Home » Posts tagged 'Torture' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: Torture

Our mission

Free Government Information (FGI) is a place for initiating dialogue and building consensus among the various players (libraries, government agencies, non-profit organizations, researchers, journalists, etc.) who have a stake in the preservation of and perpetual free access to government information. FGI promotes free government information through collaboration, education, advocacy and research.

The Official Senate CIA Torture Report

Update


GPO has released an official version of the “THE SENATE CIA REPORT” as Senate Report 113-228. The digital version is available on GPO’s Federal Digital System (FDsys):
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CRPT-113srpt288/pdf/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf
The print version is available for purchase at GPO’s retail and online bookstore for $29.
http://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/052-071-01571-0

This is a single-volume, 712 page version. It contains:

Letter of Transmittal to Senate from Chairman Feinstein — i
Foreword of Chairman Feinstein — iii
Findings and Conclusions — x
Executive Summary — 1
Additional Views of Senator Rockefeller — 500
Additional Views of Senator Wyden — 503
Additional Views of Senator Udall of Colorado — 506
Additional Views of Senator Heinrich — 510
Additional Views of Senator King — 512
Additional Views of Senator Collins — 515
Minority Views of Vice Chairman Chambliss, Senators Burr, Risch, Coats, Rubio, and Coburn — 520
Minority Views of Senator Coburn, Vice Chairman Chambliss, Senators Burr, Risch, Coats, and Rubio — 678
Minority Views of Senators Risch, Coats, and Rubio — 682

GPO Press Release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 15, 2014

GPO RELEASES THE OFFICAL DIGITAL & PRINT VERSIONS OF THE SENATE CIA REPORT

WASHINGTON – – The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) makes available the official and authentic digital and print versions of the Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program, together with a forward by Chairman Feinstein and Additional and Minority Views (Senate Report 113-288).

This document comprises the declassified Executive Summary and Findings and Conclusions, including declassified additional and minority views. The full classified report will be maintained by the Committee and has been provided to the Executive Branch for dissemination to all relevant agencies.


The release of the Senate’s Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program presents some interesting issues for government documents collections.

Issues

There are 3 separate documents and they are easily findable on the web on different web sites, but not all sites have all 3 documents and the the different copies of the individual documents are not the same.

The “official” copies are (at least today) listed on the home page of Senate Committee’s web site [see below)], but are not listed on the Committee’s Publications Page or its Press Release page – perhaps because the report is not an official committee document with an assigned “Document” or “Report” number. Presumably it will not be in FDsys unless or until it gets an official Document or Report designation.

(Why isn’t it “official”? The report was initially intended to be a full committee report. In 2009 the Committee voted 14–1 to initiate the study. But in 2009 Republicans on the Committee withdrew from active participation in the study.)

My speculation is that the different PDF files that you can find on the web are slightly different because each one was produced by scanning a paper copy with different software. I do not know if the Committee only distributed a paper copy but I do know that even its own PDF copy is (apparently) a scanned copy. (You can tell because, if you try to copy the text from the PDF, you will discover that it is badly OCR’d (optical character recognition) text. For example, the digital text of names of Senators is sometimes badly converted: Chambliss becomes “CHAMBUSS” and Rubio becomes “Rvbio”). The official copies were created using Adobe PDF Scan Library 3.1 and ScandAll PRO V2.0.12.

Official Reports and Statements

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence currently has links to three documents on its home page.

The CIA has its own responses to the report, currently listed on its Reports page.

Other official statements.

Unofficial Copies

A web search for the title of the title (“Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program”) leads to many sites with copies. Many of these are, apparently directly from the Committee site, but at least one news organization (the New York Times) evidently made its own scanned copy and digitized text version of the main report.

  • The New York Times has a PDF copy [108.4MB, 528 pages] and a plain text copy. The PDF version was created using Acrobat 11.0.9 Paper Capture Plug-in and Xerox WorkCentre 5150. Both are stored with an Amazon cloud service.

Timeline

ProPublica has created a useful timeline to put the report in perspective.

