An oversight body charged with keeping tabs on the Central Intelligence Agency reportedly deleted the only draft it had of the Senate’s sweeping review of the Bush administration’s post-9/11 torture program.
The watchdog claims it was a “mistake,” according to Yahoo News, and that it is seeking a new copy.
The episode, however, confirms suspicions of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee and the lead author of the torture report. She has said key federal agencies haven’t digested its grim findings, and that the CIA and its allies are trying to bury it.
The audit details government-sanctioned abuse, torture, and murder that took place last decade at CIA black sites around the world.
“Your prompt response will allay my concern that this was more than an ‘accident,’” Sen. Feinstein wrote in a letter last week to CIA Director John Brennan, demanding another copy be transmitted to the inspector general’s office.
She also noted that the deletion might impact an ongoing legal fight to release the 6,700-page report’s full-findings to the public, which the CIA and the Obama administration are currently resisting. In response to a Freedom of Information Act suit brought by the ACLU, the Department of Justice promised a federal judge that it would preserve all copies of the report while proceedings are underway.
“Providing the CIA IG with a copy of the full report immediately will also ensure that DOJ lawyers can inform federal judges that the status quo was adhered to and has been restored,” Feinstein wrote.
Although the agency was informed last August that the report was erased, it failed to notify the court.
Sources alleged to Yahoo News that upon receiving a disk containing their version of the document, the IG’s office uploaded it onto a secure computer, and then deleted the disk as part of “normal course of business.” Later, someone deleted the digital copy after reportedly misunderstanding the DOJ guidance ordering federal employees to refrain from reading it.
If the report is processed in any way by an executive agency, its sensitive details could be subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Last week, administration lawyers convinced a federal appellate judge to agree to exempt the report from disclosure under the law because it was written by the legislative branch. FOIA does not apply to Congress.
To keep the report as far away from FOIA requests as possible, the justice department instructed government officials to keep copies of it under lock and key.
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) wanted to go a step further in early 2015, after Republicans took back control of the upper house. He demanded that federal agencies return their copies to his committee, but the department resisted.
The New York Times reported last November that the full torture report is in the possession of the DOJ, the State Department, and the Pentagon, and that all have declined to open it.
During a Senate hearing last March, Feinstein grilled FBI Director James Comey for having not read the document, and instead letting it gather dust at the bureau’s headquarters in Washington.
“One of my disappointments was to learn that the six year report of the Senate intelligence committee on the detention and interrogation program sat in a locker and no one looked at it,” she told Comey.
“I don’t know enough about where the document sits at this point in time,” Comey claimed at the time. He did promise Feinstein he would read it.
An executive summary of the report was released by the committee in December 2014, laying out some of the details of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program. The regime was designed by two psychologists who secured multi-million dollar contracts from the agency to carry it out.
