[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 150 (Wednesday, December 10, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6470-S6480]
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Madam President, before I start my remarks on
the historic day which was yesterday--when it comes to the publication
of our long-in-the-making report on the CIA's torture program--I wish
to thank the chairman for his leadership, his mentorship, and his
friendship. I also am proud obviously to be a part of the Armed
Services Committee and to have chaired the Strategic Forces
Subcommittee. Again, I extend my thanks to the good men and women in
uniform, as did my good friend from Oklahoma. The NDAA bill is a
crucial task in front of us. I look forward to one of my last votes as
a Senator from the great State of Colorado, and I look forward to
casting a vote in favor of the Defense authorization bill.
Again, I wish to thank my two friends who have mentored me and who
have led our committee with great elan and intelligence.
SSCI Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program
Yesterday was a historic day. Almost 6 years after the Senate
Intelligence Committee voted to conduct a study of the CIA's detention
and interrogation program and nearly 2 years after approving the
report, the American people will finally know the truth about a very
dark chapter in our Nation's history.
My goal from the start has been twofold. First, I have been committed
to correcting the public record on the CIA's multiple
misrepresentations to the American people, to other agencies in the
executive branch, the White House, and to Congress. Second, my goal has
been to ensure that the full truth comes out about this grim time in
the history of the CIA and of our Nation so that neither the CIA nor
any future administration repeats the grievous mistakes this important
oversight work reveals.
The process of compiling, drafting, redacting, and now releasing this
report has been much harder than it needed to be. It brings no one joy
to discuss the CIA's brutal and appalling use of torture or the
unprecedented actions that some in the intelligence community and
administration have taken in order to cover up the truth.
A number of my colleagues who have come to the floor over the past 24
hours and discussed this report have referred to 9/11. I, too, will
never forget the fear, the pain, and the anger we all felt on that day
and in the days that followed. Americans were demanding action from our
government to keep us safe. Everyone, myself included, wanted to go to
the ends of the Earth to hunt down the terrorists who attacked our
Nation and to make every effort to prevent another attack. Although we
all shared that goal, this report reveals how the CIA crossed a line
and took our country to a place where we violated our moral and legal
obligations in the name of keeping us safe. As we know now, this was a
false choice. Torture didn't keep us safer after all. By releasing the
Intelligence Committee's landmark report, we reaffirm we are a nation
that does not hide from its past but must learn from it and that an
honest examination of our shortcomings is not a sign of weakness but
the strength of our great Republic.
From the heavily redacted version of the executive summary first
delivered to the committee by the CIA in August, we made significant
progress in clearing away the thick, obfuscating fog these redactions
represented.
As Chairwoman Feinstein has said, our committee chipped away at over
400 areas of disagreement with the administration on redactions down to
just a few.
We didn't make all the progress we wanted to and the redaction
process itself is filled with unwarranted and completely unnecessary
obstacles. Unfortunately, at the end of the day, what began as a
bipartisan effort on the committee did not end as such, even after my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle were repeatedly urged to
participate with us as partners.
As my friends in the Senate know, I am a legislator who goes out of
his way to form bipartisan consensus. However, it became clear that was
not possible here and that is regrettable.
But all told, after reviewing this final version of the committee's
study, I believe it accomplishes the goals I laid out and it tells the
story that needs to be told.
It also represents a significant and essential step for restoring
faith in the crucial role of Congress to conduct oversight.
Congressional oversight is important to all of government's activities,
but it is especially important for those parts of the government that
operate in secret, as the Church Committee discovered decades ago. The
challenge the Church Committee members discovered are still with us
today: how to ensure that secret government actions are conducted
within the confines of the law. The release of this executive summary
is testament to the power of oversight and the determination of
Chairman Feinstein and the members of this committee to doggedly beat
back obstacle after obstacle in order to reveal the truth.
There are a number of thank-yous that are in order. I start by
thanking the chairman for her courage and persistence. I also thank the
committee staff director, David Grannis; the staff lead for the study,
Dan Jones; and his core study team, Evan Gottesman and Chad Tanner.
