I’m going to have a few more posts on Ron Wyden’s letter to John Brennan in advance of Brennan’s confirmation hearing.
In light of the Zero Dark Thirty debate and Dianne Feinstein’s spat with Michael Morell, I find this passage rather interesting.
I am particularly interested in getting your reaction to the report’s revelation that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information about its interrogation program to the White House, the Justice Department, and Congress, and your view on what steps should be taken to correct inaccurate statements that were made to the public.
Frankly, it shouldn’t be a “revelation” that CIA lied to the Justice Department and Congress, at least. As I was able to show from publicly released documents, CIA was running an op on Congress. And it presented misleading documents to DOJ, both in terms of details about the techniques CIA would use as well as the crimes committed under the torture program (though I think both Congress and especially DOJ allowed themselves to be lied to at various points).
Nevertheless, it is apparently a significant conclusion of the torture program that CIA was lying to every potential avenue of oversight over their program.
Frankly, any approach to Brennan’s confirmation hearings that doesn’t also demand public release of the torture report would be yet more dereliction of Congress’ oversight role (either in his role in the White House or his prospective role at CIA, John Brennan would seem to have a significant role in Classification Authority for the torture program, so it should be a fair demand). Sadly, we probably won’t get it.
But even as a slew of journalists and film critics debate whether ZD30 is a CIA effort to pitch their torture program in the best light or not, we have yet more confirmation that CIA lied … to everyone (except maybe Cheney and Addington?).
Even as Wyden asks Brennan what steps he’ll take to make sure CIA doesn’t lie to every entity exercising oversight over it, Zero Dark 30 continues to pack theaters and convince squishy liberals torture worked.