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CIA Watchdog 'Mistakenly' Destroyed Its Only Copy Of A Senate Torture Report (yahoo.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the Keystone-Cops dept.

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.

13 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. "Enhanced Interrogation" is Torture. by headkase · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    Shh.
    1. Re:"Enhanced Interrogation" is Torture. by meerling · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re: "Enhanced Interrogation" is Torture. by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

  2. Huh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well I think someone should "mistakenly" go to jail then.

  3. Criminally negligent/incompetent by rsborg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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  4. FUCK THIS BULLSHIT. GO TO JAIL! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  5. Copies still exist; CIA IG deleted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Copies still exist; CIA IG deleted by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      No they don't. That's the entire point. Because of it's classified nature there are very few copies of this report. The copy that was destroyed was the Senate's "copy" (they didn't really have a copy because the entire document was classified to protect the torturers). You may hate Feinman, and I do because she's happy to go along with Jack Booted Thugery, but when she stood on the Senate floor and claimed the CIA was subverting government she was telling the truth. The CIA was hiding and deleting documents the Senate committee had already seen. The CIA was deliberately obstructing the Senate and all "civilian" oversight.

      But you know what? No one even cared. I've believed for a long time that the only way to fix the FBI and CIA and the abuses they commit is to destroy them and create new agencies from the ground up to take over their responsibilities. Both agencies have been unelected, corrupt, unchecked little boys clubs that wield influence and power over our democracy.

      Disband them both and reassign their responsibilities, because when they reach the point they have the only solution is to burn them down and rebuild them from the ground up.

  6. when they get it back they will put it on display by hguorbray · · Score: 5, Funny

    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'

  7. Could always by liqu1d · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ask the NSA I'm sure they've got a copy.

  8. And then ... by Egg+Sniper · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "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."

  9. Re:Sadism. by meerling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Talk to professional interrogators, or the people that have actually studied the subject.
      According to them, torture is worse than worthless because the 'intelligence' you gather is far more likely to be false than anything else.
    So again, stop believing hollywood, they make shit up for a living.

  10. Oh sure I believe that by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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