By David Cole
The New York Times - Match 15, 2014
The old Washington adage that the cover-up is worse than the crime
may not apply when it comes to the revelations this week that the
Central Intelligence Agency interfered with a Senate torture
investigation. It’s not that the cover-up isn’t serious. It is extremely
serious—as Senator Dianne Feinstein said, the CIA may have violated the
separation of powers, the Fourth Amendment, and a prohibition on spying
inside the United States. It’s just that in this case, the underlying
crimes are still worse: the dispute arises because the Senate
Intelligence Committee, which Feinstein chairs, has written an
as-yet-secret 6,300 page report on the CIA’s use of torture and
disappearance—among the gravest crimes the world recognizes—against
al-Qaeda suspects in the “war on terror.”
By Senator Feinstein’s account,
the CIA has directly and repeatedly interfered with the committee’s
investigation: it conducted covert unauthorized searches of the
computers assigned to the Senate committee for its review of CIA files,
and it secretly removed potentially incriminating documents from the
computers the committee was using. That’s the stuff that often leads to
resignations, independent counsels, and criminal charges; indeed, the
CIA’s own Inspector General has referred the CIA’s conduct to the
Justice Department for a potential criminal investigation.
READ MORE....
No comments:
Post a Comment