The detail that Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in a month and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed got into the OLC memo via the CIA IG Report released May 2004. So, too, did the reports that CIA interrogators exceeded the guidelines laid out in the Bybee Two memo. And the conclusion that the torture couldn’t be said to have stopped any attacks? That was in the CIA IG Report, too.
Which is why the IG Report’s reported release–on June 19–might be big news.
Or, it might be 400 pages of mostly redacted content.
In new responses to lawsuits, the C.I.A. has agreed to release information from two previously secret sources: statements by high-level members of Al Qaeda who say they have been mistreated, and a 2004 report by the agency’s inspector general questioning both the legality and the effectiveness of coercive interrogations.
The Qaeda prisoners’ statements, made at tribunals at the detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were previously excised from transcripts of the proceedings, but they will be at least partly disclosed by this Friday, according to a court filing. The report by the inspector general, whose secret findings in April 2004 led to a suspension of the C.I.A. interrogation program, will be released by June 19, the Justice Department said in a letter to a federal judge in New York.
Precisely how much the agency will disclose, however, remains to be determined, as the administration is clearly struggling to decide where to draw the line. In both cases, which involve separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, the documents are likely to be redacted to withhold information the C.I.A. still considers especially delicate.
Me? I’ll be pleasantly surprised (though not satisfied) if they release pages 85 though 91, which talk about the (in)efficacy of the program. It was in response to these six pages that at least some of Dick Cheney’s CYA documents were written.
And the detainee statements from their CSRTs? Maybe we’ll finally learn why Rahim al-Nashiri was only waterboarded two times.