Senate Intelligence Committee votes to declassify CIA report
The Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday voted 11 to three to declassify the summary and the conclusion of its 6,300-page report on the CIA's now-defunct detention and interrogation program.
The CIA will now scan the summary and the conclusions for redactions necessary to protect national security. White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday that President Obama would expect that process to be conducted "in all due haste." Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said the process could take as little as 30 days.
"That may be wishful thinking, but I hope not," she said, noting that Mr. Obama backs the report's declassification. "I am very hopeful... the redactions will be as few as possible so that we can get on with it," she added.
Feinstein said the full report has been updated and will be held for declassification at a later time. Releasing the summary and key findings, she said, will show that "this nation admit its errors, as painful as they may be, and seeks to learn from them."
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She called the results of the report "shocking," adding that it "exposes brutality that stands in sharp contrast to [the] values of our nation."
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., the top Republican on the committee, said he voted for declassification, even though he opposed the production of the report in the first place.
"I think it was a waste of time," he said, noting that the Senate Armed Services Committee already produced a report on the subject.
However, he said he voted for the report's declassification because "we need to get this behind us. This committee has important work" to do.
Furthermore, he said, "The general public has the right to now know what was done and what's in the report."
The public, he said, should judge "whether or not, in fact -- as we point out specifically in the minority report -- there was information gleaned from this program that led not only to the takedown of bin Laden but led to the disruption of other terrorist plots."
As the report -- years in the making -- was finalized in recent months, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA leveled serious accusations of potentially criminal behavior against one another.
Feinstein has charged that the CIA had spied on the committee's staff while the staff was working on the report. CIA Director John Brennan said was "beyond the scope of reason" to allege that the CIA "hacked" the Senate Intelligence Committee. The CIA, meanwhile, filed a crimes report with the Justice Department against the Intelligence Committee, suggesting committee staffers weren't authorized to access all the documents they obtained.
