The CIA is scheduled today to declassify a 2004 report that details at least one clear-cut case of felony torture, according to an exclusive Newsweek story.
The report, which is being released as a result of an ACLU lawsuit, involves the use of mock executions and use of a power drill in at least one interrogation. The U.S. criminal statute on felony torture explicitly enumerates “the threat of imminent death” as felony torture punishable for up to life imprisonment.
According to the August 23 Washington Post, the unidentified CIA interrogator “was immediately called back to CIA headquarters to face an internal accountability board and was ‘reprimanded and reassigned’ for committing acts outside the CIA’s legal guidelines for interrogating terrorism suspects.” Newsweek reported that the CIA interrogator’s torturing was revealed by the CIA Inspector General to the Justice Department back in 2004. The CIA interrogator has still not been prosecuted his crimes after five years, though the statute of limitations on the crime has not yet run out.
Not only did the the Bush administration fail to prosecute the perpetrator of the crime, it also pushed to cover it up. “Top Bush CIA officials, including Tenet’s successors as CIA director, Porter Goss and Gen. Michael Hayden, strongly lobbied for the IG report to be kept secret from the public,” Newsweek reporters Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff wrote.
CIA spokesmen, after years of denying it committed any acts of torture, portrayed the revelations as old news. "Justice has had the complete document since 2004, and their career prosecutors have reviewed it carefully for legal accountability," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "That’s already been done."
