Senate report on the Bush administration’s use of “enhanced interrogation” practices

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Robert Naiman in the Huffington Post:

“Time Is Running Out on the CIA Torture Report,” the National Journalreports:

Backroom negotiations over the release of a long-delayed Senate report on the George W. Bush administration’s use of so-called “enhanced interrogation” practices are again hitting a wall….
The Senate is set to adjourn in mid-December, but [Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne] Feinstein can still hold off on submitting the report until the start of next year by obtaining a consent agreement that would allow her to file when Congress is not in session.  But the extension would only give Feinstein a few weeks of extra daylight. The current Senate will formally expire at noon on Jan. 3…. The continued fraying of negotiations has some suggesting that the White House might be intentionally stalling, in hopes that it can run out the clock on the report’s release, especially with Republicans slated to take over.

National Journal notes that outgoing Colorado Senator Mark Udall — no longer constrained even in theory by the perceived need to curry favor with power — is the last line of defense for Senate Democrats: he can declassify the Senate Intelligence Committee’s preferred version of the report by himself, by reading it into the Congressional Record, under the protection of the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause.

More is at stake than establishing a public record on the CIA’s use of torture and its illegal attempts to hide its crimes from other executive branch officials and Congress, important though that is. The struggle over the release of the CIA torture report is a litmus test of the ability and willingness of Congress to conduct any meaningful oversight of the CIA at all.

One of the early indicators that the Obama was not going to impress was his statement that he would not aggressively investigate potential war crimes by the previous administration.*  Related links:

* Gen. Taguba was instructed to retire in 2006, less than two years after the release of The Taguba Report but before he publicly accused the Bush Administration of war crimes.