Ali Watkins, Jonathan Landay and Marisa Taylor, over at McClatchey, recently came into possession of, and published, what they describe as the conclusions of the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on its investigation into the CIA's detention and interrogation program.
interrogations,
conditions of confinement:
brutal and far worse
Watkins et al. note,
the twenty findings "paint a picture of an intelligence agency that seemed intent on evading or misleading nearly all of its oversight mechanisms throughout the program," which, in fairness, sounds just like every other intelligence program. As I
opined last month:
The ethos of an organization flows from the top: The current executives of all agencies thrived and excelled as the Executive department's abuses and unaccountability gained momentum, and were propelled to the top of their uniquely sensitive, secretive and powerful organizations under those conditions, as those organizations enacted programs skirting laws or, later requiring laws to be rewritten. In many cases the very infrastructure of the agencies was specifically reorganized to better fit the views and designs of unaccountable leadership. Now, they are relied upon to brief the qualified senators and judges concerning intelligence activities, even when they make assertions concerning how, previously, they had misled.
The chair of the committee, the principal proponent of the publication of [selections from] the report [subject to the direction of the White House with the advice and consent of the CIA], calls for the prosecution of the party responsible for this leak. One can only imagine that, if there were not so much water still sloshing around the decks from that agency's liberal and zealous efforts to apply enhanced interrogation techniques to unpersons under its control, there probably would not be such steady leaking now; nor would each leak make such a splash as it drops.
According to the conclusions, the detention and interrogation program suffered several systemic faults, starting with the flawed utilitarian premise – "The CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques did not effectively assist the agency in acquiring intelligence or in gaining cooperation from detainees" – juxtaposed against its stark moral valence: "The CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques [and] the conditions of confinement of detainees of the CIA were brutal and far worse than the agency communicated to policymakers."
The balance of findings concern the agency's "deeply flawed" management, poor preparation and record-keeping, failure to heed internal critiques and objections, failure to evaluate program effectiveness, failure to reprimand or hold accountable persons "responsible for serious violations, inappropriate behavior, or management failures", the use of unapproved techniques, and operation of the program so as to complicate and hinder the national security missions of other agencies, while consistently mischaracterizing the program and its effectiveness, impeding proper legal analysis by providing inaccurate information, and similarly impeding oversight and decision-making of the White House, Congress and its own Office of the Inspector General.
Just when you thought "contract attorney" or "contract sales representative" might signify the vilest job suitable for the vilest people, new horizons open: the findings note that the CIA's detention and interrogation program was designed by two "contract psychologists," although that aspect was later outsourced. (One wonders, first, how "contract psychologists" differ from "outsourced", and, second, "outsourced" . . . to whom?)
Finally, "
The CIA manipulated the media by coordinating the release of classified information, which
inaccurately portrayed the effectiveness of the agency's enhanced interrogation techniques."
That last bit seems strangely, discomfitingly, familiar . . .
All in all, you gotta give them credit for maintaining such a seemingly seamlessly effective obfuscation and misinformation edifice, that persists nigh impenetrably even unto the present moment, notwithstanding all the apparently incompetent program management and implementation: Without records how do they know which misrepresentations they have represented to which of the many would-be authorizing or oversight authorities?
