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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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July 2nd,
2009 - Obama Administration Delays Release of CIA Report |
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Obama Administration Delays Release
of CIA Report By Nedra Pickler Associated Press July 2, 2009 Washington - The Obama
administration said Thursday that it needs two more months to review an
internal CIA report on the agency's secret detention and interrogation program
before making it public, drawing criticism from civil libertarians who say
it's past time for Americans to know how its government treated terrorism
suspects. The Justice Department had
originally said it intended to release the report in June as part of a
lawsuit, but department officials now say they need until the end of August. The report by the CIA's
inspector general questioned the effectiveness of harsh interrogation methods
employed by CIA interrogators during the Bush administration, such as
waterboarding, which simulates drowning. The American Civil Liberties
Union, which has sued for release of the report, said it's time for President
Barack Obama to live up to his promises of greater transparency and release
the report instead of making further delays. "The public has a right
to know what took place in the CIA's secret prisons and on whose
authority," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security
Project. Justice Department
spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler said the report contains information that overlaps
with other CIA documents that they also must review and release by a
court-ordered Aug. 31 deadline. "As we re-reviewed the
CIA IG report it was clear that we would not be able to complete it in an
expedited manner as we had hoped," Schmaler said. "There are unique
processing issues to this review that made it clear to us we would need all
the time the court gave us to complete it." The government published a
version of the report in 2008, but its contents were almost entirely blacked
out. The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for release of all
documents related to the interrogation program. On June 3, a federal judge
gave the administration until Aug. 31 to release 319 documents related to the
program, but the Justice Department initially said it would expedite review
of the inspector general report and turn it over in June. The report, more
than 200 pages long, had been expected to be made public two weeks ago but
was held back over debates about how much of it should be censored. Justice Department attorneys
said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein that they are
not able to expedite the release of the report because they first need to
review the other 318 documents to determine what needs to be redacted. "Given the sensitivity
of the information at issue, and the need for coordination among multiple
components of the government, the review of the remanded documents is a
time-consuming and labor-intensive exercise," the government attorneys
wrote. The ACLU wrote Hellerstein
saying it objects to further delay of the report's release. "It is apparent that
the CIA report is not being delayed for legitimate reasons but to cover up
evidence of the agency's illegal and ineffective interrogation
practices," said ACLU attorney Amrit Singh. "It is time for the
president to hold true to his promise of transparency and once and for all
quash the forces of secrecy within the agency. The American public has a
right to know the full truth about the torture that was committed in its
name." Copyright © 2009 The
Associated Press. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iOTk5mUIVTPTRGU5hoR5JJrr38BAD996JRLG0 |