[Flash Walken]

The CIA is still obstructing and lying, as well

In a career-defining speech, Sen. Mark Udall took to the Senate floor Wednesday to discuss a largely classified internal CIA investigation into the agency's Bush-era "enhanced interrogation techniques," and to call for the current CIA director's resignation.

Udall, an outbound Democrat from Colorado, began highlighting key conclusions from the CIA's so-called Panetta Review, written in 2011 and named after then-agency Director Leon Panetta. Its critical findings, in addition to the agency's attempts to prevent the Senate from seeing it, Udall said, demonstrates that the CIA is still lying about the scope of enhanced-interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration.

That deceit is continuing today under current CIA Director John Brennan, Udall said.

"The refusal to provide the full Panetta Review and the refusal to acknowledge facts detailed in both the committee study and the Panetta Review lead to one disturbing finding: Director Brennan and the CIA today are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture," Udall said. "In other words: The CIA is lying."

Obama, Udall said, "has expressed full confidence in Director Brennan and demonstrated that trust by making no effort at all to rein him in." Udall additionally referred to Brennan's "failed leadership" and suggested that he should resign.

Udall said that redactions in the Senate Intelligence Committee's landmark torture report obfuscated key details about the CIA's harsh interrogation methods. Among those, Udall said, the report is ambiguous about how many CIA officials participated in the brutal practices. In reality, it was only a handful, he said.

As he spoke, Udall continued to give a blistering and detailed account of what he portrayed as the CIA leadership's refusal to come clean with the American people about its now-defunct interrogation program. Udall accused the CIA of outright lying to the committee during its investigation.

"Torture just didn't happen, after all," Udall said. "Real, actual people engaged in torture. Some of these people are still employed by the CIA."

Udall said it was bad enough not to prosecute these officials, but to reward or promote them, he said, was incomprehensible. Udall called on Obama "to purge" his administration of anyone who was engaged in torturing prisoners.

"He needs to force a cultural change at the CIA," Udall said.

And, Udall said, the institutional problems are far from over. "CIA was knowingly providing inaccurate information to the committee in the present day," he said.

Udall publicly disclosed the existence of the Panetta Review during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing last December. It has been previously reported that it harshly criticized the utility of the CIA's brutal Bush-era interrogation techniques.

So, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA is actively deceiving them to this day.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/congr...ogram-20141210

The Panetta Review found that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Congress, the president, and the public on the efficacy of its coercive techniques. The Brennan Response, in contrast, continues to insist that the CIA’s interrogations produced unique intelligence that saved lives. Yet the Panetta Review identifies dozens of documents that include inaccurate information used to justify the use of torture – and indicates that the inaccuracies it identifies do not represent an exhaustive list.

The Panetta Review further describes how detainees provided intelligence prior to the use of torture against them. It describes how the CIA – contrary to its own representations – often tortured detainees before trying any other approach. It describes how the CIA tortured detainees even when less coercive methods were yielding intelligence. The Panetta Review further identifies cases in which the CIA used coercive techniques when it had no basis for determining whether a detainee had critical intelligence at all. In other words, CIA personnel tortured detainees to confirm they didn’t have intelligence – not because they thought they did.

http://www.salon.com/2014/12/11/tort...d_smoking_gun/