They toiled for nearly 6 years to complete this report. They then
shepherded it through the redaction process, all the while giving up
their nights, weekends, vacations, and precious time with family and
friends in an effort to get to the truth of this secret program for the
members of the committee, the Senate, and now the American people.
They have been assisted by other dedicated staff, including my
designee on the committee, Jennifer Barrett. We would not be where we
are today without them. I am grateful, beyond words, for their service
and dedication. I want them to know our country is grateful too.
Let me turn to the study itself. Much has been written about the
significance of the study. This is the study. It is a summary of the
CIA's detention and interrogation program. I want to start by saying I
believe the vast majority of CIA officers welcome oversight and believe
in the checks and balances that form the very core of our Constitution.
I believe many rank-and-file CIA officers have fought internally for
and supported the release of this report. Unfortunately, again and
again, these hard-working public servants have been poorly served by
the CIA's leadership. Too many CIA leaders and senior officials have
fought to bury the truth while using a redaction pen to further hide
this dark chapter of the Agency's history.
The document we released yesterday is the definitive, official
history of what happened in the CIA's detention and interrogation
program. It is based on more than 6 million pages of CIA and other
documents, emails, cables, and interviews. This 500-page study, this
document, encapsulates the facts drawn from the 6,700-page report,
which is backed up by 38,000 footnotes.
[[Page S6475]]
This is a documentary that tells of the program's history based on
the CIA's own internal records. Its prose is dry and spare, as you will
soon see for yourself. It was put together methodically, without
exaggeration or embellishment. This study by itself--using the CIA's
own words--brings the truth to light, and that is what it was intended
to do.
The study looked carefully at the CIA's own claims--most notably that
the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques used on detainees
elicited unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that disrupted
terrorist plots and saved lives. It debunks those claims conclusively.
The CIA repeatedly claimed that using these enhanced interrogation
techniques against detainees was the only way to yield critical
information about terrorist plotting. But when asked to describe this
critical information and detail which plots were thwarted, the CIA
provided exaggerated versions of plots and misattributed information
that was obtained from traditional intelligence collection, claiming it
came from the use of interrogation techniques that are clearly torture.
This study shows that torture was not effective, that it led to
fabricated information, and its use--even in secret--undermined our
security and our country more broadly. Our use of torture and I believe
the failure to truly acknowledge it continues to impair America's moral
leadership and influence around the world, creates distrust among our
partners, puts Americans abroad in danger, and helps our enemies'
recruitment efforts.
Senior CIA leaders would have you believe their version of the
truth--promoted in CIA-cleared memoirs by former CIA Directors and
other CIA and White House officials--that while there was some excesses
in its detention and interrogation program, the CIA did not torture.
Their version would have you believe that the CIA's program was
professionally conducted, employing trained interrogators to use so-
called enhanced interrogation techniques on only the most hardened and
dangerous terrorists.
But as Professor Darius Rejali writes in his book ``Torture and
Democracy,'' ``To think professionalism is a guard against causing
excessive pain is an illusion. Instead, torture breaks down
professionalism'' and corrupts the organizations that use it.
This is exactly what happened with the CIA's detention and
interrogation program. Without proper acknowledgement of these truths
by the CIA and the White House, it could well happen again.
In light of the President's early Executive order disavowing torture,
his own recent acknowledgement that ``we tortured some folks'' and the
Assistant Secretary of State Malinowski's statements last month to the
U.N. Committee Against Torture that ``we hope to lead by example'' in
correcting our mistakes, one would think this administration is leading
the efforts to right the wrongs of the past and ensure the American
people learn the truth about the CIA's torture program. Not so.
In fact, it has been nearly a 6-year struggle--in a Democratic
administration no less--to get this study out. Why has it been so hard
for this document to finally see the light of day? Why have we had to
fight tooth and nail every step of the way? The answer is simple:
Because the study says things that former and current CIA and other
government officials don't want the American public to know. For a
while I worried that this administration would succeed in keeping this
study entirely under wraps.
