The CIA Torture Thread

[Mike]

We've been waiting quite some time for the government to finally get around to releasing parts of the $40 million 6,300 page CIA torture report, which will detail how the CIA committed torture, lied about it, and how that torture did nothing even remotely effective. As you may recall, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which wrote the report, voted back in April to declassify the 480-page "executive summary" which was written to be declassified. That is, the really secret stuff is buried in the other 6,000 pages or so. Given that, the expectation was that the exec summary would need minimal redactions. Of course, the White House asked the CIA to handle the redactions, and considering that the report makes the CIA look bad, the CIA suddenly became quite infatuated with that black redaction ink.

The report came back to the Senate Intelligence Committee with significant redactions, so much so that the Intelligence Committee declared it unacceptable and even argued that the choices in redactions made the report incomprehensible.

Since then there's been back and forth fighting over it, with some reports suggesting that the (still redacted) report might finally come out in the next week or two. However, those plans are on hold, as apparently the White House and the Senate Intelligence Committeestill can't agree on redactions, leading some to say the report won't be released until November at the earliest.

Once again, we're left wondering why the Senate Intelligence Committee won't just go with plan B and release the damn thing themselves. All of this delaying only works to the CIA's advantage. The CIA has no incentive at all to compromise and come to agreement on the redactions since it wants the report hidden. And, yes, the White House claims to want the report released and it's got the final say over the CIA, but its actions to date have not suggested that the White House is particularly serious about getting this report out there.

Originally Published: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 22:53:00 GMT
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[Mike]

We recently wrote about the ongoing delays in releasing a (heavily redacted) executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's torture regime following 9/11. That was linked to a Reuters story about how the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee still can't agree on what to redact. However, I'd totally missed a line at the end of that Reuters piece that Kevin Gosztola calls to our attention. It's where Reuters reporter Patricia Zengerle decides to not call torture "torture," but rather "physically stressful interrogation."

Human rights activists and many politicians have labeled as "torture" some of the physically stressful interrogation techniques, such as water boarding - or simulated drowning - that were authorized under former President George W. Bush.

This is a cheap cop out by Reuters and Zengerle. Waterboarding is torture. A month ago, the NY Times finally got around to admitting that waterboarding and the other interrogation techniques used by the CIA were torture and that it would call it that in the future. Reuters should get with the program (also known as the English language). It's the "view from nowhere" to pull the "well, some human rights activists call it torture." It is torture. It is not just a few human rights activists saying this. It is widely accepted as torture. The UN has said it is torture, and Reuters reporters should know that because that article is from Reuters.

Not only that, but it's pretty clearly torture under US law which defines it as:

“torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;

The act further says that "severe mental pain or suffering" includes "the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering" and "the threat of imminent death." Waterboarding fits both those classifications. It makes the brain think that you're drowning. It is severe pain and suffering and makes those experiencing it think they are about to die.

If you don't like the US law, how about the Geneva Convention, which says that parties are "prohibited from taking any measure of such a character as to cause the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands" and further defines "torture or inhuman treatment" as including "willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health."

And if that's not enough, we have the UN Convention Against Torture, which the US has both signed and ratified, which clearly notes:

For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

There is no legitimate argument that the activities carried out by the CIA go beyond "physically stressful interrogation techniques." The CIA engaged in torture. And Reuters can (and should) call it that.

Originally Published: Thu, 11 Sep 2014 14:51:38 GMT
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[Mike]

It's well known that CIA's been stalling over the release of the officially declassified 480 page "executive summary" of the 6,300 page CIA torture report, put together by staffers of the Senate Intelligence Committee over many years at a cost of $40 million. It's known that the report is somewhat devastating to the CIA and the CIA isn't happy about it (at all). Originally, the CIA suggested redactions that made the report incomprehensible, even as James Clapper said it was "just 15%" that was redacted. Recent reports have focused on the fight over redacting pseudonyms. Apparently the CIA wants all names, including pseudonyms redacted, while the Senate Intelligence Committee thinks that pseudonyms (but not real names) should be left in so that the report accurately reflects if the actions were done by a large number of diverse individuals, or by some particular individuals again and again and again. The CIA, likely employing some sort of "mosaic theory" claim, say that they're worried that even with pseudonyms, identifying the same person in a few different situations will make it easier for some to figure out who they are.

In response, Senator Ron Wyden has attacked the CIA's position and noted that it's "unprecedented" and that plenty of other, similar, reports have made use of pseudonyms, without a problem.

The CIA’s current opposition to using pseudonyms runs contrary to decades of precedent.  U.S. government agencies have used pseudonyms to protect agents’ identities in public reports going back decades, including:

• Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq (2008) – Refers to FBI Special Agents involved in detainee interrogations using pseudonyms such as  “Thomas” and “Gibson.” 
  
