Let’s see the Panetta Review
by digby
I have a piece in Salon today about Mark Udall’s speech on the floor and the little noticed classified information he revealed:
However, despite the risk, Udall did reveal some very important classified information anyway. And for inexplicable reasons, nobody seems to have noticed. I’m talking about information contained in the classified ”Panetta Review,” which was the document the CIA was allegedly looking for when it infiltrated the computers of the Senate staffers doing the investigation.
Udall called it a smoking gun. Here’s what he said:
The Panetta Review found that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Congress, the president, and the public on the efficacy of its coercive techniques. The Brennan Response, in contrast, continues to insist that the CIA’s interrogations produced unique intelligence that saved lives. Yet the Panetta Review identifies dozens of documents that include inaccurate information used to justify the use of torture – and indicates that the inaccuracies it identifies do not represent an exhaustive list.
The Panetta Review further describes how detainees provided intelligence prior to the use of torture against them. It describes how the CIA – contrary to its own representations – often tortured detainees before trying any other approach. It describes how the CIA tortured detainees even when less coercive methods were yielding intelligence. The Panetta Review further identifies cases in which the CIA used coercive techniques when it had no basis for determining whether a detainee had critical intelligence at all. In other words, CIA personnel tortured detainees to confirm they didn’t have intelligence – not because they thought they did.
We need to see that report.
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