At Yahoo News, Matt Bai updates us on where the Senate torture report (on the CIAs brutal tactics in the war on terror) is now. Sometime this summer the president might or might not release its executive summary (possibly with redactions that could make it almost meaningless). Beyond the revelations in it, which Bai claims could be explosive on CIA misdeeds, the event is no small matter. In fact, the way the CIA took out after Senator Dianne Feinstein (previously known as the senator from national security) over it has been one of the striking acts of recent times. Nothing Ive noticed has made it clearer the degree to which the various intelligence agencies and the national security state now believe themselves beyond oversight. So this is a situation to keep an eye on, as is the possibility, which Bai explores, that the Senate could invoke the obscure Resolution 400 and declassify and release it itself! Tom Sometime this summer, probably when as many Americans as possible are tanning on a beach and not paying attention, the White House is expected to release a version of a classified report on torture during the Bush years. Actually, whats likely to become public is only the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committees report; the entire thing, five years in the making, clocks in at about 6,700 pages, making it the most exhaustive account yet of what really went on in secret CIA prisons around the world. President Obama has repeatedly said he favors declassifying the report, which the public really ought to see. And should he release the summary in something close to the form in which it was sent to him, then his decision will likely end an unusually public standoff between top senators and the CIA, each of whom accused the other of spying illegally as the report was being compiled and written. If, on the other hand, Obama delays the release much longer, or bows to the intelligence community and decides to black out the reports most damaging findings, then we may find ourselves on the brink of a serious escalation between the legislative and executive branches in Washington — a war over what kind of secrets the government should be allowed to keep and, more to the point, who gets to decide.
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 15:00:00 +0000
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