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Report: Obama withholding CIA torture records from investigators

Iran Press TV

Thu Mar 13, 2014 3:20PM GMT

The US administration been preventing the Senate Intelligence Committee and investigators from reviewing CIA records about torturous interrogation techniques carried out during the presidency of George W Bush, according to US media reports.

The White House, despite publicly vowing to support the committee's probe, has been rejecting or ignoring requests by Senate members in order to help them find ways to study some 9,400 pages of documents in past five years, an investigation by McClatchy DC has revealed.

The report indicates that the documents came into committee's attention in 2009 and that the US president has still not formally issued an order to protect them by executive privilege.

The Obama administration's unwillingness to cooperate with the committee raises speculations that the documents could contain significant information about the CIA's use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques against detainees in CIA custody.

The report comes as the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee have been involved in a bitter battle over secret agency's alleged spying on Senate staff members who were investigating the controversial CIA interrogation program.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, who is highly regarded on the Capitol Hill, has been spending a lot of political capital to go after the head of the CIA John Brennan. Feinstein, a Republican who has been supported by the Obama administration, has waged an aggressive counterattack against Feinstein.

Trying to distance himself from the dispute, President Barack Obama on Wednesday said that it would be inappropriate for the White House to get involved into the issue.

Now the McClatchy report suggests that the Obama administration has been more involved in the power struggle between the two sides.

"These documents certainly raise the specter that the White House has been involved in stonewalling the investigation," said Elizabeth Goitein, the co-director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program at the New York University Law School.

Both the CIA and Senate Intelligence Committee have refused to comment on the report.

DT/DT