The bad news is that the Obama Administration is 99% behind the CIA’s “tain’t nobody’s business if we spy (on the U.S. Congress), lie, and torture” stance on, well, spying, lying, and torture. The further bad news is that Republican Sen. Richard Burr1 of North Carolina, incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wants to push that to 100%, if not 101%.
A couple of months ago, as you may remember, when Cal. Sen. Dianne Feinstein was committee chair, the committee completed a massive, 6,700-page review of the CIA’s post 9/11, pre-Obama “enhanced interrogation” program. As even the drastically trimmed version of the report that was released to the public demonstrated, the program was a fraud, a deceit, and a horror from the get-go. Apparently motivated by the strange intent to see that that sort of thing never happens again, the Senate Committee gave the full report to the Obama White House. Now, Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times reports, Sen. Burr wants it back. As Mazzetti points out, Congress, unlike the Executive Branch, is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act (guess why), and the CIA, and its running dogs, like Dick, really, really don’t want the American people to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about all the crimes and all the coverups that have been perpetrated in their names.
Let’s hope that there is at least one honest person in the Obama White House—a reasonable bet, I would say, if far from a sure thing—who has put those 6,700 pages on a thumb drive or a cloud or whatever it is the kids are using these days and that it eventually will out. I would be exceedingly depressed if the White House capitulates to Burr’s demands, which will surely be aggressively seconded by the CIA, and surrenders all copies of the report to Burr’s committee, which is very likely (very, very likely) to become a black hole of intelligence rather than a source. Which is exactly what the CIA wants.
Afterwords
Mazzetti also takes the opportunity to provide more tid-bits regarding the “Panetta Review,” the 1,000-page internal CIA report on its own torture program, which was squelched when it appeared that it was actually going to reveal, you know, the truth, particularly about claims by the CIA that torture had been invaluable in running down high level bad guys, claims the CIA kept making even though it knew they weren’t true. The Panetta Review has been much discussed in the past, and Mazzetti doesn’t quite explain what he has that’s new, but I’m guessing that it’s the following:
“One of the [Panetta] report’s findings, according to people who have seen the document, was that the C.I.A. repeatedly claimed that important intelligence to thwart terror plots and track down Qaeda operatives had come from the interrogation sessions of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed when, in fact, the intelligence had other origins.”
Surprised? Don’t be.
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It seems that Dick likes to be known as “Richard M. Burr,” but, well, fuck that shit. Literature R Us don’t play by the rules. ↩︎
