Executive Branch
CIA Rejects Request By Cheney to Declassify Two Interrogation Documents
Posted May 14, 2009 2:19 PM CST
By Martha Neil
Citing pending litigation under the Freedom of Information Act, the CIA has declined a request by Richard Cheney to declassify two documents that the former vice president contends would show that controversial interrogation methods used by the CIA after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks did elicit useful information.
Critics argue that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques are not only unlawful but are also unlikely to obtain reliable information. Meanwhile, the current director of national intelligence in the Obama administration, Dennis Blair, says such interrogations produced valuable leads but in the end were more harmful than helpful, reports the Washington Post in an article about the CIA's documents denial in a letter today.
"A document is excluded from mandatory declassification review if that document contains information that is the subject of litigation," the CIA letter states. It was sent to the National Archives and Records Administration, to which Cheney made a formal request on March 31 that the documents be released.
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Comments
Sean Vanity
May 14, 2009 3:17 PM CST
Wow- o - Wow!
Could Cheney be this much of a simpleton?
HugePhony.Com
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jeb bush
May 14, 2009 3:20 PM CST
Yes- Sean-YES..
He really is..
he is not only inarticulate, but, arrogant,stubborn and das a diagnosis of “Hubris Syndrome”, has selfish Illusions of granduer..
ow well.. simpletons are called just that for no other reason.. than they are usually very easy to figure out!
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T.R.
May 14, 2009 3:32 PM CST
One has to wonder if V.P. Cheney’s micro-managing of our intelligence agencies fostered some personal animosities over in Langley. And now, the former Vice President is trying to get the CIA’s help to buttress his administration’s legacy. Rather poetic actually.
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Max Legroom
May 14, 2009 4:31 PM CST
The documents VP Cheney is referring to must deal with foreign or overseas targets rather than domestic. Responding to the question, “So far as [you are] aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the [Bush] administration still calls “enhanced techniques”? ” FBI Director Robert Mueller answered, “I don’t believe that has been the case.” http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812?currentPage=4
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B. McLeod
May 14, 2009 11:20 PM CST
It’s just embarrassing that Cheney keeps touring around putting words together like he is somebody of significance. Even when his party was in the saddle, he never managed much beyond disgracing himself. He couldn’t even manage to go hunting without accidentally shooting another member of his hunting party. In this part of the country, that’s like one rung down from loudly shitting yourself in church. Why can’t he just go away?
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J.D.
May 15, 2009 8:02 AM CST
MEANWHILE, Nancy Pelosi can’t get her story straight about what she knew and when she knew it, and has gone so far to claim that the CIA is full of liars.
Funny, she hasn’t even used that harsh of language to describe the muslims who flew Americans into buildings.
Everyone else got the memo, so why is Pelosi so incompetent and confused? Perhaps it’s time for her to step down.
NOTE TO LIBS: The CIA documents haven’t been released because Amnesty International is ALSO trying to get them out under a FOIA request right now. So please use your colorful adjectives to describe Amnesty Int’l as well.
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B. McLeod
May 15, 2009 11:09 AM CST
“Claiming” that “the CIA is full of liars” is by no means a stretch. Deception is their life, and it does seem they sometimes have problems distinguishing between hiding things from foreign governments and hiding things from their own.
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