Pentagon and intelligence officials confirmed early Monday they believe that releasing the Senate report on alleged use of torture by the CIA will spark violence home and abroad. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday the release will cause “violence and deaths.”
“I think this is a terrible idea,” Rogers, who is regularly briefed by intelligence officials said on CNN’s State of the Union. “Our foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths…Foreign leaders have approached the government and said, ‘You do this, this will cause violence and deaths.’ Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.”
Two officials speaking on the condition of anonymity said they did, in fact, brief Rogers and members of the Defense and State Departments on the danger of releasing the report, including Secretary of State John Kerry. However, despite the warnings, the Obama administration still officially supports making the report public, which could come as early as Tuesday.
“Both departments and Congress have been made aware of the heightened potential that the release could stimulate a violent response,” the official said.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday urged Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), the soon-to-be ex-chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in charge of the report on CIA interrogations, to reconsider the holding off on releasing the report.
Feinstein cited political reasons for releasing the report at this time, claiming she is concerned the report will be buried when Republicans take control of the Senate next year. On the other hand, Rogers questioned why the report even needed to become public record, considering the Justice Department had investigated CIA activities and yet filed no criminal charges.
Officials say the 480-page report, a summary of a still-classified 6,000-page study, cherry-picks instances politically expedient to Democrats, which they feel portrays those involved in enhanced interrogation in an unfair light. Further, officials note that they were given no chance to respond to the narrative or claims underscored in the report and, in fact, Senate investigators never even bothered to talk to any of the operatives involved.
The report will be the first public accounting of the CIA’s alleged use of torture on suspected Al Qaeda detainees held in secret facilities in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East in the years following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Rogers and intelligence officials contend that the report will do little but incite radical Islamic groups to conduct acts of terror and violence.
Former President George W. Bush defended the CIA operatives in an interview last week with CNN.
“We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA. Serving on our behalf. These are patriots,” Bush said. “And whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contribution to our country, it is way off base… These are good people, good people, and we’re lucky as a nation to have them.”
CBS News reported Sunday that the report will show evidence that the CIA used tactics beyond what was “legally allowable” under the law, and that the agency lied to the White House, the Department of Justice and Congress about the effectiveness of the program. Those who have read the report say it includes new details about the CIA’s techniques, including sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, humiliation and the simulated drowning process known as waterboarding.
Former agency officials say that the program provided U.S. intel with pivotal intelligence regarding the Al Qaeda network after the Sept. 11 attacks, including former CIA Director Michael Hayden. Jose Rodriguez, the former head of the CIA’s Clandestine Service and former CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, as well as Hayden, himself, have all claimed that the program directly provided evidence that led to the location of Usama bin Laden. The world’s most wanted terrorist was killed in a 2011 raid on a Pakistani compound.
A congressional aide told to the Associated Press that the White House actually began leading negotiations to declassify the report in April, and that both the president and his director of national intelligence have endorsed its release. The Obama administration aide said they have taken additional steps to beef up security at American posts around the world.
Feinstein declined to comment for this story, but she told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday that interrogations undermined “societal and constitutional values that we are very proud of. Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again.”
“We have to get this report out,” she added.
Jason Tuttle / December 8, 2014
If Republicans wanted to avoid the entirely predictable international fallout from torturing people, they shouldn’t have had people tortured.
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John_Sellers / December 8, 2014
I think the officials who are concerned about this matter should have been voicing their concerns a long time ago and thus prevented the necessity of the current report.
Then what is the the appropriate way to proceed? I don’t know. However, I do know that the general tenant in Medical Practice, is that if you have an abscess, the best procedure is first to lance it and thus disperse the poison and render it ineffective by cleaning it up. If this is not done, it will only get worse.
I understand this report may cause some pain, but certainly not as much as the procedures leading the report in the first place. Those procedures not only hurt those who were subjected to them, but have hurt us as well.
It seems to me that the real job at hand is to release the report and then with maximum moral and ethical tenants as a guide, work the hardest possible to clean up the mess.
There is no easy way out to a good solution. I think that not publishing the report is not a good answer.
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