While the study clearly shows that the CIA's detention and
interrogation program itself was deeply flawed, the deeper, more
endemic problem lies in the CIA, assisted by a White House that
continues to try to cover up the truth. It is this deeper problem that
illustrates the challenge we face today: reforming an agency that
refuses to even acknowledge what it has done. This is a continuing
challenge that the CIA's oversight committees need to take on in a
bipartisan way. Those who criticize the committee's study for overly
focusing on the past should understand that its findings directly
relate to how the CIA operates today.
For an example of how the CIA has repeated its same past mistakes in
more recent years, look at the section of the executive summary
released yesterday that deals with the intelligence on the courier that
led to Osama bin Laden. That operation took place under this
administration in May of 2011. After it was over, the CIA coordinated
to provide misinformation to the White House and its oversight
committees suggesting the CIA torture program was the tipoff
information for the courier. That is 100 percent wrong and signifies
the Agency leadership's persistent and entrenched culture of
misrepresenting the truth to Congress and the American people. This
example also illustrates again the dangers of not reckoning with the
past. So while I agree with my colleagues on the committee who argue
that doing oversight in real time is critical, I believe we cannot turn
a blind eye to the past when the same problems are staring us in the
face in the present. Oversight by willful ignorance is not oversight at
all.
In Chairman Feinstein's landmark floor speech earlier this year, she
laid out how the CIA pushed back on our committee's oversight efforts.
Thanks to her speech, we know about the history of the CIA's
destruction of interrogation videotapes and about what motivated her
and her colleagues to begin the broader committee study in 2009. We
know about the CIA's insistence on providing documents to the committee
in a CIA-leased facility and the millions of dollars the CIA spent on
contractors hired to read, multiple times, each of the 6 million pages
of documents produced before providing them to the committee staff. We
know about the nearly 1,000 documents that the CIA electronically
removed from the committee's dedicated database on two occasions in
2010, which the CIA claimed its personnel did at the direction of the
White House. Of course we know about the Panetta review.
I turn to the Panetta review. I have provided more information on the
events that led up to the revelation included in the Panetta review in
a set of additional views that I submitted for the committee's
executive summary, but I will summarize them.
From the beginning of his term as CIA Director, John Brennan was
openly hostile toward and dismissive of the committee's oversight and
its efforts to review the detention and interrogation program. During
his confirmation hearing, I obtained a promise from John Brennan that
he would meet with committee staff on the study once confirmed. After
his confirmation, he changed his mind.
In December 2012, when the classified study was approved in a
bipartisan vote, the committee asked the White House to coordinate any
executive branch comments prior to declassification. The White House
provided no comment. Instead, the CIA responded for the executive
branch nearly 7 months later, on June 27, 2013.
The CIA's formal response to the study under Director Brennan clings
to false narratives about the CIA's effectiveness when it comes to the
CIA's detention and interrogation program. It includes many factual
inaccuracies, defends the use of torture, and attacks the committee's
oversight and findings. I believe its flippant and dismissive tone
represents the CIA's approach to oversight--and the White House's
willingness to let the CIA do whatever it likes--even if its efforts
are armed at actively undermining the President's stated policies.
It would be a significant disservice to let the Brennan response
speak for the CIA. Thankfully, it does not have to. There are some CIA
officials and officers willing to tell it straight. In late 2013, then-
CIA General Counsel Stephen Preston answered a series of questions that
I asked about his thoughts on the Brennan response as part of his Armed
Services Committee nomination hearing to be General Counsel of the
Defense Department.
His answers to the questions about the program contrasted sharply
with the Brennan response. For instance, he stated matter of factly
that from his review of the facts, the CIA provided the committee with
inaccurate information regarding the detention and interrogation
program. I have posted on line my questions to Mr. Preston, along with
his answers.
Stephen Preston was not alone in having the moral courage to speak
frankly and truthfully about the CIA's
[[Page S6476]]
torture program. There were also other CIA officers willing to document
the truth. In March 2009, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta announced the
formation of a Director's review group to look at the agency's
detention and interrogation program. As he stated at the time, ``The
safety of the American people depends on our ability to learn lessons
from the past while staying focused on the threats of today and
tomorrow.''
