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CIA Watchdog 'Mistakenly' Destroyed Its Only Copy Of A Senate Torture Report (yahoo.com)
An anonymous reader writes: According to Yahoo News, the CIA inspector general's office "mistakenly" destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report at the same time lawyers for the Justice Department were assuring a federal judge that copies of the document were being preserved. Agency officials described the deletion of the document to Senate investigators as an "inadvertent" foul-up by the inspector general. "CIA inspector general officials deleted an uploaded computer file with the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that also contained the document, filled with thousands of secret files about the CIA's use of 'enhanced' interrogation methods," reports Yahoo News. The Senate Intelligence Committee and Justice Department knew about the incident last summer, sources said. However, the destruction of a copy of the sensitive report was never made public, nor was it reported to the federal judge at the time who was overseeing a lawsuit seeking access to the still classified document under the Freedom of Information Act. Despite this incident, a CIA spokesperson has said another unopened computer disk with the full report is still locked in a vault at agency headquarters. "I can assure you that the CIA has retained a copy," wrote Dean Boyd, the agency's chief of public affairs, in an email. Feinstein is calling for the CIA inspector general to obtain a new copy of the report to replace the one that disappeared. A 500-page summary was released in 2014, and concluded that the CIA misled Americans on the effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation." Specifically, the interrogations were poorly managed and unreliable.
It's a fact no matter how you try to weasel out of it: "enhanced interrogation" is actually torture. Which doing so in a time of war is a war crime. The stuff Japanese people were sentenced to death for shortly after their trials at the end of World War II.
Shh.
Since torture methods are known to barely work, is torture mostly an excuse for sadists to get kicks? some twisted Biblical notion of hellish justice disguised as interrogation?
We know why torture doesn't happen, but when it does, why does it?
Well I think someone should "mistakenly" go to jail then.
"sorry, its in my other pants"?
If the CIA were a person (or smaller less corrupt organization) they'd be held liable (and possibly in contempt) with massive punishments.
I guess it's not just the banks that can be TBTF.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The CIA is a rogue fully-unaccountable shadow organization that thumbs its nose at ALL regulators including Congress. The longer this is allowed to go on the closer to a totalitarian state we are allowing ourselves to veer toward. Checks and balances mean JACK SHIT when they just go right around all of them.
So just to summarize this story - an agency was given a file, they accidentally deleted it, then asked for a new one from the original owner, and the owner said "ok".
"I am going to smash the CIA and scatter the splinters to the wind." - J. F. Kennedy, after the Bay of Pigs failure
Seems he never got the chance...
Execute the whole goddamn organization for treason?
We can do it while assuring them the injections are vaccines.
(well in a way they are...)
The Senate Intelligence Committee, which produced the report, has copies of its own report. The CIA has copies. The CIA IG destroyed its copy, provided to it by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and told the committee. Stupid, yes...but given that it was the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, it's not like the CIA IG destroying its only copy of the Senate's report amounts to, well, anything.
Someone is either a.) getting promoted for making that disappear b.) getting fired for making that disappear or c.) appearing to get fired but actually getting promoted by another agency for making that disappear.
They need to make sure it is really gone, because having the original turn up later and someone running a comparison of the two would assuredly find large chunks of the original missing from the back-up doc and that would be quite embarrassing.
in the basement, in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'.
-I'm just sayin'
This is clearly sedition. Hang them. And by them, I mean at the very least a dozen of the highest ranking CIA officials.
Make an example of what happens to public servants who go out of their way to serve themselves to the point of actively harming the public.
a CIA spokesperson has said another unopened computer disk with the full report is still locked in a vault at agency headquarters.
And we'll be happy to open the disk and give you a copy of the contents just as soon as we locate the Torx T10 driver we need to do so... can we keep the cool magnets?
Ask the NSA I'm sure they've got a copy.
How about some Extreme waterboarding with trump! and he will put that out with out an cover up.
If you're reading this, and you have access to this report, and you consider yourself a loyal, patriotic American, then you don't need me to tell you what the right thing to do is.
"CIA inspector general officials deleted an uploaded computer file with the report and then accidentally destroyed a disk that also contained the document. Then, while carrying the computer from which the file was deleted, officials tripped and dropped it into an MRI scanner's powerful magnet. In an effort to free the computer it was struck repeatedly with a rubber mallet. Once freed, being alarmingly warm, the computer was submerged in water to cool. Later, the computer fell from the horse that was transporting it and it was trampled to pieces. The pieces were cast into the volcano."
I think that Hillary learned how to be evasive and deny from the best in the CIA. It's pretty amazing how many critical files and witnesses have 'vanished' since the advent of the CIA.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Waterboarding (pouring water over the enemy combatant's face) and hooding (putting a bag over their head so they can't see) are bad. The US shouldn't do those things, as policy. No country should, and especially the US (more on that later*).
