Saturday, April 12, 2014

Congress has a strange way of looking at the law


“If someone distributed any part of this classified report, they broke the law and should be prosecuted,”
In the 10 years or so since President Cheney authorized and deep cover North Korean agent John Yoo justified torture, no one in a position to initiate a prosecution has said this about those involved with torture. But if you leak anything beyond what Senator Di-Fi has authorized you to and she will be all over you like flies on shit, threatening all manner of terrible retribution.
The Senate Intelligence Committee has opened an investigation into how McClatchy obtained the classified conclusions of a report into the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, the panel’s chairwoman said Friday.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she was also referring the case to the Justice Department for investigation.

“If someone distributed any part of this classified report, they broke the law and should be prosecuted,” Feinstein said in a prepared statement. “The committee is investigating this unauthorized disclosure and I intend to refer the matter to the Department of Justice.”

Feinstein issued her statement a day after McClatchy reported on the 20 major conclusions of the committee’s four-year, $40 million investigation into the top-secret detention and interrogation program that the CIA operated under the Bush administration.

“We are disappointed that Sen. Feinstein plans to seek a Justice Department investigation of our journalism,” said James Asher, McClatchy’s Washington bureau chief. “We believe that Americans need to know what the CIA might have done to detainees and who is responsible for any questionable practices, which is why we have vigorously covered this story.”

One key conclusion of the Senate report said that the CIA “repeatedly provided inaccurate information” about the program to the Justice Department, thereby “impeding a proper legal analysis.”

That conclusion challenges the main defense of the program by the CIA and the Bush administration, which relied on Justice Department legal opinions in asserting that the harsh interrogation methods used on suspected detainees didn’t violate U.S. law against torture.

The committee voted last week to send the report, including a 480-page executive summary, the findings and conclusions, to the executive branch for a declassification review. Once any redactions are completed, the committee is expected to release the executive summary, findings and conclusions, but not the 6,600-page report itself.
The full 6600 page report should be released, every other country in the world has read it by now and we paid for it. By the time the CIA finishes making their shit smell like roses, the 480 page summary will amount to about 48 words.

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