CIA Torture Report Leaked - NOW WE KNOW WHAT'S BEING DONE IN OUR NAME - By Charles P. Pierce

[kpete]

We finally have been favored with the most inevitable leak in the history of the republic. Somebody's sent the Senate committee's report on the CIA's torture program, and its description of what was done in our name, out into the world. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/04/11/224085/cias-use-of-harsh-interrogation.html This will light a fire under some asses in the Executive branch, I'm thinking. It ought to get people thrown in jail. (h/t to Martin Longman for the PDF.)
(HERE WE GO FOLKS):
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1109052-senate-intelligence-report-list-of-cia-findings.html#storylink=relast

Some of the report's other conclusions, which were obtained by McClatchy, include: the CIA used interrogation methods that weren't approved by the Justice Department or CIA headquarters; the agency impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making regarding the program; the CIA actively evaded or impeded congressional oversight of the program; the agency hindered oversight of the program by its own Inspector General's Office.

It is further evidence that nothing said by the heroes of our all-too-human, but curiously error-prone surveillance state about their activities can be trusted. Nothing. Ever. They lie for a living because their mission is a messianic one. They are contemptuous of democratic institutions, democratic norms, and any democratic spirit abroad in the people who pay their salaries and in whose name they carried out their crimes. If that skepticism is the most lasting result, that will be a good thing.

The investigation determined that the program produced very little intelligence of value and that the CIA misled the Bush White House, the Congress and the public about the effectiveness of the interrogation techniques, committee members have said. The techniques included waterboarding, which produces a sensation of drowning, stress positions, sleep deprivation for up to 11 days at a time, confinement in a cramped box, slaps and slamming detainees into walls. The CIA held detainees in secret "black site" prisons overseas and abducted others who it turned over to foreign governments for interrogation.

There is no question that these are crimes. There is no question that there are crimes that grew from the crimes. There is a severe test for the rule of law here, just as there was after the Bay of Pigs, and after the Church Committee hearings. Of course, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who had a couple of weeks in which she didn't seem to be entirely in the tank for the spooks, knows where the real problem with the leak lies.

Asked to comment on the findings, CIA spokesman Dean Boyd said: "Given the report remains classified, we are unable to comment. As we have stated previously, the CIA, in consultation with other agencies, will carry out an expeditious classification review of those portions of the final SSCI report submitted to the executive branch for review." Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein also declined to comment except to say: "If someone distributed any part of this classified report, they broke the law and should be prosecuted."

This is the debate that started with Edward Snowden, International Man Of Luggage. It's far beyond him now. What is more important -- for the government to keep its secrets or for the people to know what they need to know to govern themselves, and , about what was done in their name, and who makes the decision about where the "balance" lies. It cannot lie with the people who committed the crimes, not in this democracy.


MORE:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/cia-torture-report-leak-041114?click=feed

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. This is precisely why America is too corrupt to join the ICC.

I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. Albert Camus

[Mnemosyne]

13. To rejoin actually. War criminal Bush 'unsigned' us from the ICC shortly after being selected. nt

[Wilms]

2. ^

[Octafish]

3. ''The CIA misled the Bush White House…'' Sounds plausible. Let's ask Karen Kwiatkowski.

She remembers Doug Feith and what happened at the time:

The Lie Factory

[kpete]

5. he would only say, “Karen, we have sources that you don't have access to."

http://www.salon.com/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/

[Octafish]

18. An offer he can't refuse.

Lunch with the Chairman

Why was Richard Perle meeting with Adnan Khashoggi?

by Seymour M. Hersh
Annals of National Security
The New Yorker
March 17, 2003

EXCERPT...

Khashoggi is still brokering. In January of this year, he arranged a private lunch, in France, to bring together Harb Saleh al-Zuhair, a Saudi industrialist whose family fortune includes extensive holdings in construction, electronics, and engineering companies throughout the Middle East, and Richard N. Perle, the chairman of the Defense Policy Board, who is one of the most outspoken and influential American advocates of war with Iraq.

