On Friday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein had a hearing to figure out how to end the contempt suit the ACLU brought against the CIA for destroying the torture tapes. The ACLU asked that he hold the CIA in contempt. Hellerstein said that wouldn’t serve much purpose. The ACLU suggested that he could hold individuals–presumably meaning Jose [...]

You know what I find surprisingly absent from the OPR Report? Any discussion of how–just days after potentially receiving a document making clear that SERE techniques were torture and that torture was not effective–John Yoo still authorized the use of torture in US interrogations. Here are the last two paragraphs of that document: (U) Another [...]

We’ve been talking quite a bit about John Yoo and Patrick Philbin’s emails on the torture memos that OLC deleted: with a rebuttal of John Yoo’s claims there were no email, a report on the National Archives’ attempts to learn what happened, and a catalog of damning facts we learned from the few emails left [...]

Back in January 2008, the CIA’s OIG claimed it did not launch its investigation into torture in response to an allegation of wrongdoing. But that’s not what the IG Report itself said.

CIA wants to stall all summer before it releases the IG report.

I’ve had a couple of really weedy posts examining the CIA’s response to the torture FOIA (Cherry-Pick One, Cherry-Pick Two, FOIA Exemptions). And I wanted to pull back a bit, and explain what I think they might mean.

We’re getting all these documents because the CIA is trying to avoid being held in contempt for not revealing the now-destroyed torture tapes in a response to this FOIA in 2004.

Back in May, the CIA admitted it was deliberating about Abu Zubaydah’s torture on a frequent basis. Two days ago, it changed its mind.

The EO on classification says the Director of CIA has to make intelligence programs special access programs. But it appears that someone at NSC made torture a SAP.

Leon Panetta admits he’s protecting the identities of contractors.

Leon Panetta says we can’t have the CIA documents because it’ll show the intelligence gaps the CIA had.

You mean, like the fact they had no idea who Abu Zubaydah really was?!?!?