J. Scott Applewhite/AP file photo
Analysis: The CIA Shouldn't Get to Vet the Torture Report
Obama is making history beholden to the institution that has the biggest incentive to distort it.
Remember the report on Bush-era torture that Senate staffers spent so much time researching and writing? The one that would give Americans their best yet opportunity to be informed about and assess the morality and effectiveness of interrogation techniques employed in our names?
"The CIA is assembling what former officials have described as a defiant response to a 6,000-page report recently completed by the Senate Intelligence Committee that sharply criticizes the interrogation program as well as the agency's claims about its results," the Washington Post reports.
This isn't surprising. Of course the CIA is critical of a report that criticizes the CIA. But why can't we see the report before or concurrent with their rebuttal? Why does the CIA get a say in what gets declassified? They're biased in the most extreme ways imaginable on this subject, and have every incentive to brazenly dissemble. Vesting them with say in this matter is inexcusable.
Read the rest at TheAtlantic.com.