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PBC News & Comment: Lies & Deception Revealed by Senate Torture Review Compounded by Enablers, Defenders

Senate torture review is limited-hang-out, but sparks calls for prosecution, and purging the torture team from CIA, other agencies…..

–report confirms that CIA used bribes, deception to run torture programs, and asserts that Bush and other top officials were kept in the dark

–Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) calls on Obama to “purge his administration of high level officials” complicit in torture

–Feinstein deserves some credit for forcing this partial disclosure, but she should have known most of what CIA was foing, did not try to stop it

–deniability was evident in CIA emails, and in actions of Congressional leaders and the Bush White House

–neener neener—North Korea demands UN investigations of US torture

–management of torture was outsourced to Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who were paid more than $80 million

–Jason Leopold reports that over $300 million was spent, much on bribes

–Feinstein pointedly accuses Michael Hayden of lying to her

–ex-CIA top spooks have website to deny Senate claims

–Obama dances around the debate over claims that torture produced usable intelligence, and calls for prosecution of CIA and BushCo

–while CIA defenders claim that report is flawed because they didn’t interview the torturers, they didn’t interview any victims, either

–National Law Journal notes that Leopold’s FOIA and an ACLU suit are stil pending

–ACLU director Anthony Romero reluctantly calls for presidential pardons, as the only way to establish that crimes were committed.