Today, prompted by controversy over a Central Intelligence Agency internal review document that is said to corroborate the results of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into CIA torture, Committee Chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein vigorously defended the Committee’s work, suggesting that “If the Senate can declassify this report, we will be able to ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.” She described how the CIA repeatedly removed documents it had previously provided the Committee and how it, possibly illegally, monitored the Committee’s work. She also said that the CIA’s acting general counsel, an individual who is named more than 1,600 times in the Committee’s report, may have attempted to intimidate Committee staff.Rev. Ron Stief, executive director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, responded to Sen. Feinstein’s comments by saying: “We applaud Senator Feinstein for once more reminding the CIA that the use of torture was un-American, brutal, and should never happen again. As people of faith, the National Religious Campaign Against Torture believes that no one in the CIA stands above their moral responsibility to humanity. The facts of CIA torture contained in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report should come out now so we can get beyond the bickering and take the next steps toward a torture-free future.”
Matt Hawthorne, NRCAT’s policy director, added: “Senator Feinstein’s description of what appears to be the CIA’s attempt to obstruct congressional oversight is chilling. As she said, Committee staffers have spent years uncovering the ‘horrible details of a CIA program that never, never, never should have existed.’ The CIA operates in the shadows, but for our democracy to function, the agency must be accountable to robust congressional oversight. If, as she described, the CIA has monitored staff computers, removed documents, and is now intimidating staffers with apparently unfounded legal accusations, then we should all be very concerned about the future of congressional oversight.”
Under NRCAT’s leadership, clergy across the country published opinion pieces in newspapers in all 50 states calling for the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA’s use of torture. In December, a compilation of all published op-eds thus far (listed online at NRCAT’s website) was distributed to the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, to demonstrate the diverse religious community’s united support for release of the report.
Today, prompted by controversy over a Central Intelligence Agency internal review document that is said to corroborate the results of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into CIA torture, Committee Chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein vigorously defended the Committee’s work, suggesting that “If the Senate can declassify this report, we will be able to ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.” She described how the CIA repeatedly removed documents it had previously provided the Committee and how it, possibly illegally, monitored the Committee’s work. She also said that the CIA’s acting general counsel, an individual who is named more than 1,600 times in the Committee’s report, may have attempted to intimidate Committee staff.