On the other hand consider if we captured Osama bin Laden , who knew about plans for future terror attacks. If our interrogation experts thought that putting a bag over his head to annoy him might increase the information he revealed (potentially saving innocent lives), I'd happily fetch a bag for that use. I digress. Generally, those techniques are bad policy.
> The stuff Japanese people were sentenced to death for shortly after their trials at the end of World War II.
The japanese war criminals were convicted of kidnapping all the girls and women in villages they attacked and making them "sexual slaves". In other words, raping these civilians hundreds of times each. They were also convicted of mass murder - men from the villages, once they were too emaciated to work in the forced labor camp, would be lined up and shot.
Again, pouring water on a terrorist's face isn't a very nice thing to do to that terrorist. Systematically raping thousands of girls, many of them hundreds of times each, is a completely different level of horrible.
To say to the survivors of this rape program that their story is no worse than someone who chose to be a terrorist having water poured on them is deeply offensive and shows an incredible lack of perspective or understanding of the world.
I promised more about why the US especially shouldn't be mean to enemy combatants. The US is not historically a people, not an ethnic group or ancient tribe who established borders of the area they control like most nations. Japan is the area that (ethnic) Japanese people control, the area of Japanwse culture. The responsibility of the Japanese government is to the Japanese people, and it should protect Japanese culture and tradition.
The US isn't descended from an ancient tribe or ethnic group. The US wasn't created to define the area of US culture and traditions. Rather, was explicitly founded to protect freedom , justice, and liberty. That's the entire PURPOSE of founding the country, expressed in the founding documents. The US claims to be, aspires to be, "the brightest beacon of freedom to the world". Japan makes no such claim. Therefore, in order to accomplish our explicit purpose, the reason the country exists in the first place, we must treat justice and freedom as our top priorities. When we don't do so, we've failed in a way that other countries don't, because they make no claim of being "the land of liberty". This concept is called "American Exceptionalism". Some disagree, of course. President Obama rejects the concept American Exceptionalism, the idea that the US has a special responsibility to respect people's rights.
Going to get modded down but what if they are intentionally being rotted?
The parallelisms between crap like this an immigration are quite interesting. There are other countries that have been into torturing their own people for a hell of a lot longer then Canada or the US even exists.
"Our bad! We won't ever do that again, we promise." -- the CIA
You understand don't you, that they killed several of them during the torture. They didn't just do a little light spanking or face washing! They suffocated, drowned and dehydrated a few beyond the point a doctor could recover them. Even in Guantanmo, there were a number of unexplained deaths, prisoners due for release suddenly committing suicide by suffocation etc.
> "Systematically raping thousands of girls, many of them hundreds of times each, is a completely different level of horrible."
Wouldn't killing the girls be worse? Sex isn't as bad a killing, and its normal for women to have sex hundreds of times a year, die-ing is definitely a one time, do not want, thing.
Did they get useful intel? Doubtful. Could they have got what intel they got by more tried and tested means? Yep, that's why they're tried and tested. The CIA tortured because Bush wanted them to. He needed to be seen to be doing something, given his close relationship to the Bin Ladens (Bin Laden family rescued one of his failing oil businesses, and he blocked the report 'Bin Laden determined to Strike in the US").
Despite this incident, a CIA spokesperson has said another unopened computer disk with the full report is still locked in a vault at agency headquarters. "I can assure you that the CIA has retained a copy," wrote Dean Boyd, the agency's chief of public affairs, in an email.
Get your history right. We executed Japanese Soldiers for waterboarding ours during WWII. You listen to Faux News too much.
http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2015/jan/12/bobby-scott/bobby-scott-after-wwii-us-executed-japanese-war-cr/
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2007/dec/18/john-mccain/history-supports-mccains-stance-on-waterboarding/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/12/16/cheneys-claim-that-the-u-s-did-not-prosecute-japanese-soldiers-for-waterboarding/
How about some Extreme waterboarding with trump! and he will put that out with out an cover up.
No! The orange will all wash off of his face!
We executed Hussein, Milosevic and most of the Nazis for doing this stuff. Basically, we put a bunch of racist sadists in charge of a program where they got to dehumanize, torture and kill brown people who had no legal process. Why can't we start with the President and work our way down to the people who were 'just following orders'? I'd like to see some justice.
...It's perfectly OK for ISIL to chop heads off, execute innocent people with suicide bombs, keep women uneducated and in burkas, teach teenage boys how to be abusers, murderers, .and worst of all "martyrs"...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Part of American Exceptionalism was that we abhorred torture unlike other nations with darker histories that cared not for individual Liberty.
You seem to have missed that memo.
