Still, Leopold's report also highlights how the CIA and its defenders are likely to hit back on the claims about the torture program not being effective. They're going to argue that the torture was the "bad cop" aspect of a "good cop/bad cop" scheme, and the useful information came out when the "good cop" was in the room, but wouldn't have happened without the "bad cop" (i.e., the torture).

Retired Air Force psychologist James Mitchell, who has been credited with being the architect of the CIA's enhanced interrogation program — he's bound by a non-disclosure agreement he signed with the government and does not confirm, deny, or discuss his role in the program — said that his understanding of "the purpose of the enhanced interrogation program was to get the detainee to be willing to engage with a debriefer or a targeter who was asking a question, and that it wasn't designed so that you would ask questions about actionable intelligence… while the detainee was experiencing the enhanced interrogation program."

In other words, Mitchell is saying the enhanced interrogation program was akin to a good cop, bad cop act. For example, a "bad cop" might use EITs on a detainee, then leave the room. A "good cop" might then enter the room and, without the use of any kind of force, get answers from the detainee, who had just been subjected to EITs. If the bad cop and good cop submit separate reports, it would appear on paper that the EITs were ineffective because the bad cop didn't get the answers — the good cop did.

And the Senate would have used that intel in compiling its report.

"If you could go in and read the individual pieces of intel that were written as a result of the debriefings and the interrogations, what would that look like in the database?" Mitchell says. "What that would look like is that all the actionable intelligence came from the good cop just like you would expect, and you wouldn't see a lot of actionable intelligence leading to things like capturing bin Laden coming from the enhanced interrogation program because it wasn't designed to do that."

Still, from previous leaks, even that explanation seems questionable -- as it appears that much of the useful information came from people who weren't being tortured or before they were tortured, suggesting that argument is bunk. And, even if it were true, that doesn't magically make torture right in any way (legally or morally).

Either way, all this speculation is getting ridiculous. The Senate should just release the damn report already.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, michael hayden, senate, senate intelligence committee, torture, torture report

If GOP Takes Senate Next Week, Expect The CIA Torture Report To Disappear

from the bye-bye dept

We've heard some mumbling about one of the main reasons that the CIA has been dragging its feet on declassifying the executive summary of the CIA torture report that the Senate Intelligence Committee put together: it knows there's a decent chance that the Republicans will win the Senate next week, and suddenly the report may disappear from view. As you may recall, the Intelligence Committee (with support from GOP Senators) voted to declassify the 480 page executive summary of the 6,300 page report (which the Senate spent $40 million putting together). Multiple leaks concerning the report have suggested that it's devastating and details how terrible the CIA's torture program was, how it was completely ineffective and how the CIA lied about it all.

But most of the support for releasing the report is coming from the Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Dianne Feinstein (who sides with the NSA on plenty of stuff, but is more willing to challenge the CIA). But if the Republicans take the Senate next week, then the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee will likely shift to Senator Richard Burr, who has made it quite clear that he's on the CIA's team and against the public interest.

"I personally don't believe that anything that goes on in the intelligence committee should ever be discussed publicly," Burr told reporters in March. "If I had my way, with the exception of nominees, there would never be a public intelligence hearing."

It's also expected that Burr will try to muzzle Ron Wyden and Mark Udall (if Udall is re-elected, which is iffy at this point):

If Burr takes over as chair, he could easily sideline the committee's vocal civil libertarian bloc led by Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and bolstered by Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), two senators who've called for Brennan's resignation.

Udall, in particular, drew blunt criticisms from Burr earlier this year for disclosing the existence of an internal CIA review of the detention and interrogation program that Democrats believe vindicates their own study.

"I think Mark did make some public releases that were committee-sensitive information, but that's for the committee internally to handle," Burr told reporters in March. "My concern is that the release of information could potentially cause the losses of life to Americans. That to me, is a threshold that should be addressed."

As for the torture report itself, Burr has already said that the report is inaccurate and he's against it being released in any form. When a group of religious leaders asked him to support releasing the report, Burr told them he didn't think the report was accurate:

Last year, Burr drew criticism from more than 190 North Carolina religious leaders, including Christians, Jews, Quakers, and Muslims, for opposing the release of the Senate's post-9/11 torture report.

"The U.S. does not condone torture, but torture has been done by our citizens and in our country's name," reads a letter the religious leaders sent Burr. "We are writing to you as fellow people of faith to support the release of the ... report."

Disappointing the religious groups, Burr responded in a letter saying he opposed making the report public due to factual inaccuracies contained within the report. "I believe the American public should be provided with reports that are based on accurate facts," he said.

Given all of this, if the GOP does win, it seems like the only way the public may ever see the details is if someone steps up and leaks the damn thing.

Filed Under: cia, congress, dianne feinstein, gop, republicans, richard burr, senate, senate intelligence committee, torture report