Report: CIA's Harsh Interrogations Were More Numerous Than Previously Believed

The Democrats don't only have the Koch brothers as their 2014 midterm plan.

It appears they may try to recreate 2006 magic by putting the Bush Administration on trial again. They've complied a report on previously-secret CIA interrogation practices -- and they want to vote to make it public.

Interrogation techniques on foreign terror suspects – a practice that has provoked international condemnation – was more widespread than the agency has publicly acknowledged, Senate investigators have learned.

Moreover, the CIA’s own internal documents confirm the agency’s culpability in the hypothermia death of one Afghan captive – an incident that also has never even been publicly discussed, McClatchy was told.

...

Since the inception of the interrogation program shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the CIA has steadfastly refused to completely describe what happened to the estimated 100 detainees believed to be in its custody.

The committee is scheduled to vote Thursday on what is expected to be a damning 6,000-page report on the CIA practices that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s chairwoman, has called “un-American and brutal.”

...

Most lawmakers and those familiar with the report agree on this much: “There will be a lot of things in those sections that will be upsetting to people to read,” said the former U.S. official. “But it would make it impossible for the United States to argue that this was defensible.

“There has to be certain levels of sunlight. The CIA and others are still saying these things were necessary and they had good results. But the public needs to know the horrific things that were done. What needs to be known is that these activities did not yield good and actionable and timely intelligence and they’re reprehensible by our own values and they cannot and must not be repeated.”

The report also claims another detainee death, and says that nearly 100 detainees were subject to some level of "enhanced" interrogations, not 30. (Actually the leakers are so vague on this point I strongly suspect the CIA is justified to say that thirty detainees were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, with the additional ones falling into the "arguable" or "ticky-tack" categories. Additionally, one leaker confirms that the CIA's claim that only three detainees were waterboarded is actually true.)

The CIA admits the death of the Afghan captive, due to hypothermia, but says it was an accident. One of McClatchy's leakers disputes that, calling it either "willful negligence or even negligent homicide."

For those who say that controlling the Senate means nothing, well, it means something: Democrats (and Democrat-allied Senator King of Maine) will probably vote to pass this on to the President with a recommendation to declassify.

On the other hand, should some kind of inquiry ever be made into Government Motors' cover-ups of malfunctioning cars and resulting deaths, I'm sure these same solid citizens will deem it proper to keep it classified and/or redacted down to the punctuation until 2065.

"The equities" must be protected, you know, as Victoria Nuland said when she deleted any reference to a terrorist attack from the White House talking points on Benghazi.

posted by Ace at 01:26 PM

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