CIA Chief Slams Release of Torture Report Summary

Faults Senate for Not Interviewing Torturers

CIA Director John Brennan angrily condemned the release of the summary of the Senate’s CIA Torture Report today, saying the report was flawed and incomplete, and unfair to the torturers, who were not interviewed for the report.

The reason no CIA officials were interviewed by the Senate Intelligence Committee for the report? That’s because the Justice Department wouldn’t allow it, because those torturers might face legal ramifications for all the laws they broke.

Which would be a better legal argument if the Justice Department had any intention of holding anyone accountable for any torture, which they clearly did not, and after the damning report they didn’t contradict a single fact, they just insisted they knew everything already and didn’t see a reason to prosecute anyone.

Even Brennan conceded some of the things done were abhorrent, but shrugged off the notion of liability for anything, saying there were “no easy answers” and that it was “unknowable” if the torture really worked or not.

That “unknowable” factor seems to loom large in all CIA statements, and even the captures long claimed to be a result of torture, like of Indonesian cleric Hambali,  have counter-evidence suggesting the CIA stumbled across them and tried to attach them to the torture in an attempt to try to make it look like something good came out of it.

Ultimately, the arguments against the report center around putting torture and the people who did it in a negative light, and come from officials who, despite insisting they oppose torture in some vague manner, have no intention of ever holding anyone accountable for it.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.