CIA OBAMA CENSORSHIP OF SENATE REPORT

CIA attempts to censor report into its use, abuse of torture Jamie Seidel, agencies News Corp Australia Network August 12, 2014 11:43AM CHARGED with using “brutal” interrogation methods, the CIA is now engaged in a desperate campaign to keep the details from becoming public. It’s even gone so far as to spy on the US Senate in its efforts. The political storm erupted early last week when powerful Intelligence Committee members protested over the Obama administration’s censorship of the 500-page executive summary of their findings of CIA ‘interrogation’ techniques. The full 6300 page document will never be made public. It was the end product of an examination expected to take six months. It’s since dragged on for five years. The report’s findings are said to be scathing. It is believed to state that the CIA’s ethical and legal breaches were “widespread” and “chilling”. It also is expected to rule that the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced’ interrogation methods had not proved effective. But we now may never know for certain. Allegations are that the CIA is striving to delete enough key details to make the report incomprehensible — even though many of them have already been made public. “Try reading a novel with 15 per cent of the words blacked out. It can’t be done properly,” Senator Martin Heinrich said in his criticism of the attempted censorship. “Redactions are supposed to remove names or anything that could compromise sources and methods, not to undermine the source material so that it is impossible to understand.” So what is the CIA so keen to hide? What lies beneath the thousands of lines of black ink which will blank out so much of the summary? Why would the White House even allow the CIA to censor a report into its own misconduct? Ultimately it’s the US President who decides what should be marked as classified, and what should be public. The ball is now in President Barak Obama’s court. Here’s what US security analysis’s suspect the the CIA wants to hide: DESTRUCTION OF EVIDENCE: The whole Intelligence Committee investigation would never have happened if it was not for the destruction of key evidence. In one key incident that has been revealed, a CIA official destroyed more than 100 video recordings of the interrogations at the centre of the controversy. [...] WHEN IS TORTURE NOT TORTURE: The Bush administration insisted it wasn’t. The Obama administration says it was. At the heart of the report is whether or not the CIA knew their “enhanced” interrogation was actually torture ... [...] SUPPRESSING DETAILS: We know at least 10 types of torture the CIA applied to its captives. These were listed in the now infamous Justice Department “torture memo” and other evidence which came to light in a 2009 legal review of the allegations. But some speculate that the CIA is now particularly worried about the inherent cruelty of two previously unreported “improvised” interrogation methods ... [...] DELETING CODE NAMES: They’re just code names — acronyms and random words which are designed to disguise the subject to which they refer. But there’s something revealing even about these that the CIA wants to hide. One anonymous government source told US media the CIA was keen to blank-out any indication of name or place. This would remove any form of context for individual events. One would be indistinguishable from another. ... [...] REMOVING MENTION OF SOURCES: This may suggest something of an “own goal” by the CIA in its misinformation campaign. It appears much of the information said to have been gained via ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques was not. Instead, it was gathered by other means — means the CIA sought to mask behind the brutal face of torture. HIDING MEDIA MANIPULATION: It bears all the hallmarks of an al-Qaeda operation. Sound familiar? It should. It’s a favourite phrase used to invoke international fear and justify CIA actions. But the report appears to reveal that the organisation deliberately leaked false threats and success stories in order to justify the existence of its torture campaigns. Such revelations would deal a severe blow to the agency’s future credibility. EMBARRASSING INCIDENTS: Where the CIA Inspector General’s investigations into CIA behaviour credible? What of specific CIA actions — such as the reported abduction of the family (including a 12-year-old girl) of an opponent of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi? The CIA is keen to tout its successes — real or otherwise. But it has a long history of denial when it comes to failures. [...] WHITE HOUSE TO THE DEFENCE The Obama administration has sought to quash rising anger over the report’s redactions. “We tortured some folks,” President Obama conceded last week. “And we have to, as a country, take responsibility for that so that, hopefully, we don’t do it again in the future.” How censoring the report which is central for imposing such accountability upon the CIA achieves this goal is the issue. [...] EXTRACTS ONLY - FULL @ SOURCE Source - Herald Sun - here

Go to the source and check out the article in full.

Got some really cool pics, too.

There's a massive one of Brennan and I was right:  he looks mean.  LOL

Surprised this is news in Australia and that it's not exactly complimentary.

The public will never know what's going on or have a say on how their country is run.

Even when the government is supposedly moving towards accountability, they're hiding things from the public they're supposed to serve.