The Director's review group looked at the same CIA documents that
were being provided to our committee. They produced a series of
documents that became the Panetta review. As I discussed in late 2013,
the Panetta review corroborates many of the significant findings of the
committee's study. Moreover, the Panetta review frankly acknowledges
significant problems and errors made in the CIA's detention and
interrogation program. Many of these same errors are denied or
minimized in the Brennan response.
As Chairman Feinstein so eloquently outlined in her floor speech on
March 11 of this year, drafts of the Panetta review have been provided
by the CIA unknowingly to our committee staff years before within the 6
million pages of documents it had provided.
So when the committee received the Brennan response, I expected a
recognition of errors and a clear plan to ensure that the mistakes
identified would not be repeated again. Instead--this is a crucial
point--instead, the CIA continued not only to defend the program and
deny any wrongdoing but also to deny its own conclusions to the
contrary found in the Panetta review.
In light of those clear factual disparities between the Brennan
response and the Panetta review, committee staff grew concerned that
the CIA was knowingly providing inaccurate information to the committee
in the present day, which is a serious offense, and a deeply troubling
matter for the committee, the Congress, the White House, and our
country.
The Panetta review was evidence of that potential offense. So to
preserve that evidence, committee staff securely transported a printed
portion of the Panetta review from the CIA-leased facility to the
committee's secure offices in the Senate. This was the proper and right
thing to do, not only because of the seriousness of the potential
crime, but also in light of the fact that the CIA had previously
destroyed interrogation videotapes without authorization and over
objections of officials in the Bush White House.
In my view, the Panetta review is a smoking gun. It raises
fundamental questions about why a review the CIA conducted internally
years ago and never provided to the committee is so different from the
official Brennan response and so different from the public statements
of former CIA officials. That is why I asked for a complete copy of the
Panetta review at a December 2013 Intelligence Committee hearing.
Although the committee now has a portion of the review already in its
possession, I believed then, as I do now, that it is important to make
public its existence and to obtain a full copy of the report. That is
why I am here today, to disclose some of its key findings and
conclusions on the Senate floor for the public record, which fly
directly in the face of claims made by senior CIA officials past and
present.
For example, as I mentioned earlier, on a number of key matters, the
Panetta review directly refutes information in the Brennan response. In
the few instances in which the Brennan response acknowledges
imprecision or mischaracterization relative to the detention
interrogation program, the Panetta review is refreshingly free of
excuses, qualifications, or caveats.
The Panetta review found that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate
information to the Congress, the President, and the public on the
efficacy of its coercive techniques. The Brennan response, in contrast,
continues to insist the CIA's interrogations produced unique
intelligence that saved lives. Yet the Panetta review identified dozens
of documents that include inaccurate information used to justify the
use of torture and indicates that the inaccuracies it identifies do not
represent an exhaustive list. The Panetta review further describes how
detainees provided intelligence prior to the use of torture against
them.
It describes how the CIA, contrary to its own representations, often
tortured detainees before trying any other approach. It describes how
the CIA tortured detainees, even when less coercive methods were
yielding intelligence. The Panetta review further identifies cases in
which the CIA used coercive techniques when it had no basis for
determining whether a detainee had critical intelligence at all.
In other words, CIA personnel tortured detainees to confirm they did
not have intelligence, not because they thought they did. Again, while
a small portion of this review is preserved in our committee spaces, I
have requested the full document. Our request has been denied by
Director Brennan. I will tell you, the Panetta review is much more than
a ``summary'' and ``incomplete drafts,'' which is the way Mr. Brennan
and former CIA officials have characterized it, in order to minimize
its significance. I have reviewed this document. It is as significant
and relevant as it gets.
The refusal to provide the full Panetta review and the refusal to
acknowledge facts detailed in both the committee study and the Panetta
review lead to one disturbing finding: Director Brennan and the CIA
today are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and
misrepresent the efficacy of torture. In other words, the CIA is lying.
This is not a problem of the past but a problem that needs to be dealt
with today.
Let me turn to the search of the Intelligence Committee's computers.
Clearly the present leadership of the CIA agrees with me that the
Panetta review is a smoking gun. That is the only explanation for the
CIA's unauthorized search of the committee's dedicated computers in
January. The CIA 's illegal search was conducted out of concern that
the committee staff was provided with the Panetta review. It
demonstrates how far the CIA will go to keep its secrets safe. Instead
of asking the committee if it had access to the Panetta review, the CIA
searched, without authorization or notification, the committee
computers that the agency had agreed were off limits.
