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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDiFi Asks WH to Undo Torture Report Redactions That 'Eliminate Key Facts That Support Findings'
Zeke Miller ?@ZekeJMiller 1mSen. Feinstein says RDI report release on hold until the administration un-redacts some info http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=d574da86-1171-4bd9-b87f-707e96fa088d …
Aug 05 2014
Sen. Feinstein Statement on Redactions in Detention, Interrogation Study
Washington—Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today released the following statement on the committee study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program:
“After further review of the redacted version of the executive summary, I have concluded the redactions eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions. Until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction, the report will not be made public.
“I am sending a letter today to the president laying out a series of changes to the redactions that we believe are necessary prior to public release. The White House and the intelligence community have committed to working through these changes in good faith. This process will take some time, and the report will not be released until I am satisfied that all redactions are appropriate.
“The bottom line is that the United States must never again make the mistakes documented in this report. I believe the best way to accomplish that is to make public our thorough documentary history of the CIA’s program. That is why I believe taking our time and getting it right is so important, and I will not rush this process.”
read: http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2014/8/feinstein-statement-on-redactions-in-detention-interrogation-study
related:
Let's talk a little more about why the CIA was 'spying' on the Senate Intelligence Committee
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025320097
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PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)
bigtree
(86,004 posts). . . in that we will only be allowed an 'executive summary' of the Senate committee investigation findings - at that, even that summary was in the process of further editing by Brennan and the principles (three former CIA chiefs and others in the Bush admin involved in the tortures who were given access to the report to provide rebuttals) described in the documents.
Again, three former CIA directors and other Bush administration perps who oversaw and committed the offenses were/are being allowed to work hand-in-hand with their former protege, Brennan, who runs the agency right now, to edit and work to rebut the charges and findings in the Senate Intelligence Committee's report which was submitted to the WH for approval.
No wonder "key facts supporting the findings" are being "eliminated or obscured" from the 'executive summary'; the ONLY view of the Senate report that the American public are to be allowed to see by the government.
Jackpine Radical
(45,274 posts)she throws us a bone.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)Cynical me thinks this is more about ego than wishing to do the right thing.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)report. I believe the best way to accomplish that is to make public our thorough documentary history of the CIA’s program. That is why I believe taking our time and getting it right is so important, and I will not rush this process.”
The President is between a rock (Senate Intelligence Committee) and hard place (the very powerful Security State Branch of government.
Seems to me that the president is incapable of firing either Brennan or Gen Clapper.
TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)Yeah, they know where the bodies are buried alright because they killed them, dug the hole, threw them in, spread the lime, and are devoted to making damn sure those stiffs stay where they put them.
The appointments are the tell for intent and when the excuses come flying the rot is on be it forced or choice and either way our job is to raise hell.
bigtree
(86,004 posts). . . says, "the Justice Department last month opted not to pursue any charges against either the CIA or the Senate intelligence committee."
I say:
Refusing to press charges against the Senate Committee staffers is perfectly understandable; in fact, that move would have highlighted and blown up the way that the obstructing and interfering Brennan CIA TRUMPED-UP CHARGES against committee staffers to intimidate them after Sen. Feinstein complained to Brennan about the agency's hacking into their investigation computers, snooping into their working investigation documents, and removing documents which corroborated the findings of their investigation.
let's recap here for folks who may not know or appreciate the gravity of what was involved (long read, but well worth it):
excerpts and a brief analysis of DiFi's floor speech in March:
After we read about the tapes’ destruction in the newspapers, Director Hayden briefed the Senate Intelligence Committee. He assured us that this was not destruction of evidence, as detailed records of the interrogations existed on paper in the form of CIA operational cables describing the detention conditions and the day-to-day CIA interrogations.
The CIA director stated that these cables were “a more than adequate representation” of what would have been on the destroyed tapes. Director Hayden offered at that time, during Senator Jay Rockefeller’s chairmanship of the committee, to allow Members or staff to review these sensitive CIA operational cables given that the videotapes had been destroyed.
Chairman Rockefeller sent two of his committee staffers out to the CIA on nights and weekends to review thousands of these cables, which took many months. By the time the two staffers completed their review into the CIA’s early interrogations in early 2009, I had become chairman of the committee and President Obama had been sworn into office.
The resulting staff report was chilling. The interrogations and the conditions of confinement at the CIA detention sites were far different and far more harsh than the way the CIA had described them to us. As result of the staff’s initial report, I proposed, and then-Vice Chairman Bond agreed, and the committee overwhelmingly approved, that the committee conduct an expansive and full review of CIA’s detention and interrogation program.
