If The CIA Apologizes For Lying About Torture, But Doesn't Tell Anyone About The Apology, Does It Really Count?

Say That Again

from the 14-months-later... dept

Remember the Senate Intelligence Committee’s massive CIA torture report, that details how the CIA conducted a vast program of torturing people, which had no actual benefit, and then lied to Congress (repeatedly) about it? The same report that, when the heavily redacted executive summary was released, ex-CIA officials insisted would result in attacks on America that never actually happened?

This was also the same CIA torture report that the CIA vehemently disagreed with. Even prior to the (again, heavily redacted) executive summary being released, CIA Director John Brennan had responded to the report, insisting that it was full of lies and misleading claims. That initial response, which happened in the summer of 2013 took issue with many of the claims in the report. When the redacted executive summary of the report was finally released, the CIA apparently publicly posted a “correction” about its claims concerning the report, in which it noted that many of the statements the CIA had made in attacking the torture report were actually… not true.

And here’s the real kicker: while the CIA “released” this “correction” on its website as a “note to readers” it didn’t actually tell anyone about it. Instead, just as everyone was talking about the release of the executive summary of the terror report, and claiming that the CIA was contesting a bunch of key findings in the report, the CIA had actually posted a document on its own website detailing how its own denials were basically wrong. And some of them were big denials — including about the effectiveness of the torture program on Khalid Shaykh Muhammad (KSM). A key part of the Senate’s report was that KSM was repeatedly tortured, but didn’t cough up anything particularly useful. The CIA vehemently denied this and insisted that what KSM gave them was useful. But in this “note to readers” (again, which was never revealed to anyone), the CIA admits that it clearly overstated the value of KSM:

Rather than “the individual managing the plot,” we should have written “the individual who was in a position to advance the plot.” This terrorist had raised Canary Wharf as a potential target and was tasked by KSM to conduct surveillance of Heathrow Airport’s security, but the plot was shelved after KSM’s arrest….

… Instead of “KSM provided information on an ai-Qa’ida operative named Zubair. .. ,” we should have written that “KSM provided information that led us to understand the significance of a Jemaah lslamiya operative named Zubair.” We acknowledge that in various representations, including President Bush’s 2006 speech, CIA introduced a sequencing error regarding Majid Khan’s arrest/debriefings, and KSM’s arrest/debriefings. We repeated that error here and on page 26 of Tab C (see next erratum). However, despite that error, our description of the impact of the information acquired from KSM in the Hambali case remains accurate. It was the combination of information from both terrorists that caused us to focus on Zubair as an inroad to Hambali….

… In our review of this case, we correctly acknowledged that CIA allowed a mistaken claim that KSM played a role in Majid Khan’s capture to appear in the Inspector General’s 2004 Special Review, and we correctly wrote that this claim was a one-time error. However, our effort to provide an example of a more accurate “typical representation” of the relationship between KSM’s information and Khan ran afoul of the sequencing error noted in the previous erratum. Although information from KSM was used to elicit further details from Khan, by then Khan already had provided the information that, together with what we learned from KSM, enabled us to advance our search for Hambali….

…We incorrectly stated that KSM’s information preceded Majid Khan’s information. We stand by our overall conclusion regarding the value of KSM’s information.

In other words, a bunch of things the CIA insisted were inaccurate in the Senates Torture Report were actually quite accurate, and it was the CIA that was being inaccurate. And, sure, the CIA “admitted” this in its “note to readers” but then failed to actually tell anyone about this “note to readers.” In fact, while the document was available on the CIA website no one even seemed to notice it until a few days ago. And that includes the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The document, entitled ?Note to Readers,? was not formally provided or flagged separately for the Senate Intelligence Committee, which only became aware of its existence in the last week ? more than a year since the document was publicly posted.

The ?Note? was also noticeably absent from the CIA website?s swath of December 2014 releases related to the Intelligence Committee study, and was not mentioned in either of the agency?s archived press releases on the subject.

Not surprisingly, Senator Ron Wyden, who has been one of the leading voices in getting this report out to the public, was not at all pleased to find out about all of this:

?The CIA justified this program by claiming that it produced otherwise unobtainable information. CIA officials have now admitted their go-to example was wrong,? Sen. Ron Wyden, a prominent Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, told BuzzFeed News.

?These are significant admissions by the CIA that should not have been hidden in an obscure endnote,? Wyden said. ?Director Brennan has tried to insist that the CIA did not provide policymakers with false information about torture, but these corrections seem to be an admission that they did so, and did so repeatedly.?

It still seems worth asking why President Obama continues to allow CIA Director John Brennan to retain that role. He appears to have no problem letting him get away with lying and purposeful obfuscation over activities of the CIA to the Senate Committee that is in charge of overseeing the CIA.

Filed Under: apology, cia, lies, note to reader, senate intelligence committee, torture, torture report