All the U.S. torture in the world cant stop the U.S. from imprisoning law abiding whistleblowers reporting on the U.S. torture. * Live Coverage of the Senate Torture Report : https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/09/live-coverage-release-senate-torture-report/ * Nine CIA Black Sites Where Detainees Were Tortured. Unscrambled locations of secret detention sites disclosed... https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/09/map-of-cia-black-sites/ * Timeline: The Tortured History of the Senate’s Torture Report projects.propublica.org/graphics/torture-report?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=1418147324 The Senate began investigating the #CIAs detainee program nearly six years ago. It completed a draft of its report two years ago. Today, the Senate #Intelligence Committee has finally released the reports blistering executive summary. (The full report remains classified.) What took so long? Its a tale of White House indecisiveness, Republican opposition, and CIA snooping. It’s January 2009. Obama takes office. Within days, he shuts down the CIA’s detainee program. But he says he’d rather not dwell on the past. President-elect Barack Obama tells George Stephanopoulos hes not interested in a broad investigation of Bush-era intelligence programs, saying, We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. Obama issues an executive order banning the use of torture. However, the Senate Intelligence Committee wants to investigate. Lawmakers say they expect to conclude their inquiry sometime between August 2009 and March 2010. Feb. 27, 2009 On the condition of anonymity, Senate officials tell reporters that the intelligence committee plans to probe the CIAs detainee program. The Associated Press reports that the review will take six months to a year. March 5, 2009 The panel votes 14-1 to proceed with the investigation. Committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and vice chair Kit Bond, R-Mo., formally announce the investigation. The press release says the review should take one year. Then Obama signals he might reverse course and prosecute CIA employees involved in torture. The Senate investigation starts going off the rails. April 16, 2009 Attorney General Eric Holder releases four of the Bush administrations legal opinions sanctioning enhanced interrogation. Obama says he will not prosecute the CIA employees who acted on the Justice Departments orders and nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. April 20, 2009 Feinstein asks Obama to withhold judgment on CIA prosecutions until the committee review is finished. This study is now underway, and I estimate its completion within the next six to eight months, she writes to the president. A study of the first two detainees has already been completed and will shortly be before the committee. The same day, then- #CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry tells Lou Dobbs Tonight the report should take six to eight months to complete, but obviously a lot of people [are] looking for it to happen a little bit quicker since this has been going on for a long time. April 21, 2009 Obama suggests he might be open to prosecutions. With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws and I dont want to prejudge that, Obama says. I think that there are a host of very complicated issues involved there. Mid-2009 The CIA creates a secure facility where congressional aides will be allowed to view the documents related to the investigation. Feinstein later says the CIA provided a stand-alone computer system that was segregated from CIA networks. Aides start sorting through six million pages of documents. The process is initially slow because the CIA hires contractors to read each document before giving it to the committee, to ensure the Senate aides dont get access to sensitive documents unrelated to the detainee program. This proved to be a slow and very expensive process, Feinstein later says. Aug. 24, 2009 Holder opens a preliminary review into potential prosecutions. The next week, Feinstein tells Face the Nation she wishes the Justice Department would wait for the committee to complete its report. Were well along in that study, Feinstein says. And Im trying to push it along even more quickly. Sept. 26, 2009 Republicans on the committee withdraw from the panels review. They say the Justice Departments concurrent investigation will make CIA employees afraid to answer the committees questions. Had Mr. Holder honored the pledge made by the President to look forward, not backwards, we would still be active participants in the committees review, Bond says in a statement. Feinstein says the committees investigation will continue without the Republicans support. #Senate aides notice some fishy things happening at the CIA. The committee blows past its projected deadline. February 2010 Around this time, about 870 documents disappear from the computers in the CIA facility where congressional aides are conducting the investigation, Feinstein later alleges. May 2010 Another 60 documents allegedly go missing. As Feinstein tells it, CIA personnel first deny that the documents are missing, then blame the IT contractors, then blame the White House. The White House says it did not tell the CIA to remove the documents. May 17, 2010 The CIA apologizes for removing the documents, Feinstein later says. At some point in 2010 According to Feinstein, around this time, aides discover the Panetta Review – an internal report written for then-director Leon Panetta that acknowledges significant CIA wrongdoing. She says some time after aides find the Panetta Review, those documents disappear from the computers too. The committee keeps working. The Justice Department closes its inquiry without pursuing prosecutions. In 2012, the committee starts hinting at the reports findings. New ETA: Soon. Real soon. June 30, 2011 After a preliminary review, the Justice Departments special prosecutor clears CIA employees of wrongdoing in 99 cases of