On March 5, 2009, the committee voted 14-1 to initiate a comprehensive review of the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program. Immediately, we sent a request for documents to all relevant executive branch agencies, chiefly among them the CIA.
The committee’s preference was for the CIA to turn over all responsive documents to the committee’s office, as had been done in previous committee investigations.
Director Panetta proposed an alternative arrangement: to provide literally millions of pages of operational cables, internal emails, memos, and other documents pursuant to the committee’s document requests at a secure location in Northern Virginia. We agreed, but insisted on several conditions and protections to ensure the integrity of this congressional investigation.
Per an exchange of letters in 2009, then-Vice Chairman Bond, then-Director Panetta, and I agreed in an exchange of letters that the CIA was to provide a “stand-alone computer system” with a “network drive” “segregated from CIA networks” for the committee that would only be accessed by information technology personnel at the CIA—who would “not be permitted to” “share information from the system with other [CIA] personnel, except as otherwise authorized by the committee.”
It was this computer network that, notwithstanding our agreement with Director Panetta, was searched by the CIA
DiFi's committee worked out an arrangement with the Panetta CIA to obtain those documents which resulted in a unhelpful 'document dump' of hundreds of thousands of un-indexed pages. Nonetheless, these were the documents that the staffers obtained and used in their investigation, following the procedures the CIA had insisted on.
DiFi:
In addition to demanding that the documents produced for the committee be reviewed at a CIA facility, the CIA also insisted on conducting a multi-layered review of every responsive document before providing the document to the committee. This was to ensure the CIA did not mistakenly provide documents unrelated to the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program or provide documents that the president could potentially claim to be covered by executive privilege.
While we viewed this as unnecessary and raised concerns that it would delay our investigation, the CIA hired a team of outside contractors—who otherwise would not have had access to these sensitive documents—to read, multiple times, each of the 6.2 million pages of documents produced, before providing them to fully-cleared committee staff conducting the committee’s oversight work. This proved to be a slow and very expensive process.
The CIA started making documents available electronically to the committee staff at the CIA leased facility in mid-2009. The number of pages ran quickly to the thousands, tens of thousands, the hundreds of thousands, and then into the millions. The documents that were provided came without any index, without organizational structure. It was a true “document dump” that our committee staff had to go through and make sense of.
The committee staffers took whatever documents they thought were relevant and copied them into their own computers. At some point, they noticed that their documents were disappearing . . .
DiFi:
In May of 2010, the committee staff noticed that certain documents that had been provided for the committee’s review were no longer accessible. Staff approached the CIA personnel at the offsite location, who initially denied that documents had been removed. CIA personnel then blamed information technology personnel, who were almost all contractors, for removing the documents themselves without direction or authority. And then the CIA stated that the removal of the documents was ordered by the White House. When the committee approached the White House, the White House denied giving the CIA any such order.
After a series of meetings, I learned that on two occasions, CIA personnel electronically removed committee access to CIA documents after providing them to the committee. This included roughly 870 documents or pages of documents that were removed in February 2010, and secondly roughly another 50 were removed in mid-May 2010.
This was done without the knowledge or approval of committee members or staff, and in violation of our written agreements. Further, this type of behavior would not have been possible had the CIA allowed the committee to conduct the review of documents here in the Senate. In short, this was the exact sort of CIA interference in our investigation that we sought to avoid at the outset.
I went up to the White House to raise this issue with the then-White House Counsel, in May 2010. He recognized the severity of the situation, and the grave implications of Executive Branch personnel interfering with an official congressional investigation. The matter was resolved with a renewed commitment from the White House Counsel, and the CIA, that there would be no further unauthorized access to the committee’s network or removal of access to CIA documents already provided to the committee.
On May 17, 2010, the CIA’s then-director of congressional affairs apologized on behalf of the CIA for removing the documents. And that, as far as I was concerned, put the incident aside.
After that incident, staffers were able to uncover documents related to Panetta's internal review which appeared to provide proof of significant wrongdoing by the agency.
DiFi:
At some point in 2010, committee staff searching the documents that had been made available found draft versions of what is now called the “Internal Panetta Review.”.
We believe these documents were written by CIA personnel to summarize and analyze the materials that had been provided to the committee for its review. The Panetta review documents were no more highly classified than other information we had received for our investigation—in fact, the documents appeared to be based on the same information already provided to the committee.
