CIA use of torture 'far worse' than admitted

[Vlerchan]

CIA use of torture 'far worse' than admitted, says leaked Senate report

The CIA use of torture after the September 11 attacks did not provide useful intelligence to the agency and were “brutal and far worse” than was admitted to policymakers, according to the leaked conclusions of a US Senate investigation.

The findings of the 6,300 report, which remains classified, appear to show the CIA running far ahead even of the Bush administration’s officially sanctioned “enhanced interrogation” techniques according to a list of 20 conclusions leaked to the McClatchy news organsiation.

The Senate intelligence committee voted earlier this month to declassify a 500-page summary of its full report which was based on a three-year investigation that involved combing through some six million top secret CIA files.

The report, which has been fiercely contested behind the scenes by the CIA, is expected to deliver a damning portrait of the organisation as it scrambled to combat the threat of al-Qaeda in the years after the 9/11 terror attacks.

According to the leaked conclusions of the Senate report - which could not be independently verified by The Telegraph - the CIA also “impeded effective White House oversight” of the programme and “actively avoided and impeded” Congressional oversight.

The CIA was also accused of failing to keep accurate records of the number of suspects it had detained and held individuals “who did not meet the legal standard for detention”.

The agency also ignored “numerous internal critiques and objections” of its detention and interrogation programme which was given legal cover in a serious of Justice department opinions – so called “torture memos” - that defined practices like waterboarding not to be torture.

Describing the chaotic management of the programme as “deeply flawed” the leaked report conclusions argue that the CIA programme “damaged the United States’ global reputation, and came with heavy costs, both monetary and non-monetary.”

The broad finding that torture did not work has already been disputed by leading figures in the Bush administration, including the former vice-president Dick Cheney, who have argued that the CIA use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” – defined as torture by the UN and the Red Cross – was “effective and necessary”.

Some senior Republicans have accused Democrats of using the CIA torture investigation to score political points ahead of November’s mid-term elections – an allegation rebutted yesterday by Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat chair of the intelligence committee.

“Almost every sentence in the 6,600-page report is attributed to CIA documents, including cables, internal memoranda and e-mails, briefing materials, interview transcripts, classified testimony, financial documents and more,” Sen Feinstein wrote in the Washington Post.

She also urged the Obama administration to expedite the publication of the 500-page executive summary that the committee voted to declassify – a process expected to take weeks or even months, but to which Mr Obama has publicly committed.

“Soon, the American people will be able to judge this for themselves,” Sen Feinstein concluded, “We have confidence that they will conclude, as we have, that this program was a mistake that must never be repeated.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10761503/CIA-use-of-torture-far-worse-than-admitted-says-leaked-Senate-report.html

[Gamma Male]

Just another evil government organization that needs to be done away with.

You know, I have a theory. That after every newly elected president completes his inauguration two men in black suits put him in a limo andrive him into an abandoned warehouse. And then they get into an elevator and go down 20 floors to a top secret government facility. And then go down a long hallway, and enter a dimly lit room where 8 or 9 major CEO's, military officals, and foreign leaders are sitting at a long rosewood table. And at the end of the table is a tv screen, and when the President enters the room the TV is turned on and a video of the Kennedy Assassination from a different angle, from the grassy knoll is played. And it shows the president riding along, waving, and then all of a sudden a gun goes off right next to the camera and his head explodes and he goes back and to the left. And then the film stops, the lights in the room come on, and one of the men at the table turns to the president and says "Any questions?"

[Harry Smith]

Just another evil government organization that needs to be done away with.

You know, I have a theory. That after every newly elected president completes his inauguration two men in black suits put him in a limo andrive him into an abandoned warehouse. And then they get into an elevator and go down 20 floors to a top secret government facility. And then go down a long hallway, and enter a dimly lit room where 8 or 9 major CEO's, military officals, and foreign leaders are sitting at a long rosewood table. And at the end of the table is a tv screen, and when the President enters the room the TV is turned on and a video of the Kennedy Assassination from a different angle, from the grassy knoll is played. And it shows the president riding along, waving, and then all of a sudden a gun goes off right next to the camera and his head explodes and he goes back and to the left. And then the film stops, the lights in the room come on, and one of the men at the table turns to the president and says "Any questions?"

