AP: The Bush Administration Kept Colin Powell in the Dark About Torture
Tonight’s horrifying story about the Bush administration’s moral bankruptcy: they reportedly kept some of their most public top officials deliberately ignorant of CIA torture practices after the 9/11 attacks — up to and including Secretary of State Colin Powell.
In common human terms, this is “knowledge of guilt.” They knew the public wouldn’t support this, so they just … hid it. Even from the most senior officials in the government, charged with interacting with the public on these issues.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A Senate report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention practices after the 9/11 attacks concludes that the agency initially kept the secretary of state and some U.S. ambassadors in the dark about harsh techniques and secret prisons, according to a document circulating among White House staff.
The still-classified report also says some ambassadors who were informed about interrogations of al-Qaida detainees at so-called black sites in their countries were instructed not to tell their superiors at the State Department, says the document, which the White House accidentally emailed to an Associated Press reporter.
The 6,300-page Senate report on the CIA’s interrogation program has been years in the making. The findings are expected to reveal additional details about the CIA’s program and renew criticisms that the U.S. engaged in torture as it questioned terrorism suspects after the 2001 attacks.
A congressional official who has read the Senate report confirmed that it makes the findings outlined in the document. A former senior CIA official said the secretary of state at the time, Colin Powell, eventually was informed about the program and sat in meetings in which harsh interrogation techniques were discussed. But Powell may not have been informed when the techniques were first used in 2002, the official said. A spokeswoman Wednesday said Powell would not comment.