CIA blasted for censoring torture report

A US senator has criticized the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for censoring an upcoming Senate report on the spy agency’s torture techniques.

“The intelligence leadership [are] doing everything they can to bury the facts,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Wednesday.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has conducted a five-year investigation into the CIA’s torture program adopted in the aftermath of Sept.11, 2001 attacks.

The Senate, the CIA and the White House are negotiating what parts of the 600-page summary of the report should be kept classified.  

Sen. Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the CIA insists on expunging pseudonyms used for officers mentioned in the report to blunt the impact of the document.

The senator added that the CIA is redacting the report to the extent that would render it incomprehensible. 

Legal experts say the CIA’s use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other harsh techniques used on detainees in overseas secret prisons constituted torture.

The document, set for for public release sometime after the November midterm elections, has reportedly ignored the role of former president George W. Bush and his administration officials in approving the torture program.

The report, however, asserts that the torture program was a failure and that CIA officials misled Congress and other government agencies about it.

Sources familiar with the Senate document say that the CIA tortured al-Qaeda suspects close “to the point of death” during interrogation sessions in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.

HRJ/HRJ