Obama Catches Blame on Tactics of Torture That He Ended
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday found himself caught in the middle of a collision between the Central Intelligence Agency and his own Democratic allies, who accused the White House of helping to cover up a legacy of torture and put the president on the defensive over an interrogation program he never supported.
A day after the Senate Intelligence Committee released a blistering report on the C.I.A.’s interrogations of terrorism suspects a decade ago, Mr. Obama, who banned such methods when he took office, came under fire from Democrats on the committee for declining to endorse the report’s conclusion that they were ineffective and standing by the C.I.A. director, John O. Brennan.
Mr. Obama’s attempt to find a balance on a polarizing issue inherited from his predecessor was seen by those critics as a failure to hold the agency accountable.
Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, a Democrat on the committee and a longtime critic of the C.I.A. interrogations, took to the Senate floor to excoriate the agency for failing to come to terms with its mistakes and the White House for enabling its deceptions.
“Director Brennan and the C.I.A. today are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information to misrepresent the efficacy of torture,” Mr. Udall said. “In other words, the C.I.A. is lying.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/us/politics/obama-effectiveness-cia-torture.html?_r=0
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