Rep: CIA Torture Report Will Cause 'Violence, Deaths'

Mike Rogers says release of report is 'terrible idea,' will wreak havoc overseas
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Dec 8, 2014 1:01 PM CST
Rep: CIA Torture Report Will Cause 'Violence, Deaths'
In this Sept. 18, 2014, file photo, Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., questions witnesses in Washington. Rogers says the release of a Senate report analyzing CIA torture will cause violence and death abroad.   (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

It's not a total surprise that the CIA used torture to question al-Qaeda detainees in the years following 9/11—Obama himself acknowledged over the summer that "we tortured some folks," CBS News notes. But the details of a Senate Intelligence Committee report that may be released as early as tomorrow are worrisome enough that John Kerry tried to delay its release, while Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers, chair of the committee, asserted yesterday that releasing the report is a "terrible idea" that will cause "violence and deaths" overseas, CBS News reports. The 480-page report (a summary of an even larger classified 6,000-page study) is expected to be "sharply critical" of the CIA's interrogation tactics and to even suggest that CIA officials misled officials in the Bush administration, including the president himself, the New York Times reports.

Senior intelligence officials tell NBC News that they've informed the White House and Congress about the "heightened potential" for violence overseas, especially toward US embassies in the Middle East. Another question: whether Bush will go along with any report insinuations that he wasn't told all the details of torture being used, though sources don't seem to think that's the case. "Even if some officials privately believe they were not given all the facts, they feel it would be immoral and disloyal to throw the CIA to the wolves at this point," an ex-Bush administration official tells the Times on condition of anonymity. The quest to keep the report quiet isn't everyone's gut reaction. "Maintaining secrecy around a defunct torture program is the real liability, as doing so denies us the right to debate what happened and make sure it is never repeated," a director of Human Rights Watch tells the Times. (More CIA stories.)

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