Torture Whistleblower: I got 30 months in prison. Why does Leon Panetta get a pass?

[struggle4progress]

88. It's standard Washington baseball: something important is happening at third base,

Last edited Sun Mar 9, 2014, 01:49 PM - Edit history (1)

so naturally there's suddenly a big dispute in the outfield and everybody focuses their attention there

The real issue is whether or not the Senate report will see the light of day. Any large agency, like the CIA, is a swamp with multiple competing factions, especially when any issue of substance arises: then all kinds of gaming suddenly becomes apparent. The question -- How did the Senate investigators become aware of a document, that some in the CIA claim the investigators had no access to? -- may seem interesting at first sight, but it's actually a diversion

It seems very unlikely to me that Senate investigators hacked the CIA network. It is possible, of course, that the CIA's document control methods may not control documents as effectively as some CIA staff think, and that the document was available to the investigators purely by accident. But IMO the most likely answer to the question is that the someone in the CIA itself somehow gave the Senate investigators access to the document, either directly or indirectly -- in which case the availability could reflect an intent to make additional information available to the Senate investigators, or could reflect a deliberate intent to drum up a "sexy" controversy about whether or not the Senate investigators had hacked the CIA network. But none of this matters: it's a diversion from the real issue

One should take the stand: Congress has some duty to oversee the Executive in general and the intelligence community in particular. Torture is a violation of international law. The Senate report must be released to the public