The Defense Policy Board is a Defense Department advisory group composed primarily of highly respected former government officials, retired military officers, and academics. Its members, who serve without pay, include former national-security advisers, Secretaries of Defense, and heads of the C.I.A. The board meets several times a year at the Pentagon to review and assess the country’s strategic defense policies.

Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November, 2001, in Delaware. Trireme’s main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm’s government connections prominently: “Three of Trireme’s Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme’s principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board.” The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State (who is, in fact, only a member of Trireme’s advisory group and is not involved in its management), and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle’s who handles matters in Trireme’s New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

CONTINUED...

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/03/17/030317fa_fact

Money trumps peace.

[MisterP]

19. like in Syria!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023554942

[Aerows]

29. That entire situation

is a pile of shit that most Americans won't wrap their heads around. Not because they can't, but because they won't.

When shit like that is allowed to go on and we get deceived about it in favor of "rah rah" politics, we are a nation in trouble because we are lead by the willfully corrupt, journalism is reported by the willfully ignorant, and we are governed by the willfully criminal.

[grasswire]

4. why aren't there a thousand recs for this?

Someone leaked the most important papers since the Pentagon Papers.

[Octafish]

11. Cats. Cats with opposable thumbs.

[Auntie Bush]

6. People need to be imprisoned to show the world we don't condone this kind of treatment

The Bush administration is a disgrace to Democracy and the US. Bush needs to be in jail painting prisoners he's responsible for torturing and fellow inmates And maybe one of him in the public shower would be nice.

[grasswire]

7. the comments over at McClatchy are hot

A couple:

Roger H Werner · Top Commenter · President at Asi
Jesus H C! We've been here before. Many times. For those of you not old enough to recall, we had the U-2 denial. In the 1970s we had the the MKUltra Nightmare. Then the denials about assassinations and government destabilization programs. How many times I it going to take before our Congress, the so called house of the people, recognizes that entities created by a 1948 law don't believe they are answerable to anyone. Why is this story shocking or even surprising? It isn't. Anyone with anything more substantial than a pea brain and a memory longer than the last episode of the hottest reality TV program recognizes that NSA and CIA lie. They are organizations that lie routinely. In fact, lying has become so routine that it's no longer considered a factor in their decision-making process. It's time to terminate both of these organizations. If Congress had any cahones at all (*laughs*), they would call Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the scumbags that led us into our present nightmare are turn them into eunuchs. And when we're finished with our legal process anyone that violated international law should be sent to The World Court to be tried as war criminals. Until we are willing to apply the standards we are so willing to apply to other to our own people, then we stand for nothing. The US isn't qualified to be the world's policeman, we aren't qualified to monitor elections, kin fact we have no right to have a say in any matter concerning international justice because from where I'm sitting, what we're telling the world is that you have one standard of behavior but because we're Americans and everyone knows we're the good guys worldwide standards can't be applied to us. This demonstrable bullpucky. It's time our agencies be held accountable unless we wish to consider them as little better then the KGB or the Gestapo. As a culture and society, we've become experts at denial and we've been in denial for decades. We used the Commies as the boogieman to justify the awful things done before 1990. But then the Commies were gone. And not long after the Commies were dead then the perfect enemy appeared; an enemy that we can never kill, an enemy that we can construe to be everywhere at once. The result? What we're hearing about folks is the tip of the iceberg. Make no mistake, I don't have the slightest doubt that this pack of scumbags would make Americans disappear to keep themselves in business. We need spy agencies to be sure but they are agencies that don't have a long history of rogue behavior led by individuals who truly believe that they know what's best for us and that the democratic process is a hindrance to spying. I say end these agencies and start fresh.
Reply · Like · 2 · Follow Post · about an hour ago

Kirk Fields · Follow · Top Commenter · San Antonio, Texas
Bush lied. Cheney lied. Rumsfeld lied. Hayden lied.Gonzalez lied. They all lied because they were committing war crimes, violations of International Treaties, and acts of barbarism that the United States has executed people for doing. They believed that in glorious victory it would be forgotten. They lied to all of us for the same reason other criminals lie, the guilt and fear of punishment. They tortured innocent people to death and now they hope and pray there is no God to have seen it

[kpete]

10. thanks grasswire

truly terrifying,
peace,
kp

[Octafish]

12. Outstanding comments.

We know who They are. Fire the ones still in power. Dismantle the agencies. Start from scratch.