What was unique and interesting about the internal documents was not their classification level, but rather their analysis and acknowledgement of significant CIA wrongdoing.
To be clear, the committee staff did not “hack” into CIA computers to obtain these documents as has been suggested in the press. The documents were identified using the search tool provided by the CIA to search the documents provided to the committee.
We have no way to determine who made the Internal Panetta Review documents available to the committee. Further, we don’t know whether the documents were provided intentionally by the CIA, unintentionally by the CIA, or intentionally by a whistle-blower.
In fact, we know that over the years—on multiple occasions—the staff have asked the CIA about documents made available for our investigation. At times, the CIA has simply been unaware that these specific documents were provided to the committee. And while this is alarming, it is also important to note that more than 6.2 million pages of documents have been provided. This is simply a massive amount of records
The staff did not rely on these Internal Panetta Review documents when drafting the final 6,300-page committee study. But it was significant that the Internal Panetta Review had documented at least some of the very same troubling matters already uncovered by the committee staff – which is not surprising, in that they were looking at the same information.
So, in effect, the internal Panetta review actually corroborated the committee's own findings, rather than representing the only info available. In 2012, the Intelligence Committee approved a 6,300-page study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program and sent the report to the executive branch.
The Brennan CIA responded that they agreed with some of the report but disagreed with other parts of it. Most importantly, the parts they disagreed with were actually confirmed by the Panetta review.
DiFi:
As CIA Director Brennan has stated, the CIA officially agrees with some of our study. But, as has been reported, the CIA disagrees and disputes important parts of it. And this is important: Some of these important parts that the CIA now disputes in our committee study are clearly acknowledged in the CIA’s own Internal Panetta Review.
To say the least, this is puzzling. How can the CIA’s official response to our study stand factually in conflict with its own Internal Review?
The intelligence committee took draft copies of the documents and locked them away in their own senate facilities - in their own computer system. This was understandable, given the revelations in 2009 that key evidence had been deliberately destroyed by the agency.
The documents disappeared from their computers.
DiFi:
Unlike the official response, these Panetta Review documents were in agreement with the committee’s findings. That’s what makes them so significant and important to protect.
When the Internal Panetta Review documents disappeared from the committee’s computer system, this suggested once again that the CIA had removed documents already provided to the committee, in violation of CIA agreements and White House assurances that the CIA would cease such activities.
As I have detailed, the CIA has previously withheld and destroyed information about its Detention and Interrogation Program, including its decision in 2005 to destroy interrogation videotapes over the objections of the Bush White House and the Director of National Intelligence. Based on the information described above, there was a need to preserve and protect the Internal Panetta Review in the committee’s own secure spaces.
DiFi wrote to the agency requesting complete copies of the Panetta review. Sen. Udall also requested the documents in a committee hearing. The CIA denied the request, claiming that it was incomplete and 'deliberative.'
That's when the CIA went into full protection mode and insisted they be allowed to conduct a search of the committee's computers.
DiFi:
In late 2013, I requested in writing that the CIA provide a final and complete version of the Internal Panetta Review to the committee, as opposed to the partial document the committee currently possesses.
In December, during an open committee hearing, Senator Mark Udall echoed this request. In early January 2014, the CIA informed the committee it would not provide the Internal Panetta Review to the committee, citing the deliberative nature of the document.
Shortly thereafter, on January 15, 2014, CIA Director Brennan requested an emergency meeting to inform me and Vice Chairman Chambliss that without prior notification or approval, CIA personnel had conducted a “search”—that was John Brennan’s word—of the committee computers at the offsite facility. This search involved not only a search of documents provided to the committee by the CIA, but also a search of the ”stand alone” and “walled-off” committee network drive containing the committee’s own internal work product and communications.
According to Brennan, the computer search was conducted in response to indications that some members of the committee staff might already have had access to the Internal Panetta Review. The CIA did not ask the committee or its staff if the committee had access to the Internal Review, or how we obtained it.
Instead, the CIA just went and searched the committee’s computers. The CIA has still not asked the committee any questions about how the committee acquired the Panetta Review. In place of asking any questions, the CIA’s unauthorized search of the committee computers was followed by an allegation—which we have now seen repeated anonymously in the press—that the committee staff had somehow obtained the document through unauthorized or criminal means, perhaps to include hacking into the CIA’s computer network.
