The Holy Grail of Torture Documents To Be Released By Obama Administration.
A Sunday Washington Post article indicates that the White House will declassify and release a blockbuster 2004 CIA Inspector General (IG) report on Bush era torture tactics. According to the WaPo article:
Government officials familiar with the CIA’s early interrogations say the most powerful evidence of apparent excesses is contained in the “top secret” May 7, 2004, inspector general report, based on more than 100 interviews, a review of the videotapes and 38,000 pages of documents. The full report remains closely held, although White House officials have told political allies that they intend to declassify it for public release when the debate quiets over last month’s release of the Justice Department’s interrogation memos.
According to excerpts included in those memos, the inspector general’s report concluded that interrogators initially used harsh techniques against some detainees who were not withholding information. Officials familiar with its contents said it also concluded that some of the techniques appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994.
Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that “it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks,” according to the Justice Department’s declassified summary of it. The threat of such an imminent attack was cited by the department as an element in its 2002 and later written authorization for using harsh techniques.
[t]he report’s conclusions nonetheless prompted CIA general counsel John A. Rizzo to request fresh statements by the Justice Department that what the agency had been doing was indeed legal. Steven G. Bradbury, then deputy assistant attorney general, responded in May 2005 by issuing three opinions explaining why the interrogations did not violate the Convention Against Torture.
(For the text of the three Bradbury opinions, and other declassified torture-related documents, see my Snoopers Tip (TM) posting of May 9th, Snoopers Tip #10: Documentary Resources on Torture.)
Moreover, Greg Sargent at WhoRunsgov.com’s PlumLine reports:
Dem Congressional staffers tell me this report is the “holy grail,” because it is expected to detail torture
in unprecedented detail and to cast doubt on the claim that torture works — and its release will almost certainly trigger howls of protest from conservatives. Tellingly, neither the CIA nor the White House knocked down the story in response to my questions, with spokespeople for both declining comment. [Emphasis added]
Via litigation a massively redacted version of the IG’s report was provided to the ACLU. If the reports are true that even under the White House’s own permissive standards, torture was widely misused, and this was known to them via the IG report, and, moreover, that the IG cast serious doubt upon the efficacy of torture, this “holy grail” document may prove a bitter drink to swallow by Messrs. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Feith, Wolfowitz, etc. It will be especially interesting to see if Mr. Cheney is as visible as he’s been lately on his “Self-Indictment Tour”. . .
All I can say: let's see what happenes!I hope to have time to write that guest post for you tomoprrow!