Approximately 358 days ago, I wrote a post titled,
Yup, John Brennan Rolled DiFi on the Torture Report
In it, I predicted,
Since I was right about John Brennan being completely untrustworthy about bringing an open mind to the evidence presented in the Torture Report, let me make another prediction based on this detail.
Committee aides said the panel hoped to finish work on an updated version of the report, taking note of CIA comments, by the end of the year. The committee could then vote to request declassification, which would allow the public to see the report, or at least parts of it.
What’s going to happen is the SSCI will water down the report, ignoring the clear implications of the evidence, in hopes of getting support for declassification. The Republicans on the committee, at least, still won’t vote to declassify it. Some section of the watered-down report will be released. And the historical record on torture will not reflect the clear evidence in the documentary record.
Dianne Feinstein could, of course, move to declassify the report in its current state.
But she won’t do that, and John Brennan knows it. You see, he knows DiFi wants to be loved by the spooks she oversees, and they could care less what she thinks of them, so long as they continue to hide the true nature of their organizations. And her desire to be loved by those she oversees makes her an easy mark.
When that post said, “by the end of the year”? That meant last year. 2013.
Didn’t happen.
Meanwhile, in recent days, we’ve learned that Brennan prevailed on one of the key fights between CIA and SSCI, succeeding in having the pseudonyms of pseudonyms redacted so we can’t track all the things Alfreda Bikowsky did, beyond the torture tourism we know she engaged in and the torture she subjected an innocent Khalid el-Masri to, before she got several more promotions at CIA.
And while I think today’s report, confirming that “Yup, John Brennan Rolled DiFi on the Torture Report,” adds another dynamic — that of CIA and the President and State publicly making clear that Dianne Feinstein will bear responsibility for any backlash over the revelations in the Torture Report, I think Brennan is still doing a victory lap.
Secretary of State John Kerry personally phoned Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Friday morning to ask her to delay the imminent release of her committee’s report on CIA torture and rendition during the George W. Bush administration, according to administration and Congressional officials.
[snip]
“What he raised was timing of report release, because a lot is going on in the world — including parts of the world particularly implicated — and wanting to make sure foreign policy implications were being appropriately factored into timing,” an administration official told me. “He had a responsibility to do so because this isn’t just an intel issue — it’s a foreign policy issue.”
“That’s a nice Torture Report you’ve got there, Dianne,” these men seem to be saying, “and we’ll happily take credit for your work. Unless something bad happens in which case expect us to throw you to the wolves.”
CIA (and NSA) always get Congress to back off oversight with threats like this — kudos to Senator Feinstein for remaining committed to releasing the report.
It’s just really really frustrating that we are here, a year later, with the men in charge still levying these kinds of threats. If the torture CIA did will cause blowback, then that’s CIA’s fault, George Bush’s fault. Dick Cheney’s fault.