NYT: C.I.A. Report Found Value of Brutal Interrogation Was Inflated

[grasswire]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/21/world/cia-report-found-value-of-brutal-interrogation-was-inflated.html?mabReward=A3&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&region=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine


WASHINGTON — Years before the release in December of a Senate Intelligence Committee report detailing the C.I.A.’s use of torture and deceit in its detention program, an internal review by the agency found that the C.I.A. had repeatedly overstated the value of intelligence gained during the brutal interrogations of some of its detainees.

The internal report, more than 1,000 pages in length, came to be known as the Panetta Review after Leon E. Panetta, who, as the C.I.A.’s director, ordered that it be done in 2009. At least one of its authors won an agency award for her work, according to a recent briefing that the agency’s inspector general gave to staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The contents of the Panetta Review, which remain classified, are now central to simmering battles over the Intelligence Committee’s conclusions about the efficacy of torture and the C.I.A.’s allegations that committee staffers improperly took the review from an agency facility. The C.I.A. has publicly distanced itself from the report’s findings, saying that it was an incomplete and cursory review of documents, and has blocked its release under the Freedom of Information Act.

[KingCharlemagne]

1. If memory serves, it was that self-same Panetta Review that made its way onto the Senate

Select Committee's computers in the 'secure facility,' thereby precipitating a constitutional crisis when the CIA decided to spy on the SSC. The CIA is now a fully rogue agency, beyond any meaningful ovesight through checks and balances. Obama should have fired Brennan the day after the news about the CIA spying emerged (when Feinstein gave the speech on the floor of the Senate). Instead, Brennan still serves, thereby rendering the idea of 'accountability' utterly meaningless.

[delrem]

2. Well, gosh darn it and shucks!

But the kidnappers, torturers and murderers were patriots and 9/11 and 9/11 and 9/11, and they hate freedom, democracy and the American Way. And I'm sure that at least some info gotten from sustained torture at black sites was helpful.

And they were Arabs. Not like they were real people. Enough said.

[WillyT]

3. K & R !!!

[MisterP]

4. that's how a stovepipe works: everything that looks good goes up, everything bad the shredder

[grasswire]

5. isn't it odd...

....that the release of the report is blocked under the "Freedom of Information" Act??

[MisterP]

8. it's also very closely tied to the privatization of intel-gathering

though of course they were doing it under Reagan--embassy cables in fact were entirely derived from the army of the respective country

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/08/cheney.html
http://www.amazon.com/Legacy-Ashes-The-History-CIA/dp/0307389006

[woo me with science]

6. +1 And whether or not it is effective,

Torture is WRONG.

[Octafish]

7. Panetta Review

Now that the GOP's got the keys to the building, I bet Capitalism's Invisible Army gets a pass on this treason, too.

[johnnyreb]

9. So why did they torture?

Why risk torture if they knew that torture does not produce good info? All that torture, and then delete the torture videos?

9/11 Commission co-chairmen Kean and Hamilton: The CIA and White House "obstructed our investigation."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html

Zelikow admits that "quite a bit, if not most" of its information on the 9/11 conspiracy "did come from the interrogations."
http://web.archive.org/web/20080407223205/http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/01/30/624314.aspx

[grasswire]

11. that's a good question

We might infer that they did it because they enjoyed it. We might infer that they did it for experimentation to gain knowledge for further torture.

If they had done it as a deterrent to "the enemy", they wouldn't have destroyed the tapes.

It's an unknown.

[malaise]

10. 3..2..1 for the war criminal of a dick to attack them

He made up his conclusion without reading the report.