After searching their computers Brennan began to claim that the Panetta documents were obtained improperly and declared that he was going to conduct an investigation into committee staffer procedures and activities.
DiFi:
Director Brennan stated that the CIA’s search had determined that the committee staff had copies of the Internal Panetta Review on the committee’s “staff shared drive” and had accessed them numerous times. He indicated at the meeting that he was going to order further “forensic” investigation of the committee network to learn more about activities of the committee’s oversight staff.
Two days after the meeting, on January 17, I wrote a letter to Director Brennan objecting to any further CIA investigation due to the separation of powers constitutional issues that the search raised. I followed this with a second letter on January 23 to the director, asking 12 specific questions about the CIA’s actions—questions that the CIA has refused to answer.
Some of the questions in my letter related to the full scope of the CIA’s search of our computer network. Other questions related to who had authorized and conducted the search, and what legal basis the CIA claimed gave it authority to conduct the search. Again, the CIA has not provided answers to any of my questions.
My letter also laid out my concern about the legal and constitutional implications of the CIA’s actions. Based on what Director Brennan has informed us, I have grave concerns that the CIA’s search may well have violated the separation of powers principles embodied in the United States Constitution, including the Speech and Debate clause. It may have undermined the constitutional framework essential to effective congressional oversight of intelligence activities or any other government function.
I have asked for an apology and a recognition that this CIA search of computers used by its oversight committee was inappropriate. I received neither.
Besides the constitutional implications, the CIA’s search may also have violated the Fourth Amendment, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, as well as Executive Order 12333, which prohibits the CIA from conducting domestic searches or surveillance.
Not only did the search and removal of documents from the committee computers indicate an attempt to cover-up the corroborating information contained in the Panetta internal review, the attempt to smear committee staffers with criminal charges for obtaining the documents (through the procedures and search tools that the CIA had actually provided them) was an interference and an attempt to intimidate the committee from conducting a thorough investigation of the agency's activities.
Moreover, there was a conflict of interest, in that the acting general counsel attempting to criminalize the efforts of the committee staffers was a lawyer in the very division which carried out the interrogation procedures in question.
DiFi:
As I mentioned before, our staff involved in this matter have the appropriate clearances, handled this sensitive material according to established procedures and practice to protect classified information, and were provided access to the Panetta Review by the CIA itself. As a result, there is no legitimate reason to allege to the Justice Department that Senate staff may have committed a crime. I view the acting general counsel’s referral as a potential effort to intimidate this staff—and I am not taking it lightly.
I should note that for most, if not all, of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, the now acting general counsel was a lawyer in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center—the unit within which the CIA managed and carried out this program. From mid-2004 until the official termination of the detention and interrogation program in January 2009, he was the unit’s chief lawyer. He is mentioned by name more than 1,600 times in our study.
And now this individual is sending a crimes report to the Department of Justice on the actions of congressional staff—the same congressional staff who researched and drafted a report that details how CIA officers—including the acting general counsel himself—provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice about the program.
Mr. President, let me say this. All Senators rely on their staff to be their eyes and ears and to carry out our duties. The staff members of the Intelligence Committee are dedicated professionals who are motivated to do what is best for our nation.
The staff members who have been working on this study and this report have devoted years of their lives to it—wading through the horrible details of a CIA program that never, never, never should have existed. They have worked long hours and produced a report unprecedented in its comprehensive attention to detail in the history of the Senate.
They are now being threatened with legal jeopardy, just as the final revisions to the report are being made so that parts of it can be declassified and released to the American people . . .
This is a long 'indictment' of the CIA interference, obstruction, and intimidation, but well worth the read: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025320097
Barring reading all of that, at least this floor speech should be listened to in its entirety for anyone who wants to know what the spying, interference, and intimidation of staffers was all about:
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)as the Security State. It's my opinion that the president doesn't have the power to choose anyone else. I think they out-rank the president. They certainly have the power.
global1
(25,259 posts)demand that BushCo (whom I think ordered this) pay for their crimes.
It is imperative that the American People get outraged by this. This is not how we are in this country. We're better than that. And BushCo - needs to pay for their crimes.
spanone
(135,855 posts)BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)They are working with the torturers themselves to decide what to hide. How many excuses will there be for this?
bigtree
(86,004 posts). . . specifically a White House cover-up.
What did the President know about the CIA's (under Brennan) obstruction, interference, and intimidation of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers investigating CIA activities?
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)I've been told my sources showing wikileaks cables that prove it are Libertarians who are just making stuff up about Obama. Because Glenn Greenwald.
