Intelligence Community Warns That Releasing CIA Torture Report Details Might 'Inflame Anti-US Passions' In Middle East

from the uh,-no,-it-was-the-torture-that-was-the-problem dept

James Clapper is pulling out all the stops to try to keep the details of the CIA torture report from seeing the light of day. He apparently made the decision (without asking the White House) to have the National Intelligence Council put together a memo explaining that releasing the details of how the CIA tortured people would "inflame anti-U.S. passions in the Mideast, resulting in potentially violent street protests and threats to U.S. embassies and personnel." Except, of course, this is bullshit. It wouldn't be the release of the report inflaming such passions -- it would be the torture performed by the CIA at the direction of the US government. If the intelligence community is so worried about the details becoming public then it shouldn't have engaged in torture in the first place. Otherwise, the intelligence community has all the cover it needs to do horrible things, because any move to expose those actions could be stopped under this same idiotic theory that the revealing of those actions would create anger, rather than the actions themselves.

And, yet, the memo is being passed around and used by the supporters of the surveillance state to protest the releasing of any details from the Senate Intelligence Committee's CIA torture report:

The Mideast is a tinderbox right now and this could be the spark that ignites quite a fire,” said one U.S. intelligence official who was briefed on the findings.

That concern was echoed Friday by a former top U.S. intelligence official who helped oversee the interrogation program. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out if you release a report like this at a time when terrorism is surging all over the Mideast you are handing the other side a recruitment tool,” John McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy director, told Yahoo News. “It’s blindingly obvious.”

Of course, the response to McLaughlin ought to be "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that if you release a report like this, it might embarrass folks like John McLaughlin for his role in the torture program. It's blindingly obvious." And, really, if McLaughlin is so concerned about how folks might react to this program, perhaps he should have, you know, stopped it.

Filed Under: anger, cia, intelligence community, james clapper, john mclaughlin, national intelligence council, senate intelligence committee, torture, torture report