Anti-Bush protester Anna White lays a red rose and a banner outside the White
House in Washington, October 17, 2006. (photo: Jason Reed/Reuters)
Who's
Afraid of the Torture Report?
By Ashley Gorski and Noa
Yachot, ACLU
11 November 15
Multiple
government agencies are doing their best to ignore a 6,900-page elephant in the
room: a mammoth report, authored by the Senate Intelligence Committee,
detailing the horrors of the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.
A New
York Times’ article published
today reveals an absurd and scandalous state of affairs in the executive
branch. Last December, the Senate released a summary of the torture
report to the public and sent the full report to several government agencies,
with the explicit instructions that it be used “to help make sure that this
experience” — of torture, secret detention, and CIA deception — “is never
repeated.”
Despite
the Senate’s clear intent at the time, the Justice Department has prohibited
government agencies from even opening the full torture report. Yes, the agency
responsible for federal law enforcement is forbidding officials across the
Obama administration from reading the most detailed account in existence of the
CIA’s past torture program as well as the agency’s related evasions and misrepresentations
to Congress, the White House, the courts, the media, and the American public.
The
refusal to read the report relates to ACLU Freedom of Information Act litigation demanding its
release. Earlier this year, after Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) took over as chair
of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he wrote to President Obama with the
unprecedented request that the
agencies transfer their copies of the full torture report back to the Senate.
Because congressional documents aren’t subject to FOIA, he clearly hoped to
impact the outcome of our case and prevent the report from being released.
After the ACLU filed an emergency motion to
stop the transfer of the report, the government agencies told the court that
they’d honor the “status quo” — committing to hold on to the report. Now, the
Justice Department is apparently interpreting that commitment to prevent
government officials from reading the report.
The
stakes are high. In the words of the Times’ report, the Justice Department is
“effectively keeping the people in charge of America’s counterterrorism future
from reading about its past.” Under the Bush administration, the Justice
Department played an integral role in the CIA program, beginning with its
authorization of most of the torture methods the agency would use on detainees.
Today’s Justice Department should welcome a thorough examination of the
terrible mistakes of the past — not seek to ensure that the report never sees
the light of day.
Sen.
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the former SCCI chair who led the research and
writing of the report, wrote to the Justice Department last
week, asking Attorney General Loretta Lynch and FBI Director James Comey to
allow government officials to read the full report in order to learn “from the
mistakes of the past to ensure that they are not repeated.” We wholeheartedly
agree.
All of
this raises the question: Why is the executive branch fighting so hard to keep
the full torture report from the American public? Perhaps because officials
know that the report is damning — and its release will spur renewed calls for
CIA accountability.
But
ignoring the torture report won’t make it go away. Truth has a way of coming
out eventually.
C 2015 Reader Supported News
Donations can be sent
to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St., Baltimore, MD
21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at] verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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