But yes, this is purposeful hindering of prosecution. Not just letting it slide, actively working to cover it up. All the way back to not allowing the photographs to come out.
I'm so damn mad, and I'm mad as hell at people who call themselves "Democrats" choosing partisanship over standing up against one of the greatest evils of humanity. If I am generous, I think a lot of those people refuse to look at the pictures (because they're so sensitive and they don't have to) or even read the descriptions of the atrocities. The word torture is an abstraction, so it's easy for them to try to explain away.
But there is something so wrong going on with this latest maneuver by the administration and CIA, I'm starting to think that this was the reason why a freshman Senator was vaulted to the Oval Office. It's freaking me out.
bigtree
(86,004 posts). . . she was a high profile journalist reporting on the Scooter Libby trial.
In 2013, Newsweek published an article about Wheeler titled "The Woman Who Knows The NSA's Secrets."
here's Marcy in March:
The White House Has Been Covering Up the Presidency’s Role in Torture for Years
____ We can be sure about one thing: The Obama White House has covered up the Bush presidency’s role in the torture program for years. Specifically, from 2009 to 2012, the administration went to extraordinary lengths to keep a single short phrase, describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program, secret.
Some time before October 29, 2009, then National Security Advisor Jim Jones filed an ex parte classified declaration with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, in response to a FOIA request by the ACLU seeking documents related to the torture program. In it, Jones argued that the CIA should not be forced to disclose the “source of the CIA’s authority,” as referenced in the title of a document providing “Guidelines for Interrogations” and signed by then CIA Director George Tenet. That document was cited in two Justice Department memos at issue in the FOIA. Jones claimed that “source of authority” constituted an intelligence method that needed to be protected.
. . . The White House’s fight to keep the short phrase describing Bush’s authorization of the torture program hidden speaks to its apparent ambivalence over the torture program. Even after President Obama released the DOJ memos authorizing torture – along with a damning CIA Inspector General Report and a wide range of documents revealing bureaucratic discussions within the CIA about torture – the White House still fought the release of the phrase that would have made it clear that the CIA conducted this torture at the order of the president. And it did so with a classified declaration from Jones that would have remained secret had Judge Hellerstein not insisted it be made public.
As Aftergood noted, such White House intervention in a FOIA suit is rare. “The number of times that a national security advisor has filed a declaration in a FOIA lawsuit is vanishingly small,” he said. “It almost never happens.” But as ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer noted of the finding, “It was the original authority for the CIA’s secret prisons and for the agency’s rendition and torture program, and apparently it was the authority for the targeted killing program as well. It was the urtext. It’s remarkable that after all this time it’s still secret.”
President Obama’s willingness to go to such lengths to hide this short phrase may explain the White House’s curious treatment of potentially privileged documents with the Senate now – describing President Bush’s authorization of the torture program and its seemingly contradictory stance supporting publishing the Torture Report while thwarting its completion by withholding privileged documents. After all, the documents in question, like the reference to the presidential finding, may deprive the President of plausible deniability.
Furthermore, those documents may undermine one of the conclusions of the Torture Report. According to Senator Ron Wyden, the Senate Torture Report found that “the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information about its interrogation program to the White House.” Perhaps the documents reportedly withheld by the White House undermine this conclusion, and instead show that the CIA operated with the full consent and knowledge of at least some people within the White House.
more: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/03/13/president-obama-covering-presidencys-role-torture-4-years/
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)Thomas Jefferson
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)Actually, she makes me nuts, but the one area I could never find fault with her was on environmental issues. KNR
TheKentuckian
(25,026 posts)joeybee12
(56,177 posts)bigtree
(86,004 posts). . . but it involves blatant obstruction by the CIA into a Senate investigation into the agency activities.
That's coupled with the White House's direct involvement in eliminating "key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions."
This is nothing for the Senator, herself, to be complicit in covering up. This is way beyond anything that she's likely to support.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)and for all her flaws has a strong set of ethics, lots of what I don't agree with, but as you said, this is beyond what she approves of.
BrotherIvan
(9,126 posts)As a Californian, I apologize for her. But her ego is so big, I think she may go to bat on this one. We'll see. Someone I'm sure has a file on her for occasions such as this.
joeybee12
(56,177 posts)But the one thing I can say about DiFi is she's a hard worker...not like Flailin' Palin or McLame.
hootinholler
(26,449 posts)and still fight for the removal of other redactions?