• The 9/11 Commission Report (2004) – Refers to agents involved in hunting Osama Bin Ladin and other sensitive operations using pseudonyms such as “Mike,” “Richard,” “Jeff.” Pages 110, 112, 113, 114, 130, 131, 133, 138, 142, 204.
  
• The Investigation of the Abu Ghraib Detention Facility (2004) – Refers to CIA employees at the Abu Ghraib prison using pseudonyms such as “Other Agency Employee01,” “Other Agency Employee02,” etc. Pages 53, 54, 55, 76
  
• Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board – (1998) – Includes the names of some CIA officers, and notes that “in some cases pseudonyms are used instead of an individual’s true name.” (p. 52)  Also notes that “the Review Board would not agree to CIA’s request for blanket postponements of CIA names.” Page 48.
  
• Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair (1987) – refers to a CIA station chief in Central America using the pseudonym “Tomas Castillo. “ Pages pp. 139, 142, 143, 144, 146, 147, 505-510.
  
• Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders – (1975) – Report authored by the Church Committee notes that “We believe that the public is entitled to know what instrumentalities of their Government have done,” and that “the Committee, on occasions, resorted, on balance, to the use of an alias or a general description of the individual or his position.” Page 2.
  

So why does the CIA seem to think it's such a problem here? Well, mainly because the CIA is willing to do just about anything to stop this report, perhaps in an effort to run out the clock until some more "CIA friendly" Senators take over. Still, it seems that the more the CIA fights over this, the more and more likely it is that someone is just going to leak the damn report, and it may reveal a lot more than what's currently on the table.

Originally Published: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 22:54:28 GMT
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[Mike]

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.

Originally Published: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 17:42:29 GMT
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[Mike]

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.

Originally Published: Fri, 07 Nov 2014 18:10:00 GMT
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[Mike]

As we were worried might happen, Senator Mark Udall lost his re-election campaign in Colorado, meaning that one of the few Senators who vocally pushed back against the surveillance state is about to leave the Senate. However, Trevor Timm pointed out that, now that there was effectively "nothing to lose," Udall could go out with a bang and release the Senate Intelligence Committee's CIA torture report. The release of some of that report (a redacted version of the 400+ page "executive summary" -- the full report is well over 6,000 pages) has been in limbo for months since the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed to declassify it months ago. The CIA and the White House have been dragging out the process hoping to redact some of the most relevant info -- perhaps hoping that a new, Republican-controlled Senate would just bury the report.

The arguments for not leaking the report -- or just putting it into the Congressional record -- is not a legal one. Members of Congress are allowed to put whatever they want in the Congressional record without fear of legal repercussions. However, it could lead to other problems, including being kicked off of the Intelligence Committee, which would have led to less ability to oversee what was going on in the future. But since he's leaving anyway... As Timm notes:

But Udall’s loss doesn’t have to be all bad. The lame-duck transparency advocate now has a rare opportunity to truly show his principles in the final two months of his Senate career and finally expose, in great detail, the secret government wrongdoing he’s been criticizing for years. On his way out the door, Udall can use congressional immunity provided to him by the Constitution’s Speech and Debate clause to read the Senate’s still-classified 6,000-page CIA torture report into the Congressional record – on the floor, on TV, for the world to see.

There’s ample precedent for this. In 1971, former Senator Mike Gravel famously read the top-secret classified Pentagon Papers for three hours before almost collapsing and then entering thousands of pages more into the record after he couldn’t speak for any longer from exhaustion.

In fact, Gravel is now urging Udall to do exactly that, in an interview he gave to Dan Froomkin.

“If Udall wanted to do this, he could do the same thing.” Gravel said. “Hell, I’d fly into Washington and help him pass it out.”

If it’s more convenient, Gravel said, he’ll be in Udall’s home state of Colorado in a couple weeks. “If he wants to, we can get together over Thanksgiving weekend, and talk this thing out so he feels comfortable.”

The two biggest reasons not to do it, Gravel said, are no longer relevant. “The biggest fear you have is peer pressure. What are my members of the Senate going to think of me? But I’ve got to say, if you lose office, like he has, he’s got no more peer pressure.”

Udall himself had been rather quiet about all of this over the past few weeks, but has now told the Denver Post that all options are on the table, but he's still hopeful that a deal may be reached.

“I’m going to keep all options on the table to ensure the truth comes out,”

In an odd way, his loss may actually put extra pressure on the CIA to agree to fix the retraction problem, since they now know that Udall can just go around them entirely. Suddenly, the "fallback" position isn't such a good situation. In the past, the CIA could stall under the likelihood that no one could really do much about it. But that calculus has changed, meaning that the CIA no longer has the upper hand here. Still, it would be something if Udall decides that the only way to get this info out is to put it out himself, in part, because he could release a lot more than just the executive summary. Who knows if he'd go that far, but it's good to hear that he's at least open to the option.

Originally Published: Fri, 14 Nov 2014 20:24:24 GMT
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[Mike]

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...

Originally Published: Thu, 20 Nov 2014 22:23:22 GMT
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