THE CIA TORTURED CAPTIVES?

I can’t believe the CIA would stoop so low as to torture anyone. Why not? Because the CIA has told us they haven’t tortured anybody.

OBAMA WON’T RELEASE SENATE REPORT ON CIA TORTURE
By Lisa Barron

Newsmax
December 13, 2013

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence adopted a 6,300 page report on the CIA's post-9/11 torture program a year ago — but it remains classified, meaning nobody else has seen it.

That's because the Obama administration has yielded to pressure from a faction in the CIA to keep the agency's rendition, detention, and interrogation tactics secret, The Atlantic reports.

Senators from both parties, however, have pushed the White House to make the contents of the report public.

Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has said the report "confirms for me what I have always believed and insisted to be true—that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of prisoners is not only wrong in principle and a stain on our country's conscience, but also an ineffective and unreliable means of gathering intelligence."

Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the intelligence committee, said she thinks releasing the information "will settle the debate once and for all over whether our nation should ever employ coercive interrogation techniques such as those detailed in this report."

In addition, the study contradicts the belief that these techniques were what led to finding Osama bin Laden's courier, suggesting that "the CIA detainee who provided the most accurate information about the courier provided the information prior to being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques," according to McCain, Feinstein, and Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, reports Politico Magazine.

And Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., told the publication that the reports details how "the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information about its interrogation program to the White House, the Justice Department, and Congress."

The CIA reportedly sent a response to the report to Congress, criticizing many of its findings, but has apparently addressed just the bullet points that come before the executive summary.

Meanwhile, the Center for Victims of Torture is pressing not only for the release of the study but also for a response from the government.

"The Intelligence Committee’s 6,000-plus page report, containing more than 35,000 footnotes, is a serious and comprehensive review of the CIA’s past torture program. The report is a significant step to making sure the U.S. government does not return to official policies of torture and cruel treatment," said Curt Goering, executive director of CVT.

"The Administration needs to get right its response to it. While the CIA certainly has a role in reviewing the report and providing feedback to the Intelligence Committee, given the agency’s large hand in policies of torture and cruel treatment, their comments should not be allowed to pass through without an independent assessment from other relevant agencies, including the White House."

"Not doing so would be like letting the fox guard the henhouse," he added.