Press Release
Published on March 24, 2014
ADVISORY: Tuesday, March 25, 2014 at 11:30a.m.
Washington, D.C. – Human Rights First will host a March 25 media briefing conference call to discuss recent developments in the Senate intelligence committee’s post-9/11 CIA torture report, as well as the importance of public release of the study. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the intelligence committee, has committed to holding a vote to declassify the report by the end of the month.
Participants for the 11:30a.m. EDT phone briefing will include: former General Counsel of the Department of the Navy Alberto Mora; Steve Kleinman, former senior intelligence officer with the U.S. Air Force; and Raha Wala, Human Rights First’s senior counsel for defense and intelligence. The call’s participants will each provide their unique national security perspective as to why the report’s release is so crucial for our nation to move forward.
The now-public feud between Senator Feinstein, chair of the Senate intelligence committee, and CIA Director Brennan has captured recent headlines, and bipartisan support for releasing the torture report is gaining momentum. President Barack Obama for the first time publicly came out in support of release of the report last week, and former CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, a proponent of torture, has reiterated his belief that the report should be made available to the American people.
Please RSVP to Corinne Duffy at DuffyC@humanrightsfirst.org or 202-370-3319.
WHAT
Media Briefing: Release of the Senate Intelligence Committee CIA Torture Report
WHO
Alberto Mora, Former General Counsel of the Department of the Navy, Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard University
Steve Kleinman, Former Senior Intelligence Officer with the U.S. Air Force
Raha Wala, Senior Counsel for Defense and Intelligence at Human Rights First
WHEN
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
11:30a.m. EDT
WHERE
Call in number: 800-862-9098
Conference ID: TORTURE
Participant Information:
Alberto Mora’s career includes broad experience in the law, industry, and government. From 2001 to 2006, Mora served as General Counsel of the Department of the Navy. As the chief legal officer for both the Navy and Marine Corps, he managed more than 640 attorneys and personnel across 146 offices throughout the United States and overseas and supervised the Navy’s Judge Advocate General Corps and the Marine Corps Staff Judge Advocates. Additionally, he served as the Reporting Senior of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, as the Department’s Chief Ethics Officer and, on occasion, as the Acting Secretary of the Navy. Earlier in his career, Mora also served in the U.S. State Department as a Foreign Service Officer and as General Counsel of the United States Information Agency in the George H.W. Bush Administration. Mora is currently an Advanced Leadership Fellow at Harvard University.
Steven Kleinman is a career intelligence officer with more than 26 years of operational and leadership experience in assignments worldwide. He is a recognized subject matter expert in the full spectrum of human intelligence operations, intelligence support to special operations, and special survival/resistance to interrogation training. Kleinman is a highly decorated veteran of three major military campaigns – Operation Just Cause, Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom – during which he served as an interrogator, the chief of a joint and combines interrogation team, and as a senior advisor on interrogation operations to a special operations task force.
Raha Wala is Human Rights First’s senior counsel for intelligence and defense, where he advocates for U.S. counterterrorism and national security policies that are consistent with human rights norms. Wala graduated with honors from Georgetown University Law School, where he served as managing editor of the Georgetown Journal of International Law, co-president of Georgetown Law’s Amnesty International chapter, and student co-director of the Iraqi Refugee Resettlement Fact-Finding Project. Wala received his J.D. from Georgetown University Law School and his B.B.A. in Finance and Political Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
