For the last five years, the White House has withheld over 9,000 top-secret documents from a Senate investigation of the CIA’s former detention and torture program. The report comes one day after the CIA was accused of interfering in the probe. Though the White House has publicly supported the investigation into Bush-era torture, the Obama administration has routinely rejected requests by the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence to see the records, McClatchy news service reported Wednesday. It is not clear how substantial the documents are for the investigation, yet the White House has shielded them without wielding the claim of executive privilege that has been used often by the Obama and George W. Bush administrations to cover CIA and other government secrets following the attacks of September 11, 2001. The White House told McClatchy a “small percentage” of the 6.2 million pages of documents given to the Committee were “set aside because they raise executive branch confidentiality interests.” The White House added that it had worked with the Committee “to ensure access to the information necessary to review the CIA’s former program.” Neither the CIA nor the Committee would offer comment to McClatchy. On Tuesday, Committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) alleged that the CIA secretly removed classified documents from a computer system used by Congress in the torture probe. Feinstein claimed the CIA improperly searched a stand-alone computer network at the agency’s Langley, Virginia headquarters that was put in place so that Intelligence Committee staffers could view sensitive documents. Stacy Miller Evan L Smith Kodo Kaze Mike Manion Andrew P Beaver Johnny Audacity Erick Hicks Deb Nun Joanne Marvin Mona Radler Ginnee Hancock Glenn Geronimo George Dewey John-Michael Steele Bret Smith III DMarie Mulattieri
Posted on: Thu, 13 Mar 2014 16:02:18 +0000
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