Democrats on Friday accused a powerful Republican senator of seeking to erase the history of the CIA’s torture program in the 2000s by demanding copies of a highly classified report be handed over to him.
They said Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, had secretly told government agencies this week to return their copies of the committee’s 2014 “Full Report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program” to him.
An estimated eight copies were distributed to the White House and various agencies, and Burr said Friday he wanted them back to ensure the sensitive information within remained secret.
“As the committee does with all classified and compartmented information, (I) will enact the necessary measures to protect the sensitive sources and methods contained within the report,” he said in a statement Friday, without confirming specifics of his request.
But Democrats see a plan to destroy all copies of the report to make sure the full truth of the Central Intelligence Agency’s torture activities after the September 11 attacks never sees the light of day.
“No senator — chairman or not — has the authority to erase history. I believe that is the intent of the chairman in this case,” said Diane Feinstein, the Democratic senator who originally commissioned the report in 2009 when she chaired the committee.
Another committee Democrat, Senator Ron Wyden, said Burr’s effort “could serve only one purpose — to pave the way for the kind of falsehoods used to justify an illegal and dangerous torture program.”
The 6,700-page report documents in detail the extra-legal detentions and interrogations of Al-Qaeda suspects like 9/11 plotter Abu Zubaydah, using brutal, now-banned techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation to try and break down the subjects.
A 528-page executive summary of the report was released publicly in December 2014 and supported arguments against the use of torture. But the full version has details of specific interrogations and secret information on participants and locations.
When the report was completed Democrats sought to ensure it would become part of the public record by distributing it to key agencies in the government. Burr has been seeking their return since he took over the committee in 2015, and recently told the original recipients to return it.
So far three copies have been returned to him from the CIA, the CIA inspector general’s office, and from the Director of National Intelligence, congressional sources told AFP.
The status of others that were distributed to the Defense Department, the Justice Department, the FBI and State Department are not known.
Last December outgoing president Barack Obama, anticipating a Republican and possibly CIA-backed effort to bury the report, had a White House copy committed to his forthcoming presidential library in Chicago.
It’s not clear whether that copy was being sought by Burr.
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