News To Make You Furious- Torture doesn’t go away if you ignore it

Government documents can be pretty dry reading, but almost a year ago the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) released a report that was a blockbuster. Well, technically, they released a 525-page executive summary of a 6000-page classified report on the CIA’s post-911 program of torture, abuse, and secret prisons (Torture Report). The central conclusion was the CIA interrogation methods were much more brutal and less effective than described to the public and to Congress under oath. But you know what? After a year no one, not even the officials it was sent to, has read the actual report. And that’s no accident; it’s a deliberate strategy to bury crimes and malfeasance without ever having to face the ugly truth. The deeper you dig the more pointlessly partisan the issue gets, until the only sensible response is to get Furious…

If you don’t remember what the executive summary found (and after all, it has been a year), then here are 7 key points from the CIA Torture Report, courtesy of the NY Times…

The C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques were more brutal and employed more extensively than the agency portrayed.
The C.I.A. interrogation program was mismanaged and was not subject to adequate oversight.
The C.I.A. misled members of Congress and the White House about the effectiveness and extent of its brutal interrogation techniques.
Interrogators in the field who tried to stop the brutal techniques were repeatedly overruled by senior C.I.A. officials.
The C.I.A. repeatedly underreported the number of people it detained and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques under the program.
At least 26 detainees were wrongfully held and did not meet the government’s standard for detention.
The C.I.A. leaked classified information to journalists, exaggerating the success of interrogation methods in an effort to gain public support.

We try to avoid pointing partisan fingers, but partisanship is undeniably involved here. Republican apologists have fought examination of the Bush administration’s post-911 crimes at every turn, and the Torture Report was certainly no exception. The report was compiled and distributed under SSCI chair Diane Feinstein and the Democrats, but the Republicans took over the Senate in the last election. New SSCI chair Richard Burr immediately made the unprecedented demand that all copies of the report be returned to the Senate. And that’s where the lawyers come in.

The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that the CIA and Departments of Defense, Justice, and State release the full classified report. That’s fine; the ACLU, SSCI, CIA, DOD, DOJ, DOS, POTUS, and RNC could fight it out in acronym court. But here’s something you may not know about FOIA… it doesn’t apply to Congressional records. FOIA can reach into the Executive Branch (including the CIA) but Congress, the Legislative Branch, is immune. By trying to claw back the report into the Senate, Burr is trying to lock it up so it dies a slow death of obscurity. He was supported in May when a judge ruled that even though the report was distributed to the Executive Branch it still remained a Congressional record. Of course the ACLU appealed, and a result is expected this year. But why aren’t officials even reading the report? Because Senator Burr is getting (perhaps) unwilling help from the Department of Justice (DOJ). If, for example, a State Department official opened, read, and summarized the report, then that could lead a judge to determine the document belonged to the Executive branch rather than the Legislative. To prevent “influencing the outcome of the lawsuit” the DOJ has ordered that NO ONE open or read the report. They are “maintaining the status quo” until a final ruling is made… the report can’t be opened by the Executive branch, but it isn’t being returned to the Senate either until a judge makes a final decision. The result is this pivotal report is languishing in office safes throughout Washington, being actively ignored.

The fact that our country systematically tortured is a gross failure of our presidency, legislature, judiciary, and overall society. At some level we all stand condemned. However, we can’t punish the guilty, exonerate the innocent, condemn the cowards, or praise the heroes until we know who they are and what they did. We can’t prevent torture from happening again until we understand how it happened the first time. It’s said that “the wheels of justice grind slow but grind fine”, but it’s also said that “justice delayed is justice denied”. We should rightly expect a prudent pause for investigation rather than a rush to the gallows, but the Torture Report took almost 6 years to create and it has sat unread for another year on top of that. The longer we wait the further the events recede into the past, and the less likely justice will ever be done at all.