When do we start calling this a 'cover-up' by the Obama White House? [View all]

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from Spencer Ackerman at the Guardian:

Top senator rejects CIA torture report redactions ahead of public release
Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein threatens to delay release in an attempt to reverse deletion of ‘key facts’

The key senator behind a landmark congressional investigation into the CIA’s use of torture has rejected redactions made by the Obama administration ahead of a planned public release of the politically charged report.

In the latest struggle between Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the intelligence committee, and the CIA, Feinstein said she would delay a heavily anticipated disclosure of portions of the report in an attempt to reverse redactions that “eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions”.

“Until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction, the report will not be made public,” said Feinstein, who added that she intended to outline the committee’s desired disclosures in a private letter to President Barack Obama.

On Friday, after the White House provided the committee with a redacted version of the report for public release, director of national intelligence James Clapper issued a statement saying “more than 85% of the committee report has been declassified, and half of the redactions are in footnotes.” The White House put the CIA in charge of the redactions process, a move some observers considered a conflict of interest.

That balance has been harder to maintain after CIA director John Brennan on Thursday conceded that agency officials had been found to have violated a network firewall to access email and other data from committee staffers conducting the investigation. Brennan apologised, but several senators of both parties, on and off the committee, are calling for Brennan to resign or to be fired.

. . . for more than a year, senators on the committee have made clear that it has concluded the CIA materially misrepresented the scope, efficacy and intensity of its torture regime to both its legislative overseers and the Bush-era Justice Department . . .

read: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/05/top-senator-rejects-cia-torture-report-redactions-ahead-of-release



Aug 05 2014

Feinstein Statement on Redactions in Detention, Interrogation Study

Washington—Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today released the following statement on the committee study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program:

“After further review of the redacted version of the executive summary, I have concluded the redactions eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions. Until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction, the report will not be made public.

“I am sending a letter today to the president laying out a series of changes to the redactions that we believe are necessary prior to public release. The White House and the intelligence community have committed to working through these changes in good faith. This process will take some time, and the report will not be released until I am satisfied that all redactions are appropriate.

“The bottom line is that the United States must never again make the mistakes documented in this report. I believe the best way to accomplish that is to make public our thorough documentary history of the CIA’s program. That is why I believe taking our time and getting it right is so important, and I will not rush this process.”

read: http://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2014/8/feinstein-statement-on-redactions-in-detention-interrogation-study


Here's a couple of questions I'd like answered . . .

What did the President know about the CIA's obstruction, interference, and intimidation of Senate Intelligence Committee staffers investigating the agency's activities?

What role did the President have in what Sen. Feinstein terms 'eliminating or obscuring key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions?'

I'm asking DUers, at what point do we conclude that there's enough evidence that the Obama White House is obstructing the Senate investigation's report? Do we wait for the Senate committee members to say so? (they've come very close to that conclusion)

I'm all for waiting to see what the White House ultimately decides to leave in and leave out of it's 'executive summary' of the investigation's findings, but there's already enough interference, obstruction, intimidation, and 'redacting' on the record for me to conclude that something major is being perpetrated - even if someone in or out of the WH can rationalize us away from calling it a 'cover-up.'



Let's talk a little more about why the CIA was 'spying' on the Senate Intelligence Committee
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025320097