WaPo:
An exhaustive, five-year Senate investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogations of terrorism suspects renders a strikingly bleak verdict of a program launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, describing levels of brutality, dishonesty and seemingly arbitrary violence that at times brought even agency employees to moments of anguish.
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee delivers new allegations of cruelty in a program whose severe tactics have been abundantly documented, revealing that agency medical personnel voiced alarm that waterboarding methods had deteriorated to “a series of near drownings” and that agency employees subjected detainees to “rectal rehydration” and other painful procedures that were never approved.
NY Times:
Months before the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly prepared a public-relations plan that would stress that information gathered from its disputed interrogation program had played a critical role in the hunt. Starting the day after the raid, agency officials in classified briefings made that point to Congress.
But in page after page of previously classified evidence, the Senate Intelligence Committee report on C.I.A. torture, released Tuesday, rejects the notion that torturing detainees contributed to finding Bin Laden — a conclusion that was also strongly implied in “Zero Dark Thirty,” the popular 2012 movie about the hunt for the Qaeda leader.
This was torture, plain and simple. And every DFH that said so during the Bush years got it right. In fact, no one looks worse in this report than George W Bush, except for maybe the people still desperate to defend him.
if anyone today is looking at @emptywheel and not recognizing her contributions to the torture debate, you’re doing it wrong.
— @DemFromCT
Oh, and no one gets more credit than Marcy Wheeler, who called this years ago. And she points out
another issue now:
For Obama to pardon Bush, Cheney, and Tenet, he would have to admit that the same Finding that he used to authorize drone strikes that have killed hundreds of civilians authorized war crimes. There is absolutely zero chance Obama is going to do that.
More politics and policy below the fold.
WaPo:
Hayden’s testimony vs. the Senate report
A look at then-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden's testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on April 12, 2007, compared with the extensive summary on the CIA's interrogation and detention program, released on Tuesday.
"The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow," @SenJohnMcCain says. "But the American people are entitled to it nonetheless."
— @jeffzeleny
Dafna Linzer:
Here are the five things to look for when the report is released Tuesday:
1. One word: Torture. Since The New York Times first exposed in 2004 that the CIA was “waterboarding” select al-Qaeda detainees and had approved a secret list of interrogation techniques, a political debate has raged over whether to call those methods by their right name: “torture.” The Bush administration called them “enhanced interrogation techniques” and rejected the notion that anything the CIA did constituted torture. When asked, President Bush would simply say “we do not torture,” and that is because “torture” is illegal.
2. Was it worth it? Members of the Bush administration, most notably former Vice President Dick Cheney and former CIA Director Michael Hayden, have publicly insisted, along with prominent Republican member of Congress, that torture works. Once out of office, Cheney said that the waterboarding of three al-Qaeda detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – long considered the orchestrator of the 2001 attacks – “produced phenomenal results for us.” But many others have disagreed. The report is expected to reach a judgment on this question. But even as readers weigh the evidence, it’s worth asking: Does it matter? If torture is illegal – because it constitutes cruel and inhumane treatment – and is immoral, do we want our spy agencies doing it, even if it could work?
3. Who did this? The report is not going to identify the people who carried out the interrogations, and it won’t name the Bush administration officials who knew of their actions. Cheney once famously explained that to win the war against al-Qaeda, the United States needed to “work the dark side, if you will.” But this report doesn’t go there, so don’t expect revelations along the lines of: “Jack Bauer in the Salt Pit with a wooden plank.” The names of Bush administration officials associated with “the torture memos,” including John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of Berkeley, or Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, are unlikely to surface in this report.
Ruth Marcus:
Releasing the Senate intelligence committee’s report on torture wasn’t even close to a close call. It was a necessary, if infuriatingly belated, corollary to the choice not to prosecute those who relied on faulty legal advice in engaging in such repugnant practices.
The sordid episode called for national accountability, which is what the committee provided Tuesday. Nations, like individuals, cannot move on from traumatic moments without taking stock of their behavior.
WaPo:
Congressional leaders unveiled a massive $1.01 trillion spending bill Tuesday night that will keep most of the federal government funded through September.
The legislation is expected to pass in the coming days and will allow the new Republican-
controlled Congress to clear the decks of lingering spending issues, while setting the stage for a prolonged fight with President Obama over immigration policy.
At 1,603 pages, the legislation provides money to fight the rise of the Islamic State and $5.4 billion to fight the threat of Ebola. But there is no additional money for the Affordable Care Act and there are modest spending cuts at the Environmental Protection Agency and Internal Revenue Service, two perennial GOP targets. Still, Democrats won bigger budgets for enforcement at agencies created after the 2008 economic collapse.
Don't forget there's a Surgeon General to confirm.
Sabrina Siddiqui:
Prospects that the Senate will confirm Vivek Murthy as surgeon general have remained bleak throughout the year, largely due to the physician's support for stricter gun laws. But a last-ditch campaign by health care activists has provided a glimmer of hope for Murthy, with a number of key Democrats coming out in support of his nomination in recent days.
Earlier this year, as many as 10 Democrats were reportedly prepared to vote against President Barack Obama's pick for the nation's top public health position, forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to table a vote on the nomination. But with the clock ticking down to the end of Democratic control over the upper chamber, health care activists are ramping up pressure on Democrats to confirm Murthy before Republicans take control of the Senate -- and their efforts appear to be paying dividends.