The Church committee had a good chance, and the Pike committee in the house as well, back in the Ford administration. Donald Rumsfeld was a part of the administration back then and worked very hard to prevent the Church Committee from dismantling the CIA, and the administration did seem very worried that the this could have happened. The Church committee were called traitors by some hardliners at the time. Since that time, the executive has amassed even more power relative to congress.
On the other hand consider if we captured Osama bin Laden , who knew about plans for future terror attacks.
I'd rather consider if we captured you, and we believe that you know about plans for future attacks. But you don't actually know about any future attacks, so you can't tell us about any. But we don't believe you know nothing, and so we keep torturing you. Finally, you decide to lie, and tell us that you do know of one future attack. But we disbelieve that you only know about one, so the torture continues.
Really? "My dog ate my homework?"
Waterboarding (pouring water over the enemy combatant's face) and hooding (putting a bag over their head so they can't see) are bad.
Are you serious? Waterboarding someone is a drowning technique. Waterboarding is 'pouring water over their face' the way tearing someone's finger nails out is a 'rough manicure'. They were drowning people several times a day for days or weeks on end. You need to get your head straight on this.
"In other words, raping these civilians hundreds of times each."
Wait that sounds pretty unpleasant. Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to write it as "In other words, they potentially got some unwanted sexual attention"? /sarcasm
Systematically raping thousands of girls, many of them hundreds of times each, is a completely different level of horrible.
Yes, absolutely, but really its only different because of the scale. We only waterboarded (hopefully) a small number of people (possibly dozens) of times. Not hundreds or thousands. But seriously you can't claim the moral high ground over a criminal who raped his victims repeatedly when you drowned and resuscitated your own victims over and over again. The ONLY thing that made us better was the scale was pretty small by comparison.
I'm not even sure which torture I'd call more inhuman -- held down and raped by soldiers repeatedly vs held down and drowned repeatedly... to hear the waterboarding victims talk; about the panic attacks, nightmares they live with now, the terror and the pain they felt... they might well have opted for the rape instead. Maybe it doesn't even make sense to try to hold one or the other as worse.
thank you for putting American Exceptionalism in terms of responsibilities to ourselves, not in terms of "we are better than others" which is usually how it comes out. its similar for Jews, who claim to be the chosen people: chosen to be the bearers of gods message, not exactly shits and giggles, sort of a burden, doesnt make you better, just gives you a special purpose. I strongly agree that that is America's purpose, and we need to put it front and center in all our dealings with the world: support our values, we respect you more. support them less, we will limit contact with you. dont get me started on how we cut deals with vile govts. its not just evil, its particularly evil for us to do, as our constitution gives us no excuse to do it.
They are unaccountable to YOU.
HOWEVER, they are accountable to the PRESIDENT, and BOTH BUSH and OBAMA have known EXACTLY what has been going on since DAY ONE.
BUSH, CHENEY, OBAMA, RUMSFIELD, ALEXANDER, RICE, HAYDEN, the ENTIRE DOJ, CIA, NSA, BOTH CHAIRS and subs of Senate and House Intel Committees....
ALL of these people knew and know EXACTLY what's going on, and APPROVED of it.
Prosecute them all.
I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout.
I guess you forgot to read any of those pages before you linked to them. Here are a couple of quotes from your first link:
--- ...
Scott qualified his statement to make clear he was referring to executed Japanese military members who faced a variety of war crime charges, including waterboarding, not that they were sentenced to death solely for that offense.
Wallach, in his essay, wrote that six Japanese generals who ordered and permitted water torture were sentenced to death. He added, however, that those generals were also convicted of many other war crimes
---
So yeah, in a few cases, when someone committed "many other war crimes" (primarily intentionally starting the war), and btw they also did waterboarding, a few such people were sentenced to death.
AP Langly, WV Slashdot readers are all Un-Wed Mothers.
"No matter how cynical you become, there is just no way to keep up." Lily Timlin
Oh I totally believe that they only had one copy of this critically important report. It's too bad that the dog ate it or whatever.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Then PETA will become involved due to cruelty to whatever he's wearing in place of hair.
Trump will make sure that torture is very well managed.
Waterboarding is drowning under controlled conditions. It's supposed to simulated but many times the victims did drown and had to be resuscitated.
I think the main point is that if the US is going around trying to convince the world that it's the shining example of goodness that has been wronged then it shouldn't be going around doing evil acts like this. After the 9/11 attacks there was a tremendous amount of sympathy and goodwill towards the US in which it could have used for much good. Even after the invasion of Afghanistan it kept much of that goodwill because it got the approval from the UN. Then it didn't get the approval for the invasion of Iraq due to the lack of evidence but still went ahead, proof of how prisoners were treated came out, Guantanamo, the death toll from the second Iraq war (and not just the US casualties), the torture scandal, drone strikes, and a long list of other things has eroded that goodwill and even turned it into hostility from certain areas. The world was ready to help the US but it's leaders chose a path of vengeance instead of tackling the problem.
