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Published on December 17, 2014
This is a radio interview from NPR
On Tuesday, the Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to release a long-awaited report detailing the Central Intelligence Agency’s post-9/11 interrogation techniques. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been fighting to get the report out to the public since April. Political resistance against its release has been fierce. Critics from both sides of the aisle fear that the report might spur violence on American personnel overseas. On Friday, Secretary of State Jerry Kerry called Feinstein on behalf of the White House, asking her a postponement.
“I think this is a terrible idea,” Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chair of the House Intelligence Committee told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “Foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths. Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.”
Others, including former CIA director Michael Hayden, chafe at the conclusions drawn by the report. “To say that we relentlessly over an expanded period of time lied to everyone about a program that wasn’t doing any good, that beggars the imagination,” Hayden said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” The report finds that the CIA overused harsh interrogation techniques and that they failed to obtain useful information.
