CIA Fights Full Release Of Detainee Report -White House Urged to Maintain Secrecy

[kpete]

Source: Washington Post

CIA Fights Full Release Of Detainee Report
White House Urged to Maintain Secrecy

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 17, 2009

The officials say the CIA is urging the suppression of passages describing in graphic detail how the agency handled its detainees, arguing that the material could damage ongoing counterterrorism operations by laying bare sensitive intelligence procedures and methods.

The May 2004 report, prepared by the CIA's inspector general, is the most definitive official account to date of the agency's interrogation system. A heavily redacted version, consisting of a dozen or so paragraphs separated by heavy black boxes and lists of missing pages, was released in May 2008 in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.

................

After the report was issued, then-CIA director George J. Tenet demanded that the Justice Department and the White House reaffirm their support for the agency's harsh interrogation methods, even when used in combination, telling others at the time that "no papers, no opinions, no program." At a White House meeting in mid-2004, he resisted pressures to reinstate the program immediately, before receiving new legal authorization, according to a source familiar with the episode.

The Justice Department subsequently sent interim supporting opinions to the CIA, allowing its resumption after Tenet's departure, and went on to complete three lengthy reports in 2005 that affirmed in detail the legality of the interrogation techniques with some new safeguards that the CIA had begun to implement in 2003.



Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603516.html?hpid=topnews

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Old and In the Way]

2. BS...this is pure CYA for Dick Cheney and his dummy, W. Bush.

If the real story gets out, it's war crimes, plain and simple. I guess no one has the stomach to hang a recent US VP. Saddam? No problem. His US counterpart? That would be too horrible to consider...even if that means we all eat his his complicity.

[Hissyspit]

3. Cover-Up

It's all cover-up.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=325070&mesg_id=325070

MADDOW: "Bush administration officials used to use the waterboarding of abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Muhammed to defend torture. Then last month, FBI interrogator Ali Soufan testified in Washington that he got valuable information from abu Zubaydah using conventional, legal, proven interrogation methods, until somebody else began to torture abu Zubaydah, who then clammed up. So they can no longer brag about torturing abu Zubaydah. Now it appears that they can no longer brag about torturing Kahlid Sheikh Muhammed either - that not only was it illegal, but it was also ill-advised, self-destructive, counter-productive. And so it may be that the last of the pseudo-substantive defenses of torture has tonight gone away."

- snip -

MADDOW: "In previous-released versions of these transcripts - and I mean they are still pretty redacted, I mean, there's still big blocks of text... - but in previous versions, the CIA had removed almost all references to the abuse of prisoners. Today, it's still heavily redacted, but we are getting these new little blocks of text. What do you think are the most significant new details that are jumping out for you."

WIZNER: " Well, I think that passage that you highlighted is very critical, and the first question we have to ask is 'why in the world was that classified?' Was there anything in the passage that you read that included a secret source or method by the CIA that included intelligence information that couldn't be shared with the world. There was one thing in that passage that the Bush administration desperately did not want the world to know, and that was that it's illegal torture program not only was immoral, but that it was also useless. You heard Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, he said, they tortured me and I said, 'O.k. bin Laden is there.' Well, have we got bin Laden? Obviously this program wasn't working, but it was a critical lynchpin of their defense of the program that without it, American lives would be lost."

MADDOW: "And, as you point out, this brings us from not only to the crime of torture, to the crime of covering-up of the crime of torture."

WIZNER: "Well, I think that's right, and I think different things are being covered up here. So the Bush administration critically wanted to cover up how ineffective torture was. They also wanted to cover up information about the specific detainees. There is a passage in which abu Zubaydah, who Bush had called an arch-terrorist, the No. 3 in al Qaeda, recounts that eventually his CIA interrogators told him we realize that you're not the No. 3, that you are not even a planner or a fighter, that, you know, we made a mistake in your identity, and that's something, again, that contains no legitimately secret information, but just would have been very embarrassing for the Bush administration in carrying on this torture program."

MADDOW: "What does this new information mean in terms, I guess in terms of accountability - I don't even know what that would mean anymore, given how little we've gotten from the new administration about what they'd be willing to move forward with. Do you think this has implications?"

- snip -

WIZNER: "I think that what is going on here is very, very clear. This is information, the release of which, would increase the calls for criminal accountability, and that is something that the Obama administration has been fighting to avoid. And remember these are voices that have been missing from the debate. We have the Justice Department memos that tell you what John Yoo and Jay Bybee authorized, we have Dick Cheney's denials, but the people who were eyewitnesses to this are the victims themselves, and those people are still cordoned off and secreted away, and their words, which give a clearer picture of exactly what happened - this document is called 'Written Statement Regarding Alleged Abuse from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed' and it's still completely blank, because they might give lie to another myth in this story.

[JDPriestly]

4. K&R

If the program has been discontinued, then the argument that these documents should not be released because they reveal American interrogation techniques is irrelevant.

The argument that the documents cannot be released because their release will cause a backlash that will endanger our troops and agents and citizens overseas makes no sense because some of the victims of the torture have been released and are describing their experiences first-hand and in graphic detail. We aren't hearing much about their statements in our media, but rest assured, in those companies in which our troops are located, the statements of the torture victims are receiving wide dissemination.

So, there is no persuasive argument for withholding these documents other than that the people who were in the Bush administration does not want them released and Obama is, as usual, afraid of offending anyone, so he is giving in to the pressure from the former Bush administration. Obama is making himself a part of the cover-up of the torture. Obama seemed like such a nice guy. Too bad he lacks the courage to do what is right.

[Senator]

5. We Need Both Prosecutions And Purges.

Any less means that we have an intelligence community that does nothing but torture and a permanent "JustUs" Department.

At the CIA, the report was welcomed by some lower-ranking officials who were privy to what was happening at the prisons and had complained to Helgerson's office about apparent abuses, according to an official familiar with the study. But it provoked immediate anger and resistance among the agency's top managers, lawyers and counterterrorism experts, who charged that Helgerson had overstepped his authority and that the report contained factual inaccuracies and a misreading of the law.

Anger is a symptom of guilt. The rank and file of both agencies do not deserve to have their culture, and resulting morale, determined by the torturers. It is damaging the nation.

People like Brennan are http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/15/brennan/index.html">simply too corrupted to be given a voice in "what to do."

This is Obama's core failure. His http://talkingimpeachment.com/blog/Hall-of-Shame-Inductee----Barak-Obama.html">years of tacit complicity have conditioned him to listen too much to what are http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSTRE53H1Y020090418">fast becoming his co-conspirators.

Unless and until he reverses, it will be his ONLY legacy.

---

[Soylent Brice]

6. i keep waiting for a leak on the inside. a major leak, docs, photos, etc.

it's bound to happen eventually. someone in there has to have a conscience.

*fingers crossed*

[Senator]

7. There's really nothing to "leak." That's the insanity part.

No one is denying anything. They're all just repeating the same age-old, lame torture rationalizations.

The torturers really are naked emperors. And Obama's become their court jester -- amusing them with happy talk of change while war criminals chuckle their way around the laws and treaty obligations our greater generations fought and died to forge.

--

[grahamhgreen]

8. The Film that will put BUSH Behind BARS!