[truedelphi]

30. Upsetting and tragic words to consider.

And all of these um, "detentions" and "interrogations" were done in our name.

[grasswire]

8. the document is only two pages long

Is it a super summary? 6.2 million pages summarized into two?

[Autumn]

9. Tip of the iceberg.

[CJCRANE]

22. Well, that was a quick and easy read.

There's nothing there that anyone with an ounce of common sense couldn't have figured out for themselves.

[DeSwiss]

14. K&R

- Nothing. Will. Be. Done. Under. This. Corrupt. System.

[font size=10]NOTHING.[/font]


That's what corrupt means...........


[center]THIS IS WHAT WE'VE BECOME
''Guarding the heroin poppies of democracy and freedom.''
[/center]

[blkmusclmachine]

15. MUST.

LOOK.

FORWARD.

[johnnyreb]

16. "more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida"

Worth remembering, from NBC January 30, 2008:

The NBC News analysis shows that more than one quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of al-Qaida operatives who were subjected to the now-controversial interrogation techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations is central to the Report’s most critical chapters, those on the planning and execution of the attacks.
(....)
Zelikow admits that "quite a bit, if not most" of its information on the 9/11 conspiracy "did come from the interrogations."
http://web.archive.org/web/20080407223205/http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/30/624314.aspx

[Solly Mack]

17. K&R

[grasswire]

20. Thank you Edward Snowden

It fills kind of weird to have read a classified document tonight over at McClatchy.

Here's hoping the whole report is out soon.

[CJCRANE]

21. Interesting... nt

[grasswire]

23. kick nt

[tblue37]

24. The leaker "broke the law and should be prosecuted"? What about

the actual war criminals.

[grahamhgreen]

25. Torture is a diract attack on our Constitution.

[librechik]

26. Friday night news dump?

any chance this story will be discussed Sunday morning? It's up to you, Stephanopolus or Jay Tapper, lol

we need to keep it alive

[WillyT]

27. K & R !!!

[librechik]

28. this is probably some of what's left after the redacting--that part is

still in process. I predict (again) the CIA will reveal nothing important that they specifically want to reveal.maybe they'll pick a patsy. I vote for everybody involved is either innocent or un-prosecutable or dead.

[Aerows]

31. Shame on the leaker!

How dare they discredit this Senate and this White House for revealing wrong doing while Democrats are in office!!!!!

Unreal. Why are these people continuing to be let off of the hook after we Democatically elected a Democratic President, and the Senate is a Democratic majority?

[Ichingcarpenter]

32. CIA front companies and other black money support torture

The CIA pays other contractors to help hide their torture. They compartmentalize their operations to hide what they do from others in their own agency. Plus since their budget is hidden except to the House and Senate socalled oversight committees they even hide that and more as we have seen.

Gun running,money laundering, arms dealing, drug running, private prisons ie Poland, and even legitimate business plus other hidden money makers are lucrative businesses which can support CIA actions which will never be caught in any Congressional oversight because its out of the loop and provides millions if not billions for black op agendas.

Since I've dealt with FOIAs we are finding that
the use of private contractors now puts the FOIA outside of its jurisdiction. Boz Allen is an example
that the NSA uses so citizens can not see what the government is doing. So you know have a government inside of a government. that's really running the show.


This tortue story is like others have said is just a tip of the iceberg.

.

[bbgrunt]

33. K and R. I am so beyond outrage that I'm surprised any of it got leaked.

[Octafish]

34. ''Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants.'' -- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Eugene Robinson sums up the situation:

Torture is immoral, illegal and irreconcilable with this nation's most cherished values. If defenders of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" program disagree, they should come out and say so. Instead, they blow smoke.

http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/eugene-robinson-share-the-torture-report