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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.
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.
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.
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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.
Well, if you believe that the new report the CIA will provide is the same as the old report, then I have a bridge I would like to sell you.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
It's not actually a Geneva Convention issue, that's a separate agreement that covers torture as a no-no. The US is a signatory of certain international agreements on human rights that ban, among other things, torture, and those are not limited to any specific time or circumstances.
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.
Would you like to buy a bridge?
The restriction against torture during wartime is supposed to mean "not even in the extreme case of war", but some people seem to think it means it's ok as long as it's not war?
Then they should get the protections that apply to civilians, protections that apply when not at war, and so forth. There are also international laws and treaties and protocols other than the Geneva Convention that cover battlefield and prisoner situations. The US supreme court however has said that the Geneva Conventions, common articles 3, do apply in the war on terror even though it is not a state vs state conflict.
International criminal courts have had a ruling that said there was no middle ground between civilian and soldier, no status of person that was not covered by some law. That is, civilians engaged in hostile actions are subject to domestic law of the state detaining them. This may mean military tribunal as far as international law goes, however the supreme court has been disagreeing with congress and executive over this. Neither US nor international law allow the secret indefinite detention without trial for unlawful combatants, and neither allows torture.
The military in general supports all this and has a strict military code of justice. They do not want to treat detained combatants badly because they know it will cause repercussions when US soldiers are captured. The CIA however as a civilian organization is much looser and with fewer ethical or moral restrictions, and no hesitation to act outside the law, they're the bastards to watch out for.
When you have to compare yourself to ISIL to look good, I guess you've reached the top of the bottom.
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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.
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...
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.
There was no declaration of war in either US invasion of Iraq. World War II was the last time the United States actually declared war.
Oh, I see. It wasn't a "war" because we didn't call it a "war".
Like when I rape some girl, I don't call it "rape". I call it "unilateral surprise sex", so that way it's not really rape. Or when I break in your house and take your TV and money. Don't bother calling the police, because it's not "stealing", I just "borrowed your stuff forever".
You're right, we didn't actually declare war, but that doesn't mean we didn't go to war.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...