FDLP Library Actions

What can FDLP Libraries (or any library) do to ensure that their uses will be able to find and get unaltered, official, copies in the future? Just relying on the web may not be adequate, secure, consistent, transparent, or guaranteed. There are several issues. The existing links to even the official documents may not be stable. The official digital copies are only digital surrogates of the original paper copy. There are already other alternative digital surrogates available. The quality of the surrogates varies and the links to those copies may also not be stable.

I suggest the following actions by libraries:

  • Get copies of the official digital versions directly from the Committee web site as soon as possible (see links above).
  • Create a digital “hash” or “checksum” of the documents you download. (See a list of various tools and a discussion of checksums for preservation, if you are unfamiliar with the concepts.)
  • Catalog your copies and include them in your OPAC or other official library inventory and discovery databases. Include adequate metadata that describes how, when, and where you got your copies.
  • Ideally, you should store your copies in a Trusted Digital Repository. Unfortunately, there are, as yet, very few certified TDRs. Short of that, be sure that you have copies stored in more than one geographic location and that you have a way of verifying over time (using the checksum) that the files you stored have not been altered or corrupted.

Senate *finally* releases study on CIA aka the “torture report”

Yesterday the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its “Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program – Foreword, Findings, and Conclusions, and Executive Summary.” (BIG PDF!) The report is 525 pages, heavily redacted, and includes graphic details about the torture techniques used by the CIA. The study found that American torture was not confined to a handful of aberrational cases or techniques, nor was it the work of rogue CIA agents. It was an officially sanctioned, worldwide (over 1/4 of the world’s countries participated in some way!) regime of torture that had the acquiescence, if not explicit approval, of the top members of both political parties in Congress.

Many current and former CIA- and GW Bush Administration officials, including George W Bush and Dick Cheney themselves, are defending the effectiveness of the methods that were used (there’s even a site that’s popped up called “CIA Saved Lives.” I would highly recommend going over to Glenn Greenwald’s Intercept site where he’s been live blogging the report as he combs through it.

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ statement on the report says it well and succinctly:

“A great nation must be prepared to acknowledge its errors. This report details an ugly chapter in American history during which our leaders and the intelligence community dishonored our nation’s proud traditions. Of course we must aggressively pursue international terrorists who would do us harm, but we must do so in a way that is consistent with the basic respect for human rights which makes us proud to be Americans.

“The United States must not engage in torture. If we do, in an increasingly brutal world we lose our moral standing to condemn other nations or groups that engage in uncivilized behavior.”

The Zelikow Memo: Internal Critique of Bush Torture Memos Declassified

The State Department has released a February 2006 internal memo from Philip D. Zelikow, counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, opposing Justice Department authorization for “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the CIA. All copies of the memo, which reflect strong internal disagreement within the George W. Bush administration over the constitutionality of such techniques, were thought to have been destroyed. But the State Department located a copy and declassified it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive.

DoJ probe on Guantanamo interrogations released

The Department of Justice’s Inspector General has just released its report (PDF) (uploaded to the Internet Archive of course!) on the FBI’s involvement in detainee interrogations in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Reuters reports that the “Bush administration’s top security officials ignored FBI concerns” and that the “FBI, alarmed by interrogation techniques such as the use of snarling dogs and forced nudity, clashed with the Defense Department and CIA over their use. According to McClatchy News, The IG’s report had been delayed in part because the Pentagon slow-rolled its review of the report for classified information.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Bush administration’s top security officials ignored FBI concerns over the abusive treatment of terrorism suspects, which one agent called “borderline torture,” a four-year Justice Department probe found.

The FBI, alarmed by interrogation techniques such as the use of snarling dogs and forced nudity, clashed with the Defense Department and CIA over their use, said the 370-page report released on Tuesday by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Critics say the techniques employed by the CIA and U.S. military in questioning terrorism suspects captured after the September 11 attacks amounted to torture.

FBI agents participated interrogations and still do, but bureau Director Robert Mueller directed agents in 2002 not to participate in coercive questioning, the report said.

[Thanks Crooks and Liars!]

Archives