A devastating and secret report by the Senate Intelligence Committee documents in detail how the C.I.A.’s brutalization of terror suspects during the Bush years was unnecessary, ineffective, and deceptively sold to Congress, the White House, Justice Department, and the public.
The CIA has long fought to keep the report secret.
That's not surprising, given that torture is wholly illegal (and see this).
And that the CIA's torture program ended up deceiving the 9/11 Commission. Specifically, the 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on third-hand accounts of what tortured detainees said, with two of the three parties in the communication being government employees. The 9/11 Commissioners were not allowed to speak with the detainees, or even their interrogators. Instead, they got their information third-hand. The Commission itself didn’t really trust the interrogation testimony … yet published it as if it were Gospel.
New York Times investigative reporter Philip Shenon Newsweek noted in a 2009 essay in Newsweek that the 9/11 Commission Report was unreliable because most of the information was based on the statements of tortured detainees.
As NBC News reported:
- Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured
- At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured.”
- One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ
- The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves
Indeed, the type of torture used by the U.S. on the Guantanamo suspects was of a "special" type. Senator Levin revealed that the the U.S. used Communist torture techniques specifically aimed at creating false confessions. And see these important reports from McClatchy, New York Times, CNN and Huffington Post.
CIA Goes to Great Lengths to Cover Up Torture
The CIA has already gone to great lengths to cover up the torture … and the unreliability of the testimony published by the 9/11 Commission.
The CIA has blocked release of the Senate's torture report for years. But it has taken many other actions to try to keep the lid on the torture program.
For example, the CIA videotaped the interrogation of 9/11 suspects, but falsely told the 9/11 Commission that there were no videotapes or other records of the interrogations, and then illegally destroyed all of the tapes and transcripts of the interrogations.
9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:
Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.
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Government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.
(And the chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 said that Soviet-style government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses. We believe that some of the minders were from the CIA.)
Spying On Its Overseers In Washington
In the last 24 hours, the New York Times and McClatchy have published stories revealing that the CIA is spying on the Senate Intelligence Committee, as part of its efforts to block release of its torture report.
Just Security points out:
The CIA Inspector General has reportedly requested the Justice Department to investigate the case as a criminal matter.
As Tech Dirt notes:
In many ways, the idea that the CIA is directly spying on the Senate Committee charged with its own oversight is a bigger potential scandal than many of the Snowden NSA revelations so far.
We partially agree … although we believe that the NSA has also been spying on – and blackmailing – its "overseers" in Washington.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1hLxvzm George Washington