In so doing, the agency might have violated multiple provisions of
the Constitution as well as Federal criminal statutes and Executive
Order 12333.
More troubling, despite admitting behind closed doors to the
committee that the CIA conducted the search, Director Brennan publicly
referred to ``spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly
unsupported by the facts.''
He even said such allegations of computer hacking were beyond ``the
scope of reason.'' The CIA then made a criminal referral to the
Department of Justice against the committee staff who were working on
the study. Chairman Feinstein believed these actions were an effort to
intimidate the committee staff, the very staff charged with CIA
oversight. I strongly agree with her point of view.
The CIA's inspector general subsequently opened an investigation into
the CIA's unauthorized search and found, contrary to Director Brennan's
public protestations, that a number of CIA employees did, in fact,
improperly access the committee's dedicated computers. The
investigation found no basis for the criminal referral on the committee
staff. The IG also found that the CIA personnel involved demonstrated a
``lack of candor'' about their activities to the inspector general.
However, only a 1-page unclassified summary of the IG's report is
publicly available. The longer classified version was only provided
briefly to Members when it was first released. I had to push hard to
get the CIA to provide a copy for the committee to keep in its own
records. Even the copy in committee records is restricted to committee
members and only two staff members, not including my staff member.
After having reviewed the IG report myself again recently, I believe
even more strongly that the full report should be declassified and
publicly released, in part because Director Brennan still refuses to
answer the committee's questions about the search.
In March, the committee voted unanimously to request responses from
Director Brennan about the computer search. The chairman and vice
chairman wrote a letter to Director Brennan, who promised a thorough
response
[[Page S6477]]
to their questions after the Justice Department and CIA IG reviews were
complete. The Chair and Vice Chair then wrote two more letters, to no
avail. The Director has refused to answer any questions on this topic
and has again deferred his answers, this time until after the CIA's
internal accountability board review is completed, if it ever is.
So from March until December, for almost 9 months, Director Brennan
has flat out refused to answer basic questions about the computer
search; whether he suggested a search or approved it; if not, who did.
He has refused to explain why the search was conducted, its legal
basis, or whether he was even aware of the agreement between the
committee and the CIA laying out protections of the committee's
dedicated computer system. He has refused to say whether the computers
were searched more than once, whether the CIA monitored committee staff
at the CIA-leased facility, whether the agency ever entered the
committee's secure room at the facility, and who at the CIA knew about
the search both before and after it occurred.
I want to turn at this point to the White House. To date, there has
been no accountability for the CIA's actions or for Director Brennan's
failure of leadership. Despite the facts presented, the President has
expressed full confidence in Director Brennan and demonstrated that
trust by making no effort at all to rein him in.
The President stated it was not appropriate for him to weigh into
these issues that exist between the committee and the CIA. As I said at
the time, the committee should be able to do its oversight work
consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of
powers, without the CIA posing impediments or obstacles as it has and
as it continues to do today. For the White House not to have recognized
this principle and the gravity of the CIA's actions deeply troubles me
today and continues to trouble me.
Far from being a disinterested observer in the committee-CIA battles,
the White House has played a central role from the start. If former CIA
Director Panetta's memoir is to be believed, the President was unhappy
about Director Panetta's initial agreement in 2009 to allow staff
access to operation cables and other sensitive documents about the
torture program.
Assuming its accuracy, Mr. Panetta's account describes then-
Counterterrorism Adviser John Brennan and current Chief of Staff Denis
McDonough--both of whom have been deeply involved in the study
redaction process--as also deeply unhappy about this expanded
oversight.
There are more questions that need answers about the role of the
White House in the committee's study.
For example, there are the 9,400 documents that were withheld from
the committee by the White House in the course of the review of the
millions of documents, despite the fact that these documents are
directly responsive to the committee's document request. The White
House has never made a formal claim of executive privilege over the
documents, yet it has failed to respond to the chairman's request to
the documents or to compromise proposals she has offered to review a
summary listing of them. When I asked CIA General Counsel Stephen
Preston about the documents, he noted that ``the Agency has deferred to
the White House and has not been substantially involved in subsequent
discussions about the disposition of these documents.''