alleged detainee mistreatment. He recommends that the Justice Department investigate just two cases of detainee deaths. April 27, 2012 Reuters reports that the committee has found no evidence that CIA #torture led to any significant intelligence breakthroughs. At this point, the report is still being finalized. April 30, 2012 Feinstein and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., issue a press release saying the CIAs enhanced interrogation techniques did not help the government find Osama bin Laden. They say the committee will complete its review soon. Aug. 30, 2012 Attorney General Eric Holder announces he is not prosecuting any CIA employees for detainee deaths. Sept. 6, 2012 The New York Times reports that the committees review is nearing completion. In December 2012, the committee votes to start the declassification process. Now lawmakers just need the CIA to provide its comments on the report, and then the committee can vote again about which parts should be released. Dec. 13, 2012 The committee votes 9-6 to approve the report for the declassification process. Feinstein says the report is more than 6,000 pages long. Committee co-chair Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., votes against approving the report. He says the report contains significant errors, omissions, assumptions and ambiguities – as well as a lot of cherry-picking. But the report isnt declassified right away — the first step is to send the report to the White House, the CIA and other federal agencies for their comment. After that is complete in mid-February, the committee will vote again on how much of the report should be declassified, the New York Times reports. The CIA does not like the report. Jan. 30, 2013 Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., expresses his disappointment that CIA director nominee John Brennan has not yet reviewed the committees report. Feb. 7, 2013 Brennan reads the 300-page summary of the committees report in time for his confirmation hearing. He tells the panel, I must tell you that reading this report from the committee raises serious questions about the information that I was given at the time. He adds, I dont know what the facts are or what the truth is. So I really need to look at that carefully and see what CIAs response is. Feb. 15, 2013 Comments are due to the committee. Neither the CIA nor the White House submit a response by the deadline. March 7, 2013 The Senate confirms Brennan as CIA director. An anonymous senior intelligence official tells the Wall Street Journal that the agency objects to most of the committees report. March 26, 2013 Brennan is now responsible for assembling the CIAs response. Anonymous former senior CIA officials tell the Washington Post that an early draft is highly critical and finds loads of holes in the committees report. May 7, 2013 Anonymous former officials tell the Washington Post that the CIA is still assembling a defiant response. May 10, 2013 Brennan meets with President Obama and shows him the CIA’s response, the Intercept later reports. White House photographer Pete Souza snaps this photo, which reportedly shows Brennan holding the response: President Barack Obama talks with CIA Director John Brennan, center, and Chief of Staff Denis McDonough in a West Wing hallway of the White House, May 10, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) June 2013 The State Department sends a classified letter urging the committee not to declassify the report. In the letter, then-assistant secretary of state Philip Goldberg warns that if the committee reveals the CIAs cooperation with foreign intelligence agencies, it could endanger American diplomats and harm foreign relations. June 27, 2013 The CIA officially responds to the report. The 122-page secret rebuttal reportedly lists errors and criticizes the committee for failing to interview any CIA employees. A committee aide says the panel tried to interview those involved, but the CIA did not cooperate. The same day, Udall issues a statement accusing intelligence officials of leaking inaccurate information critical of the committees report. Udall alleges that the CIA and the White House repeatedly rejected requests to discuss the Committees report with Members or Committee staff. But the committee thinks the CIA hasnt properly considered one important piece of evidence – the agencys own internal report, which allegedly acknowledges CIA wrongdoing. Lawmakers push forward. Between June 27, 2013 and Jan. 15, 2014 The committee concludes the CIAs official response is at odds with the Panetta Review, which found evidence of wrongdoing. At some point during this period, congressional aides take printed copies of the Panetta Review out of the secure CIA facility where they have been assembling their research, without the CIAs permission. July 19, 2013 #Feinstein says shes leading a push to declassify at least the 300-page executive summary of the report. Chambliss says he disagrees with the reports conclusions, but he thinks both the summary and the CIAs response should be released. He adds that the report is flawed because it relied too heavily on documents. The folks doing the report got 100 percent of their information from documents and didnt interview a single person, he says. White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden says the Obama administration still wants to address some factual questions, but the administration thinks some version of the findings of the report should be made public. READ MORE : projects.propublica.org/graphics/torture-report?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=1418147324 #TortureReport #PoliceState #Financial #Education #Finance #Privacy #Security #MikeBrown #Science #EricGarner #AngelaMerkel #Russia #Protesters #Technology #Cops #Police #ABC #CBS #NBC #MSNBC #FOX #NDAA #Fema #NationalSecurity #CIA, #GCHQ #Isis #Ebola
Posted on: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 03:32:19 +0000
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