Q: Where is Ali bin-Abu hiding?
A: He's in him mom's basement.
(check... not found, more torture)
Q: Where is Ali bin-Abu hiding?
A: He's at the hotel, room 42, cross dressing
(check... OK, we got him)
You make a couple of good points. I think that's much more insightful than suggesting that waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the other perpetrators of 9/11 is just as raping innocent girls.
All great empire started to show inside corruption to the highest level before falling to small outside influence. I do wonder if what we are seeing, are the inherent sign that the institution are so corrupt that they can destroy such document in impunity (whoever said "if you think the "copy" has the same info I have a bridge for you" there is no no way to detect if there was foul play to change the report), and when you add the other signs and crack at the seams (particularly the social cracks) then it does not show a pretty picture. Add to that ongoing war cost and past war cost. I do wonder sincerely if we are seeing the destabilization and fall of the US empire, it reminds me of the russian empire fall, economical , debt ridden, and showing similar corruption.
has a backup copy.
... "mistakenly" destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report ...
A genuine "The dog ate my report", then? Amazing, you would have thought adults could do better.
its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture report
So that's why they died out!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Funny how they keep doing that, except for the times they've claimed to have 'misplaced' it, or have redacted it to black pages, or just said "no".
Of course, it isn't like they've been caught lying to the public and the government before...
"Yes sir, we accidently destroyed the disk. You see we where testing a flamethrower and accidently burned the disk, and then as it happens sometimes a steamroller came by and just happened to crush it, and finally we spilled some highly corrosive acid on the remains.It was just a freak accident."
The funny thing is, that would actually be a pretty good place to put a copy :P
C'mon CIA Watchdog, don't be so cheap: cough up a Bitcoin or two to get the decryption key to that CIA Torture Report from your friendly Ransomware Provider...
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
For what, misinterpreting a memo? Having to get another copy of the report? Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.
Clinton is a square shooter
Evil conniving murdering fucking cunt-faced shit-eating bastards. I pay TAXES to these assholes.
Incidentally, Panama actually has this phenomenon. The construction companies have been giving kickbacks to the government officials, and the officials have been coming up with more money and ever more inventive ways to keep the debt off the books. A lot of money seems to be going into useless skyscrapers, but they're also building roads and hospitals.
If you're going to have corrupt industries, it's probably better that they are constructive rather than destructive.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Yeah if you believe it, I have a bridge for sale in NYC...
Yes, absolutely, but really its only different because of the scale. We only waterboarded (hopefully) a small number of people (possibly dozens) of times. Not hundreds or thousands. But seriously you can't claim the moral high ground over a criminal who raped his victims repeatedly when you drowned and resuscitated your own victims over and over again. The ONLY thing that made us better was the scale was pretty small by comparison.
Don't stoop to the GP's methods.
Clearly, the only difference wasn't the scale. Another crucial difference was the purpose. I'm not claiming that torture is justifiable, and I fully agree that what the US did was wrong, and that we should be ashamed and should take action to ensure it doesn't happen again, but motives do matter and there is a difference between abuse for its own sake or for individual gratification and abuse for a specific and important goal.
Not a problem. You can get Cheetos at any supermarket or convenience store.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Trump will just get rid of PETA , NIMBY , ETC.
...Probably. LOL
Seems the CIA and its Inspector General are reading from the IRS playbook.
Organization? You must be joking..
I'm not claiming that torture is justifiable [...] but motives do matter
Make up your mind. Is torture indefensible, or are you defending torture, to any degree, if the torturer claims it's for a good cause?
They waterboarded 3 people...TOTAL ....uninformed, brainwashed, idiots. Go back to MoveOn.org, keep reading and continue to drink your Koolaid.
Nobody drowned. Withstanding waterboarding is part of Seal Training.
You people are idiots,
No, there is no difference. Torture is torture, and only evil people do it. It never produces results, and if you say there's a difference ... you're as bad. Don't try to justify evil to look intelligent, you just look deluded and evil.
We have a winner! Torture is immoral and cannot be allowed. It violates every principle that freedom-loving societies are built upon.
I suppose torture might work, occasionally. It really doesn't matter. Discussions about the effectiveness of torture sidetrack the bigger issue. Some foolish people are gradually led to believe that the effectiveness of torture means we might morally be able to employ it. No, we can never. When we employ torture, we become monsters ourselves. Do you want to destroy the moral center of our men and women in uniform?
Torture destroys who we are. That's why we cannot use torture. And that's without even considering what it does to the people we torture.
"OMG!!! What am I doing?! I just cannot seem to stop feeding these important Senate report pages through the shredder! Won't somebody stop me?"
Said the loyal CIA employee to no one in particular.