UK & US - UK DIEGO GARCIA BASE - US-UK COLLUSION - RENDITION, TORTURE - UK COVER-UP

UK government attempts to conceal its involvement in rendition and torture By Robert Stevens 9 August 2014 The British government is seeking to cover up its role in the illegal “extraordinary rendition”—kidnappings and torture—programme run by the United States. Ahead of the delayed release of a US Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) torture system, in place under the previous George W. Bush administration, the Observer revealed that the UK government has approached its US counterparts to censor information regarding Britain’s involvement in rendition and torture through the use of the Indian Ocean air base of Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia, a tiny atoll, is a British Overseas Territory that has been leased to the US for decades. It became a strategic base for the US military during the Cold War and was used to supply its forces in the Red Sea and Vietnam. It was also the only base used for air strikes against Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991. It was used again by the US military for the “shock and awe” bombardment of Iraq in 2003 as well as the heavy bombardment of Afghanistan in 2001. The Observer cites a letter from former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague to the human rights organisation Reprieve. Hague was Foreign Secretary for four years in the government of Prime Minister David Cameron until last month’s cabinet reshuffle. Hague informed Reprieve that, “We have made representations to seek assurances that ordinary procedures for clearance of UK material will be followed in the event that UK material provide[d] to the Senate committee were to be disclosed.” The meaning is clear: the UK government is insistent that details of its active participation in an illegal global kidnapping and torture network, in close collaboration with the US, remain under lock and key. The censoring being demanded by the British is just part of an overall mass of redactions being put in place by the US military-intelligence apparatus prior to the report’s release. Last Friday, Senator Dianne Feinstein said the Senate Intelligence Committee would delay the release of the declassified summary of its voluminous report on the CIA torture system, due to the scale of redactions being made. Successive UK governments have denied accusations that Diego Garcia was used as a “black site” prison and that rendition flights landed there. As far back as 2002, the Washington Post reported that Diego Garcia was “one of a number of secret detention centers overseas.” In 2008 then British Home Secretary David Miliband told parliament that two US flights each containing a prisoner did refuel on the island in 2002, but claimed those detained remained on board and that the “US Government has assured us that no US detainees have ever been held on Diego Garcia.” Andrew Tyrie, a Conservative MP, is the founder and chairman of Parliaments all-party group on rendition. [...] Tyrie has called for an inquiry in Britain’s involvement in rendition and torture on the basis that without this happening, the UK’s ability to portray itself as an upholder of democracy on the international stage is vastly undermined. “With the truth established, Britain can draw a line under these allegations and demonstrate that we abide by the values that we expect of others.” The lies that Diego Garcia has played no role in rendition and torture continue to unravel. An account by freelance investigative journalist Andy Worthington, published on Al-Jazeera last month noted, “In October 2003, Time reported that ‘a regional intelligence official’ had stated that Hambali, a ‘high-value detainee’ seized in Thailand two months earlier, was being held and interrogated on Diego Garcia, and in the years that followed, other claims were made, both by journalists and by retired US general Barry McCaffrey, who, in May 2004 and December 2006, referred to prisoners being held on Diego Garcia.” [...] continued @ source link http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/08/09/rend-a09.html

Feinstein's report's been delayed because they're whiting out the British, huh?

Wasn't democracy supposed to be transparent?

Kidnapping and torture ... lawlessness ... even terrorism  ... isn't that what the powers that be supposedly stand 'against'.  LOL

Hypocrisy, inscrutability and lawlessness is how you maintain an empire.

OBAMA - CIA AND TORTURE

Barack Obama admits: The CIA 'tortured some folks after 9/11' Friday 01 August 2014 “We tortured some folks,” he admitted, “We did some things that were contrary to our values.” In 2009 he described waterboarding, a favourite CIA technique, as torture and “a mistake” and he banned its use by American operatives, but last night’s comments are the most emphatic admission.. President Obama, speaking ahead of the expected release of a Senate report that criticises the CIA’s treatment of captives, steered clear of commenting on the efficacy of torture. He added that he believed the mistreatment occurred because of pressure security officials felt to prevent another attack. He said Americans should not be too “sanctimonious,” about passing judgment through the lens of a seemingly safer present. He also expressed confidence in his CIA director, John Brennan, in the wake of an internal CIA report documenting that the spy agency improperly accessed Senate computers. There have been calls for his resignation by congressional lawmakers. FULL @ SOURCE SOURCE - http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/barack-obama-admits-the-cia-tortured-some-folks-after-911-9644016.html

So there you go ... CIA can do whatever they want ... and the government approves.

Report should be vaguely interesting.

And Brennan's in with O.

LOL