If the documents are privileged, the White House should assert that
claim. But if they are not, White House officials need to explain why
they pulled back documents that the CIA believed were relevant to the
committee's investigation and responsive to our direct request.
The White House has not led on this issue in the manner we expected
when we heard the President's campaign speeches in 2008 and read the
Executive order he issued in January 2009. To CIA employees in April
2009, President Obama said:
What makes the United States special, and what makes you
special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold
our values and ideals even when it's hard--not just when it's
easy; even when we are afraid and under threat--not just when
it's expedient to do so. That's what makes us different.
This tough, principled talk set an important tone from the beginning
of his Presidency. However, let's fast forward to this year, after so
much has come to light about the CIA's barbaric programs, and President
Obama's response was that we ``crossed a line'' as a nation and that
``hopefully, we don't do it again in the future.''
That is not good enough. We need to be better than that. There can be
no coverup. There can be no excuses. If there is no moral leadership
from the White House helping the public to understand that the CIA's
torture program wasn't necessary and didn't save lives or disrupt
terrorist plots, then what is to stop the next White House and CIA
Director from supporting torture.
Finally, the White House has not led on transparency, as then Senator
Obama promised in 2007. He said then this:
We'll protect sources and methods, but we won't use sources
and methods as pretexts to hide the truth. Our history
doesn't belong to Washington, it belongs to America.
In 2009 consistent with this promise, President Obama issued
Executive Order 13526, which clarified that information should be
classified to protect sources and methods but not to obscure key facts
or cover up embarrassing or illegal acts.
But actions speak louder than words. This administration, like so
many before, has released information only when forced to by a leak or
by a court order or by an oversight committee.
The redactions to the committee's executive summary on the CIA's
detention and interrogation program have been a case study in its
refusal to be open. Despite requests that both the chairman and I made
for the White House alone to lead the declassification process, it was
given by the White House to the CIA--the same Agency that is the focus
of this report. Predictably, the redacted version that came back to the
committee in August obscured key facts and undermined key findings and
conclusions of the study.
The CIA also included unnecessary redactions to previously
acknowledged and otherwise unclassified information. Why? Presumably,
to make it more difficult for the public to understand the study's
findings. Content that the CIA has attempted to redact includes
information in the official, declassified report of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, other executive branch declassified official
documents, information in books and speeches delivered by former CIA
officers who were approved by the CIA's Publication Review Board, news
articles, and other public reports.
It is true that through negotiations between the committee, the CIA,
and the White House, many of these issues were resolved. However, at
the end of the day, the White House and CIA would not agree to include
any pseudonyms in the study to disguise the names of CIA officers. In
2009 the CIA and the committee had agreed to use CIA-provided
pseudonyms for CIA officials, but in the summary's final version, the
CIA insisted that even the pseudonyms should be redacted.
For an agency concerned about morale, this is the wrong approach to
take, in my view. By making it less possible to follow a narrative
threat throughout the summary, this approach effectively throws many
CIA personnel under the bus. It tars all of the CIA personnel by making
it appear that the CIA writ large was responsible for developing,
implementing, and representing the truth about the CIA's detention and
interrogation program. In fact, a small number of CIA officers were
largely responsible.
Further, there is no question that the identities of undercover
agents must be protected, but it is unprecedented for the CIA to
demand--and the White House to agree--that every CIA officer's
pseudonym in the study be blacked out. U.S. Government agencies have
used pseudonyms to protect officers' identities in any number of past
reports, including the 9/11 Commission report, the investigation of the
Abu Ghraib detention facility, and the report of the Iran-Contra
affair.
We asked the CIA to identify any influences in the summary wherein a
CIA official mentioned by pseudonym would result in the outing of any
CIA undercover officer, and they could not provide any such examples.
Why do I focus on this? The CIA's insistence on blacking out even the
fake
[[Page S6478]]
names of its officers is problematic because the study is less readable
and has lost some of its narrative thread.
