PRESS RELEASE
Trump Takes Moral High Ground: Turns Over CIA ‘Torture Report’ to Court
Feb. 20, 2017 (EIRNS)—Proving once again that he has what former President Barack Obama lacks in the morals department, President Trump has turned a complete copy of the still-classified, 6,778-page Committee Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program (the "Torture Report") over to the Second Circuit Court. This was in response to filings of briefs by lawyers involved in court proceedings of two Guantanamo Prison inmates.
The report, completed in December 2014, by the Senate Intelligence Committee under leadership of Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), remains classified, with only a 600-page redacted summary having been released. Upon completion, Feinstein saw to it that unredacted copies of the full report were sent to the Pentagon, the Justice Department, the White House, and the CIA (and possibly others). In a now-famous "mishap," the CIA’s copy was destroyed—an incident not revealed until a year later—in August, 2015. The incoming head (January 2015) of the Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr (R-N.C.), vowed to "repossess" any remaining copies, and destroy them. Obama’s Justice Department issued an order to ban even the in-house reading of the document, keeping it beyond reach of even Freedom of Information Act requests.
In the induced paranoia following the election in November 2016, Feinstein issued a public call to Obama to declassify the report in the two months remaining in his term. Well, while the lame duck obviously did not have what it takes to "do the right thing"—the court’s order to preserve the document was issued on Dec. 29, 2016—it seems that he did have the gumption to squirrel away the sole White House copy for his personal library. The copy Trump gave the court on Feb. 10, came from the Justice Department, and is possibly the sole surviving complete copy of the report.
