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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.
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".
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'
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.
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.
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.
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.
When you have to compare yourself to ISIL to look good, I guess you've reached the top of the bottom.
- These characters were randomly selected.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
... "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.
No, not in the slightest.
Now, what was your point again?
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."
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.
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...
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.
The subliminal manipulation in this comment is interesting. So we're trying to find Ali bin Abu, and we receive information from torturing that he may be in this mom's basement. So we go check, and he's not there. More torture.
However, the torture is so effective now that not only do we get Ali bin Abu's actual location, but we also get the interesting tidbit that he's a filthy cross dresser in addition to being a filthy Muslim!
The Jews are doing a bang up job here. Not only have they manufactured the schism of Christian/Muslim which makes you all shut your brains off, but now they're able to apply the other parts of their brainwashing to further make you all shut your brains off.
Note that half the time we hear how horrible the Muslims are because they kill gays. The other half of the time, it's fine for us to torture and kill them because they're gay.
Such propaganda. So doublethink. Wow.
...Probably. LOL
Seems the CIA and its Inspector General are reading from the IRS playbook.
Organization? You must be joking..
http://www.theguardian.com/law/2015/oct/16/cia-torture-water-dousing-waterboard-like-technique
http://www.theguardian.com/law...
But that's beside the point. I never claimed it was a lot of people. Only that the people who were waterboarded were waterboarded repeatedly: dozens, even hundreds of times.
Nobody drowned.
Drowning is defined as respiratory impairment from being in or under a liquid. Drowning doesn't need to result in death.
Withstanding waterboarding is part of Seal Training.
Your point? Even SEALs have come out and said that its torture.
And they've also pointed out that their training was in very controlled circumstances, and that they *knew* they would be ok, how long it would be, when it would be over, and that they'd be taken care of. And that comparing it to what goes on in a CIA secret prison is ridiculous.