But as the chairman has said, we will find ways to bridge that gap.
The tougher problem to solve is how to ensure that this and future
administrations follow President Obama's pledge not to use sources and
methods as pretexts to hide the truth.
What needs to be done? Chairman Feinstein predicted in March--at the
height of the frenzy over the CIA's spying on committee-dedicated
computers--that ``our oversight will prevail,'' and generally speaking,
it has. Much of the truth is out, thanks to the chairman's persistence
and the dedicated staff involved in this effort. It is, indeed, a
historic event.
But there is still no accountability, and despite Director Brennan's
pledges to me in January 2013, there is still no correction of the
public record of the inaccurate information the CIA has spread for
years and continues to stand behind. The CIA has lied to its overseers
and the public, destroyed and tried to hold back evidence, spied on the
Senate, made false charges against our staff, and lied about torture
and the results of torture. And no one has been held to account.
Torture just didn't happen, after all. Contrary to the President's
recent statement, ``we'' didn't torture some folks. Real actual people
engaged in torture. Some of these people are still employed by the CIA
and the U.S. Government. There are, right now, people serving in high-
level positions at the Agency who approved, directed or committed acts
related to the CIA's detention and interrogation program. It is bad
enough not to prosecute these officials, but to reward or promote them
and risk the integrity of the U.S. Government to protect them is
incomprehensible.
The President needs to purge his administration of high-level
officials who were instrumental to the development and running of this
program. He needs to force a cultural change at the CIA.
The President also should support legislation limiting interrogation
to noncoercive techniques--to ensure that his own Executive order is
codified and to prevent a future administration from developing its own
torture program.
The President must ensure the Panetta review is declassified and
publicly released.
The full 6,800-page study of the CIA's detention and interrogation
program should be declassified and released.
There also needs to be accountability for the CIA spying on its
oversight committee, and the CIA inspector general's report needs to be
declassified and released to the public.
A key lesson I have learned from my experience with the study is the
importance of the role of Congress in overseeing the intelligence
community. It is always easier to accept what we are told at face value
than it is to ask tough questions. If we rely on others to tell us what
is behind their own curtain instead of taking a look for ourselves, we
can't know for certain what is there.
This isn't at all to say that what the committee found in its study
is a culture and behavior we should ascribe to all employees of the CIA
or to the intelligence community. The intelligence community is made up
of thousands of hard-working patriotic Americans. These women and men
are consummate professionals who risk their lives every day to keep us
safe and to provide the their best assessments regardless of political
and policy considerations.
But it is incumbent on government leaders--it is incumbent on us--to
live up to the dedication of these employees and to make them proud of
the institutions they work for. It gives me no pleasure to say this,
but as I have said before, for Director Brennan that means resigning.
For the next CIA director that means immediately correcting the false
record and instituting the necessary reforms to restore the CIA's
reputation for integrity and analytical rigor.
The CIA cannot not be its best until it faces its serious and
grievous mistakes of the detention and interrogation program. For
President Obama, that means taking real action to live up to the
pledges he made early in his Presidency.
Serving on the Senate Intelligence Committee for the past 4 years
opened my eyes and gave me a much deeper appreciation of the importance
of our role in the balancing of power in our great government. It also
helped me understand that all Members of Congress, not only
Intelligence Committee members, have an opportunity and an obligation
to exercise their oversight powers.
Members who do not serve on the Intelligence Committee can ask to
read classified documents, call for classified briefings, and submit
classified questions.
This is my challenge today to the American people. Urge your Member
of Congress to be engaged, to get classified briefings, and to help
keep the intelligence community accountable. This is the only way that
secret government and democracy can coexist.
We have so much to be proud of in our great Nation, and one of those
matters of pride is our commitment to admit mistakes, correct past
actions, and move forward knowing that we are made stronger when we
refuse to be bound by the past.
We have always been a forward-looking Nation, but to be so we must be
mindful of our own history. That is what this study is all about. So I
have no doubt that we will emerge from a dark episode with our
democracy strengthened and our future made brighter.
It has been an honor to serve on this committee, and I will miss
doing its important work more than I can say.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
