Leaked Report Says CIA Tortured Illegally; Feinstein’s Mad Somebody Leaked It

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The McClatchy news service reported Friday that it had obtained a leaked copy of a Senate Intelligence Committee report that contradicts pretty much everything the CIA has said about its Detention and Interrogation Program. Here's the list of the report's conclusions (PDF), but let me just break it down for you:

  • The CIA tortured people;
  • Even under the DOJ's definition of "torture," it tortured people;
  • It lied about how many people it tortured;
  • It lied about how brutal the torture was;
  • It "avoided or impeded" congressional oversight;
  • It lied about whether the torture worked; and
  • The torture didn't work.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein said she was absolutely outraged by this. And by "this," of course, she meant the leak. "If someone distributed any part of this classified report," she said, "they broke the law and should be prosecuted." (That goes double for the part about how none of the torturers have been prosecuted.)

Feinstein has also been outraged by recent revelations that the U.S. government has been spying on its own people. And by "people," of course, she meant "Dianne Feinstein."

The report is said to be over 6,000 pages long, with an "executive summary" of 480 pages. It's not very often that a 480-page summary would be third on my list of outrages for any given story, but here the first two are torture and world-class hypocrisy, so, third place it is.