Senate’s Secret Torture Investigation

…will it prevent a public accounting?

While both houses of the U.S. Congress are busily debating whether or not possible investigations of the Bush administration’s policies on the torture of prisoners and detainees in its wars on terror, Iraq and Afghanistan should be held at all, and if held whether or not they should be public, California Senator Diane Feinstein has managed to forestall the public possibility for a year. Democrat Feinstein and Republican Kit Bond of Missouri as chair and co-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee announced on March 5 a Committee review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

The probe is designed to discover new information about the origins of the programs as well as to scrutinize their operations. The five specified areas of investigation include:

• The creation, operation and maintenance of the CIA interrogation program.

• How detainees were assessed as to who possessed information valuable enough to require “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

• Whether the Intelligence Committee, Office of Legal Counsel and other responsible offices of government received accurate information from the CIA about its detention and interrogation programs.

• Whether the programs were implemented in compliance with guidance issued by the pertinent government offices.

• Whether information gained through the programs was valuable enough to justify the programs themselves.

The Obama administration is conducting its own concurrent review in-house. Such closed-door investigations may or may not lead to more open examinations, and there is the possibility that immunity granted to witnesses in these non-public reviews may interfere with any future public testimony and/or prosecutions that proceed from violations of law if those are determined to have occurred.

It would appear that the “move forward” attitude of the new administration and among enablers in Congress in light of revelations coming out via Bush administration memos and documents ordered to be released by judicial review requires some behind-the-scenes machinations to ensure that public disclosure cannot lead to criminal prosecutions or public disclosure of some of the worst abuses in programs the public already knows from sickening photographs and documents already released went well beyond rational justification and the few “bad apples” on the lower tiers thus far prosecuted for prisoner abuses.

Public pressure for the appointment of a special prosecutor is quickly gaining momentum. In the past independent investigations for prosecution have been conducted before or concurrently with Congressional investigations so as to minimize the impact of immunity granted to witnesses or possible defendants. By insisting that the secret investigations precede any possible public ones it is practically a foregone conclusion that the public will never see justice done for any violations of law the public is also not allowed to know about.

No wonder people are becoming seriously jaded about politics and politicians in this country.

Links:

Senate panel starts inquiry into CIA interrogation program
Feinstein, Bond Announce Intelligence Committee Review of CIA Detention and Interrogation Program
Senate to investigate CIA’s actions under Bush

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Filed under Bush, Immunity, Intelligence, Torture, War Crimes | Comment (0)