That's the family friendly version, they don't even bother showing the president that any more.

[Vlerchan]

For good measure - same report as provided the above information:

British gave 'full co-operation' for CIA black jail on Diego Garcia, report claims.

The British government allowed the CIA to run a “black” jail for Al-Qaeda suspects on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, it was claimed last night.
The report, based on leaked accounts of a US Senate investigation into the CIA’s kidnap and torture programme after 9/11, contradicts years of British government denials that it allowed the US to use Diego Garcia for its “extraordinary rendition” programme.

The alleged Diego Garcia black site was used to hold some “high-value” detainees and was made with the “full co-operation” of the British government, according to Al Jazeera America, quoting US officials familiar with the Senate report.

Last night William Hague was facing demands from international and British lawyers representing victims of the CIA “extraordinary rendition” programme to urgently clarify the new allegations in a letter from Reprieve, the legal charity that represents several rendition victims.

“We need to know immediately whether ministers misled Parliament over CIA torture on British soil,” said Cori Crider, Reprieve’s strategic director.

“If the CIA operated a black site on Diego Garcia, then a string of official statements, from both this and the last government, were totally false. Were ministers asleep at the wheel? Or, as the report suggests, have we been lied to for years?” The new details could be confirmed within weeks after the US Senate voted last week to declassify a 500-page summary of its three-year investigation in the CIA kidnap and torture programme that examined some six million classified documents.

A summary of the report is now with the White House which has said it is determined to release it to the public, subject to national security considerations. It remains unclear how far the CIA, which has fought bitterly against publication, will succeed in having it redacted.

The claims that the British were fully aware of a Diego Garcia black site chimes with claims by a security source to The Daily Telegraph last weekend that Tony Blair and senior government ministers, including Jack Straw, were briefed in detail and “every step of the way” on the CIA rendition programme.

Amrit Singh, senior lawyer with the New York-based Open Society Justice Initiative and the author of Administration of Torture, a book detailing the Bush administration’s torture policy, said the Al Jazeera report clearly suggested UK involvement with the CIA programme went far beyond tacit complicity.

“The fact that this says it was being done with full co-operation’ of the British government suggests that the British government knew exactly what was happening on its territory and is therefore liable for the secret detention,” she said.

The role of Diego Garcia in the CIA programme has been under scrutiny since 2006 and came back into the headlines after top secret documents found in Libya in 2011 showed Diego Garcia being listed on a CIA rendition flight plan for a Libyan Islamist Abdel-Hakim Belhadj and his wife Fatima Boudchar in March 2004.

Scotland Yard is currently investigating whether criminal charges should be laid against MI6 officers or anyone else who was complicit in the rendition of Mr Belhadj and another Libyan Islamist Sami al-Saadi who was paid a £2.2m “no fault” settlement by the British government in 2012.

After the Tripoli documents were made public by Human Rights Watch the Foreign Office issued a statement again denying that Diego Garcia had been used as a rendition stop.

“No flights with a detainee on board landed on Diego Garcia in March 2004,” said David Lidington, a minister of state at the Foreign Office, in a written parliamentary answer of December 2012 in response to a question about the Tripoli documents.

The answer added that aside from two acknowledged cases of rendition through Diego Garcia in 2002 there were “no other instances in which US intelligence flights landed in the UK, our Overseas Territories, or the Crown Dependencies, with a detainee, on board since 11 September 2001.”

In a letter to Mr Hague seen by The Daily Telegraph lawyers at Reprieve asking the foreign office both to confirm the truth of its early statements and clarify whether – if rendition flights were not allowed to land at Diego Garcia in March 2004 – it was because of concerns over earlier detentions.

Responding to the letter, an Foreign Office spokesman declined to elaborate, saying only: “I refer you to statements we’ve made in the past on this issue.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10758747/British-gave-full-co-operation-for-CIA-black-jail-on-Diego-Garcia-report-claims.html

[Osama Gulryz]

I can't say it for sure

[sqishy]

Am I really really surprised or even a bit surprised? No, not at all.