The CIA Torture Cover Up

[kpete]

Source: Daily Beast

The CIA Torture Cover Up

by John Sifton

John Sifton

Why doesn’t Leon Panetta want the agency investigated or prosecuted for torture allegations? Maybe because some of the men implicated, John Sifton reports, are the ones advising him.

On Monday night the confidential report of the International Committee of the Red Cross on the CIA’s secret detention and interrogation program was published on the website of the New York Review of Books. The report confirms previous allegations about CIA abuses against detainees. Unlike earlier reporting, however, the document is based on irrefutable first hand information: interviews with detainees and U.S. officials. The document describes in stark detail the CIA’s use of forced standing, sleep deprivation, prolonged isolation, assaults, and waterboarding. It also discloses the participation of CIA medical personnel in torture.

Some revelations in the IRCR report have already become known through the reporting of journalists Mark Danner and Jane Mayer. As a result, press accounts have focused on the fresh news of medical personnel supervising and overseeing abuse. But other important facts about the report have been overlooked that make the question of torture not simply a matter of the past.

Since the basic facts about their involvement in the CIA interrogation program are now known, Panetta’s actions are increasingly looking like a cover-up.

The New York Times reported that Leon Panetta, the current CIA director, has taken the position that “no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished.” Yet a number of CIA officials implicated in the torture program not only remain at the highest levels of the agency, but are also advising Panetta. Panetta’s attempt to suppress the issue is making Bush’s policy into the Obama administration’s dirty laundry.

Read more: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-04-08/the-cia-torture-cover-up/