THOSE who do not publish history's mistakes aredoomed to repeat them. That, in essence, is the concern that lies behind plans by the SenateIntelligence Committee, with support from the White House, to declassify and release hundredsof pages from a scathing report into CIA detention, rendition and interrogation methods usedafter the September 11th 2001 attacks, which accuses the agency of misleading Congress andthe White House about the value of intelligence extracted from more than 100 terrorsuspects in a worldwide network of secret “black sites”.
The CIA has promised to work “expeditiously” to scrub the nearly 500-page summary ofinformation that could imperil national security. Veterans of the spy agency, backed by manyRepublicans, have challenged the report—prepared by Democratic staffers of the SenateIntelligence Committee and drawing on millions of internal CIA records—as a flawed andpartisan bid to smear the CIA and the administration of George W. Bush.
The attorney-general, Eric Holder, said on April 8th that President Barack Obama believes thatbringing the programme “into the light” “will help the American people understand whathappened in the past and can help guide us as we move forward” so that no government wouldcontemplate such actions in the future.
Officials who have seen the report have briefed reporters that it describes previouslyundisclosed horrors, among them the “Salt Pit”, a site nearKabul, at which one terror suspecthad his head repeatedly held under iced water and was repeatedly beaten. The report examines20 case studies, arguing that, each time, the same intelligence could have been obtainedwithout torture.
The CIA insists that it is impossible to know what milder methods might have achieved, andmay release its own response to the report. The agency is already locked in a remarkablepublic fight with the Democratic chairman of the intelligence committee, Senator DianneFeinstein ofCalifornia, traditionally a doughty defender ofAmerica's spooks. Trust is at such alow ebb that Mrs Feinstein wants the White House to take the lead on editing the public report.On April 6th Michael Hayden, the CIA's director from 2006 to 2009, had suggested that thesenator was taking an “emotional” approach to the report. “An old male fall-back,” retortedMrs Feinstein.