No One Is Even Pretending the Torture Report Isn't a Document of American Failures

By Kia Makarechi, Vanity Fair

25 October 14

or many months, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Central Intelligence Agency have been feuding over the former’s attempts to delineate alleged crimes of the latter. The committee’s “torture report,” as it’s colloquially known, focuses on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs after 9/11, and no one on any side is even pretending that it’s not full of horrifying details that would upset anyone who believes in human rights or responsible intelligence gathering.

The issue took a personal turn when Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the C.I.A. of spying on the computers of Senate staffers who were working on the report at a C.I.A. office. The agency eventually admitted that it had monitored a computer drive that was to be used only by Senate staffers, but claimed it had to because classified material was being removed from the building. C.I.A. director John Brennan eventually apologized for the breach.

What was the material in question? A copy of the “Panetta Review,” the C.I.A.’s own, internal investigation into its use of torture—a report widely considered to be damaging to the agency’s reputation. Coupled with the Senate’s report, that makes not one but two reports that break down the C.I.A.’s likely abusive techniques. The American public has seen neither, and deserves to know what is being done in the name of protecting us.

The C.I.A. has been working on redacting the Senate report in advance of the release of its executive summary, which lawmakers voted to declassify months ago. Human-rights and transparency advocates are concerned that the redactions will strip the summary of its impact, and the Intelligence Committee is inclined to agree.

Enter White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, who, the Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim and Ali Watkins revealed on Tuesday, is personally negotiating redactions between the C.I.A. and the Senate committee. McDonough, as Grim noted, could be spending his time helping coordinate the president’s oversight over the nation’s response to Ebola, working on bolstering the Democratic Party’s chances in November, thinking about ISIS, or any number of other pressing tasks. Instead, sources say, he may be helping Director Brennan play keep-away from the Senate and the American public.

The White House claims that McDonough is working not to protect Brennan but rather to push along the redaction process. But McDonough and Brennan are widely known to be very close, and the White House appears to be concerned that a tough report could make today’s C.I.A. look bad, even though the abuses documented in the report took place under George W. Bush. (The report doesn’t even concern itself with whether or not the executive branch ordered torture.)

Instead of focusing on the C.I.A.-Senate feud, McDonough and the White House might want to pay attention to another torture-related matter. On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered that the Justice Department must detail its reasoning for blocking the release of up to 2,100 redacted photographs documenting torture by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The images are believed to be more upsetting than those that sparked the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004.

The C.I.A. claims it used “aggressive interrogations” in ways that bolstered national security. The evidence suggests otherwise. In March, VF Daily noted that while some of the information hinted at in leaked summaries of the report (the network of C.I.A. “black sites,” for example) was new, interested parties have long known that the agency has worked to hide its most abusive techniques from oversight, exaggerated the importance of those it tortured, and falsely attributed vital breakthroughs to torture rather than traditional questioning.

Enough is enough—the C.I.A. should stop delaying the release of the report, and the White House should let the agency answer to the public scrutiny it brought upon itself.

Fear May Win Elections, But It Makes Governing Hard

By Cynthia Tucker, The National Memo

25 October 14

"Keep calm and carry on." — British government poster, 1939

ccording to Hollywood, most disasters feature government or institutional figures who try to downplay the scale of catastrophe, at least publicly, in order to prevent mass panic. Rightly or wrongly, these fictional leaders want to shield the public from the facts because they believe disseminating the truth would only provoke hysteria.

Right now, though, life is hardly imitating art. As the midterm elections approach, some leading political figures — most of them Republicans — are actively spreading half-truths, distortions and just plain lies in order to increase voter anxiety. They believe exploiting public fears will boost their chances.

It is a sinister and shameful use of the political soapbox, a detrimental exercise that misleads people about the risks they face from threats as different as Islamic jihadists and an exotic virus. It also damages the reputations of institutions that are indispensable in a crisis.

Shouldn’t our political leaders be the responsible ones who distribute facts, dampen panic and model rational decision making? Isn’t it part of their job to coach the rest of us to keep cool? Apparently not, if exaggerating threats is the better campaign strategy.

The use of fear as a political weapon isn’t new, of course. It is as old as the earliest political gatherings and has been used by feudal lords, despots and democratically elected premiers and presidents. There’s a reason for that: Fear is among the most powerful of human emotions, more likely to motivate people to react than sorrow, joy or even anger.

For some Republican candidates, Ebola arrived in the United States just in time. While the murderous jihadists of the Islamic State group had helped to push President Obama’s approval ratings to new lows, they were still a faraway threat. But the tragic death of Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian national who died in a Dallas hospital, lent itself to hyperbole and fearmongering.

Several Republicans have found a way to work the Ebola virus into criticisms of their Democratic opponents, usually linking an alleged weakness on border security to an enhanced threat from infected persons. Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has suggested that the Obama administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are hiding the truth about the transmission of Ebola.

But the prize may go to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who suggested in an interview with the right-wing media organization Newsmax that Islamic State fighters might use Ebola as a biological weapon.

While the GOP has taken the lead on the fear bandwagon, a few Democrats have also jumped aboard, scared to be left behind. Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Kay Hagan (D-NC) are among the Dems who have joined the call for travel bans from some West African countries, although health officials have repeatedly said such restrictions would be counterproductive.

Perhaps our elected leaders would be more responsible if the nation were facing an existential threat, as it did in World War II. Perhaps they’d put aside partisanship if Ebola were really poised to create a worldwide pandemic, spiraling through affluent countries as well as poor ones.

History shows us examples of bipartisan cooperation to fight not only Nazi Germany but also the communist threat that lingered for a half-century after that. Unfortunately, that same history shows us many examples of politicians only too willing to inflame passions, incite fear and create panic for personal gain. Sen. Joe McCarthy’s crazed commie-hunt went on for years, destroying not just livelihoods but also lives.

In my lifetime, politicians have used the fear of racial integration to incite white voters and scare them to the polls. For decades, the worst stereotypes about black students were used to agitate white parents; the most pernicious lies about black homeowners used to panic white neighborhoods. While those segregationist pols didn’t invent racism, they primed it and pandered to it. And we are still trying to recover from the havoc they wrought.

Yes, you can win elections by inspiring fear and panic, unfortunately. But you will have created another breach in the social fabric — another ruinous tear that will make it more difficult to govern from the post you’ve won.