A Spurious Challenge to the Senate Torture Report
CounterPunch, 10 December 2014
CIA director John Brennan, having failed to block the release of the Senate intelligence committee’s report on torture and abuse, is now abetting the efforts of former CIA directors and deputy directors to rebut the report’s conclusions that the interrogation techniques amounted to sadism and that senior CIA officials lied to the White House, the Congress, and the Department of Justice about the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA directors George Tenet and Michael Hayden and deputy directors John McLaughlin and Steve Kappes, who were guilty of past deceit on sensitive issues, have threatened to make documents available to undermine the findings of the Senate committee. The senior operations officer who ran the CIA’s torture and abuse program, Jose Rodriquez, has been permitted to write a book and a long essay in the Washington Post that argue the interrogation techniques were legal and effective. Their charges are completely spurious and their credibility is non-existent. Read more.
See Especially:
Patrick M. Skinner, This Disaster Happened Because the CIA Outsourced Accountability (TIME)
See Also:
Mel Goodman, Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008)
Mel Goodman, National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism (Open Media, 2013)
Steven Aftergood: CIA Torture Report – Oversight, But No Remedies Yet — With Strong PBI Comment