CIA pushes back on Senate torture report: Like doing Tuesday's crossword 'with Wednesday's answer's key'
The Central Intelligence Agency isn't happy that Senate Democrats released the declassified, redacted executive summary of the intelligence committee's report on CIA "enhanced interrogation techniques." The hard pushback has come from former CIA directors, Bush administration officials, the psychologists paid handsomely to devise the torture techniques, and others who had a hand in the program. Also, Fox News.
But some of the pushback comes off as a little strange. In a statement emailed to The Associated Press, for example, the CIA basically accused the report's authors of cheating by including only some of the information they found in the mountain of CIA documents: "That's like doing a crossword puzzle on Tuesday with Wednesday's answer's key."
If you think about it for a few seconds, using the key will still get you the correct answers: In this case, that the CIA tortured people, lied about it, and didn't save any lives through its grotesque treatment of prisoners. Not that the CIA has an easy job, as AP's Bradley Klapper points out: "The CIA is now in the uncomfortable position of defending itself publicly, given its basic mission to protect the country secretly."
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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.