The Waiting is Torture: CIA Inspector General Report Delayed for Third Time

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Meg White

I spent my day refreshing the Justice Department's online press room every few minutes, waiting for the promised CIA torture report, which meant all day I was staring at these pressing announcements, among others:

United States Settles False Claims Act Allegations Against National Home Builder and Mortgage Lender

Attorney General Appoints New Chief Immigration Judge

Assistant Attorney General Ron Weich Announces Leadership Team in the Office of Legislative Affairs

But no CIA report. The Department of Justice was supposed to release a 2004 report from the CIA's Inspector General's Office Wednesday. The highly-anticipated document was rumored to contain scathing criticism of the Bush Administration's torture policy. So far there's been no news from the Justice Department, but apparently White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs addressed the issue at today's briefing. I guess we're supposed to get a look at it tomorrow, or in three days or some other time in the future, maybe.

This is the third delay on this report, apparently because of inter-agency fighting over how much is to be un-redacted. On June 26, the DOJ requested a second delay to July 1 to give them an additional week (the first delay was because they'd only had the report for some two days) to review the documents. The ACLU, the main plaintiff in the case, consented to the June 26 delay and agreed to give the government three more days today.

Gibbs suggested today that disappointed reporters go back through the first release of the report. Though the document had already been released in 2008 as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the most known about it was thanks to another memo that references it. The 2008 release was so heavily redacted that virtually no information was gleaned from it. But Bush Administration torture memos released by the Obama Administration suggested the report questioned the effectiveness of torture techniques, specifically waterboarding.

Pre-emptively taking the White House press secretary's advice, I had already looked through the first release of the report. Man, was that a breeze.

In the 2008 release, available online from the ACLU, a 116-page report was whittled down to a 41-page PDF because access to entire sections were "denied in full" by the government. Even the table of contents was highly redacted. One fourth of those remaining pages are in the form of appendices. The rest is pretty much all related to the detailing of torture statutes and the United States' commitment to following international law and human rights protocol (when applicable).

The report also ironically includes a State Department condemnation of other countries' use of torture, such as "patterns of abuse of prisoners in Saudi Arabia by such means as 'suspension from bars by handcuffs, and threats against family members... [being] forced constantly to lie on hard floors [and] deprived of sleep... Other reports have criticized hooding and stripping prisoners naked." Sound familiar?

Oh, and President Bush's statement on the United Nations' International Day in Support of Victims of Torture in 2003 is in there, too. My, wasn't that a treat to reread.

Hopefully we'll get the report in three days as promised. I'm leaving town for the holiday, like many others. But there's nothing like an inspector general report for some light vacation lit!

While I'm a bit miffed that I didn't have the day to comb through the report, line by un-redacted line, I am sure Marcy Wheeler (the blogger who's become well-known for beating out major media outlets by actually reading torture memos and breaking shocking revelations about detainee treatment due to her diligence) will be waiting for the report and dutifully refreshing her computer screen while I'm on an airplane. I'm also willing to bet the ACLU will have some people on the case. And you can bet BuzzFlash will be watching, posting and re-posting. Torture may be a word that's tough for the MSM to say, but -- if nothing else -- BuzzFlash does not suffer from shyness.

In his reporting on the (hopefully) forthcoming document, Glenn Greenwald cautioned Tuesday against the media's concentration on waterboarding and the emphasis on a few bad apples that has become the norm in reporting this story. He expresses hope that the release of the report will force a change in perception:

The picture that is most commonly conveyed -- that torture was confined to a small handful of cases, was highly regulated, and resulted in no long-lasting harm -- is pure propaganda, completely false.  The reality -- that our "interrogation tactics" killed numerous detainees, who, by definition, are people confined helplessly in our custody, virtually none of whom has been convicted of anything, and at least some of whom are completely innocent -- is virtually never heard as part of these debates.  It's vital that this changes.  Tomorrow's likely release of a new version of the incriminating CIA IG Report provides an excellent opportunity for that finally to happen.

We applaud Greenwald for being one of the very few who can see the red herring for what it is. But BuzzFlash has been calling out the MSM on their misrepresentation of the torture debate for quite some time. This is about murder, first and foremost.

Whatever revelations come from this document, whenever it gets released, it's important that the American people begin an honest accounting of the murders that have been committed in our collective name.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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