\nCIA Now Reviewing OPR Report on Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury<\/a>
By emptywheel<\/font><\/strong>
June 17, 2009 <\/div>\n<\/p>\n
Sheldon Whitehouse revealed during today’s Department of Justice oversight hearing<\/a><\/strong> that the CIA is now reviewing the results of the Office of Professional Responsibility report on John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury’s role in authorizing torture. <\/div>\n\nWhitehouse:<\/strong> CIA was given a opportunity for substantive comment and classification review. Is it now the CIA that is holding up the release of the report? <\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nEric Holder claimed that the CIA’s review was not holding up the report. But when asked whether or not DOJ was ensuring that those at CIA reviewing the document had clean hands on torture, Holder twice did not answer, and ultimately said he wasn’t worried whether those involved in torture get to make substantive comment on the OPR report…In other words, no, Holder doesn’t find it problematic that someone like John Rizzo–who remains the Acting General Counsel at CIA and who made apparently false declarations to OLC<\/a><\/strong> in 2002 when it first approved torture–gets a chance to review the OPR report…<\/div>\n<\/p>\n
As troubling as this news that CIA is reviewing the OPR report is, it does say something about the OPR report’s conclusions. They implicate CIA enough that Eric Holder [not Mukasey] feels that CIA ought to get a chance to explain itself. I’ve been saying for months that the CIA may have knowingly submitted false information to OLC. It may be that John Yoo and Jay Bybee used that as their excuse for their crappy opinions. Maybe, if this report ever comes out, we’ll get to see whether that’s the case.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nOh, the tension. O.P.R.<\/strong><\/font> and C.I.A. I.G.<\/strong><\/font> Reports<\/strong><\/font> just sitting there waiting to be read, parsed, howled at, bemused. Poor Eric Holder and Leon Panetta are getting grilled as the with-holders when I’m sure either one of them would much prefer being on the other side. All of this seems gratuitous to me. Sooner or later, we’re going to see every single bit of it. The abuses of classifications have been so great that no one is going to put up with any of it anymore – at least if it has anything to do with the Bush Administration.<\/div>\n