Sen. Dianne Feinstein Is Fact-Checking the CIA Torture Report - East Idaho News
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Sen. Dianne Feinstein Is Fact-Checking the CIA Torture Report

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Getty 121114 DianneFeinstein?  SQUARESPACE CACHEVERSION=1418333281600Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images(SACRAMENTO, Calif.) — Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairperson of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, has been sending out fact-checking emails, responding to critics of the Senate’s report on CIA interrogation methods.

Her latest fact-check, sent out on Thursday morning, shortly before CIA Director John Brennan held a press conference regarding the torture report, makes clear that no senators were briefed on the techniques used by CIA operatives prior to their approval. Further, she says, the full Intelligence Committee was not briefed until hours before then-President George W. Bush acknowledged the program publicly.

Feinstein also claims that “when senators were finally briefed on the issue, they were provided extensive inaccurate information and were repeatedly stonewalled by the CIA, which refused to provide documents or answers to questions.”

The email also included a timeline of the briefings received and concerns voiced by senators.

According to Feinstein, the CIA began using “enhanced interrogation techniques” in August 2002. The first briefings, for just the chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, were held the following month, and the full Intelligence Committee was not briefed until September 2006 — four years later.

Feinstein also notes that a bill to ban such techniques was proposed and adopted by the conference committee, the House and the Senate in 2007 — only to be vetoed by President Bush.

The full Senate report, released Tuesday, detailed techniques that equated to torture and the lack of proof that such actions definitively improved national security.


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