It’s already glaringly obvious that the Senate isn’t going to follow up the CIA torture report with any actual reform, or even a token attempt to hold any of the torturers accountable. Still, CIA officials are outraged.
Nobody likes to be called a torturer, even if they tortured people and even if they’re going to get away with it. CIA Director John Brennan and others were furious about the release of the heavily redacted summary of the report.
Not that they could single out anything in the report as actually untrue. Rather, they were defending the torture itself, with Brennan insisting it “saved lives” and remains critical to US counter-terrorism operations.
Former CIA Director George Tenet, who oversaw all the torture, complained the report was “inaccurate and destructive,” and a threat to national security, saying its public release was a “dark day for congressional oversight.”
He’s right in that last regard, as the Senate isn’t making any attempt at oversight at all. Rather, they’re engaged in years-after-the-fact reporters, and even the reporting was enough to offend the CIA, which was under the impression they could do literally anything they wanted without fear of public embarrassment.
The CIA seem to have been singled out in the summary report.
They could deflect some of the criticism by releasing and/or confirming the names of cooperating overseas regimes that provided them with rendition and torture services.
Spread the opprobrium and take the heat off them alone.
Now is the time for all dirty laundry to washed and aired.