The CIA is getting away with keeping every important secret about torture
A definitive Senate report about one of America’s darkest periods continues to be withheld – precisely because the agency behind it refuses to come clean.
At this point, is there anything the Central Intelligence Agency thinks it can’t get away with?
To recap: the CIA systematically tortured people, then lied about it.Destroyed evidence of it, then lied about that. Spied on the US Senate staffers investigating the agency for torture, then lied about that. Now, after somehow being put in charge of deciding what parts of the Senate’s final report on that torture should be redacted, the CIA has predictively censored the key evidence of the litany of all of those transgressions.
The agency’s black marker has reportedly censored – at different points in the report – already-public, embarrassing and criminally culpable information. By doing so, the CIA has rendered it, as one Senator noted, “incomprehensible”. So while the Senators and Langley fight it out behind closed doors, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the intelligence committee chair, put the report’s public release on hold. Again.
Feinstein seems genuinely pissed at the intel community’s overreach (for once), but the sad fact remains that this is probably exactly what the CIA wanted: a protracted fight over redactions that will get played out largely in secret, while the report stays secret for weeks (or months) more, and what remains of any statutes of limitations for crimes outlined in it continue to tick away.
The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper – not exactly known for his truth-telling – defended the redactions, insisting that 85% of the report remained untouched. But, as Senator Mark Heinrich said, “Try reading a novel with 15% of the words blacked-out.”… [continue reading]
— by Trevor Timm writing for The Guardian
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The CIA is getting away with keeping every important secret about torture
A definitive Senate report about one of America’s darkest periods continues to be withheld – precisely because the agency behind it refuses to come clean.
At this point, is there anything the Central Intelligence Agency thinks it can’t get away with?
To recap: the CIA systematically tortured people, then lied about it.Destroyed evidence of it, then lied about that. Spied on the US Senate staffers investigating the agency for torture, then lied about that. Now, after somehow being put in charge of deciding what parts of the Senate’s final report on that torture should be redacted, the CIA has predictively censored the key evidence of the litany of all of those transgressions.
The agency’s black marker has reportedly censored – at different points in the report – already-public, embarrassing and criminally culpable information. By doing so, the CIA has rendered it, as one Senator noted, “incomprehensible”. So while the Senators and Langley fight it out behind closed doors, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the intelligence committee chair, put the report’s public release on hold. Again.
Feinstein seems genuinely pissed at the intel community’s overreach (for once), but the sad fact remains that this is probably exactly what the CIA wanted: a protracted fight over redactions that will get played out largely in secret, while the report stays secret for weeks (or months) more, and what remains of any statutes of limitations for crimes outlined in it continue to tick away.
The Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper – not exactly known for his truth-telling – defended the redactions, insisting that 85% of the report remained untouched. But, as Senator Mark Heinrich said, “Try reading a novel with 15% of the words blacked-out.”… [continue reading]
— by Trevor Timm writing for The Guardian
Discover more from Vox Populi
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
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