Senate Select Intelligence Committee (SSCI) Chair Dianne Feinstein has publicly accused the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of spying on her committee, thereby violating the law and the Constitution and calling into question the committee’s ability to perform its responsibility to conduct effective oversight of the CIA. (1) Behind the dispute over CIA spying on the Senate is a dispute over the classification of two key documents: the committee’s report on the interrogation and detention practices of the CIA duri ng the Bush Administration, and an internal CIA review that corroborated the committee report’s criticisms while the CIA was officially telling the committee that its report’s criticisms were wrong. (2) The Senate Intelligence Committee, as it is also known, has the power to move to declassify these documents on its own, without waiting for CIA approval. Urge the Senate Intelligence Committee to move to declassify the CIA torture report by signing our petition to the Senate at MoveOn. justforeignpolicy.org/act/Senate-declassify-torture-report Under Section 8 of Senate Resolution 400 – the resolution that established the Senate committee in 1976, after the Church Committee’s investigation of abuses by U.S. intelligence agencies - the Senate Intelligence Committee has the power to declassify documents if it determines that is in the public interest, without the approval of the executive branch. If the executive branch objects, under the provisions of Section 8, the declassification can be approved by the full Senate. (3) Giving the committee this power to declassify documents was a key goal of the resolution that established the committee, as the legislative history shows. (4) The fact that the committee has this power is a key lever the committee can invoke to compel the Administration to “voluntarily” agree to declassification, as the committee did in 2009. (5) Urge the Senate Intelligence Committee and the full Senate to move to declassify the committee’s report on CIA torture and the CIA’s internal review, and urge the Obama Administration to fully cooperate, by signing and sharing our petition. justforeignpolicy.org/act/Senate-declassify-torture-report
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 15:18:20 +0000
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