CIA Refuses to Hand Over Interrogation Records

Agency says releasing Bush-era documents will undermine national security

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Sep 2, 2009 1:22 AM CDT

(Newser) – The CIA has refused to hand over any more documents relating to its Bush-era interrogation and detention programs, the New York Times reports. The agency told a federal judge that dozens of documents, including communications from secret prisons and agency assessments of the programs' legality, must remain secret in the interests of national security.

Releasing the documents is "reasonably likely to degrade" the agency's "ability to effectively question terrorist detainees and elicit information necessary to protect the American people," the CIA said in a court filing made public yesterday. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been seeking the documents' release for years, slammed the agency's refusal as being at odds with the Obama administration's pledge of greater transparency.

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A chair and shackles mounted to the floor sits inside a room used for interrogations and interviews of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Shackled Guantanamo detainees sit together in a common area at Guantanamo's Camp 6 maximum-security detention facility earlier this year. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

Leg shackles lie on the floor in Camp 6 detention center at the US Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, Pool)

A shackled detainee, clutching paperwork of some kind, is escorted by two gloved US military inside the Camp Delta detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in 2006. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)

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There’s really no distance at all between this declaration and the declarations the CIA was filing during the Bush administration. - ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer

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CIA Refuses to Hand Over Interrogation Records