[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Page S6405]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          CIA OVERSIGHT REPORT

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, today for the first time the American people 
are going to learn the full truth about torture that took place under 
the CIA during the Bush administration. I have served for 22 years with 
the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein. She is 
dignified. She is very thorough in whatever she does. She is 
intelligent and she cares a great deal. She has proven herself to be 
the one of the most thoughtful and hard-working Members of this body. 
The people of California are, as well they should be, very proud of 
this good woman.
  I am appreciative of the work the Senate Intelligence Committee has 
done under her direction. We are here today because of her efforts. She 
has persevered, overcome obstacles that have been significant, to make 
this study available to the American people.
  I am gratified for the work done by Democrats on the Intelligence 
Committee. We are here today, again I repeat, because of their efforts. 
We do not often mention, as certainly we should, the work of our 
staffs. I want to throw a big bouquet to the intelligence staff. They 
have worked so hard. Under the direction of Senator Feinstein, they 
have worked for 7 years--7 years--working on this vitally important 
matter. It is a report that was not easy, but they did it.
  Here is what they did: Committee members and staff combed through 
more than 6 million pages--6 million pages--of documents to formulate 
the report. The full committee report is 6,700 pages long--7 years, I 
repeat, in the making.
  The unclassified executive summary, which is going to be released 
today, is more than 500 pages. I want everyone to understand, the 
Select Committee on Intelligence, along with the House Committee on 
Intelligence, is the only group of people who provide oversight over 
our intelligence community. They actually have the ability to 
investigate what happened. No one else. Not the press, not Senators, 
nor the public, or outside organizations have the ability to 
investigate the CIA. But we did it. The implications of this report are 
profound. Not only is torture wrong, but it does not work. For people 
today, we hear them coming from different places saying, It was great. 
It was terrific what we did. It has got us so much.
  It has got us nothing, except a bad name. Without this report, the 
American people would not know what actually took place under the CIA's 
torture program. This critical report highlights the importance of 
Senate oversight and the role Congress must play in overseeing the 
executive branch of government. The only way our country can put this 
episode in the past is to come to terms with what happened and commit 
to ensuring it will never happen again. This is how we as Americans 
make our Nation stronger. When we realize there is a problem, we seek 
the evidence; we study it; we learn from it. Then we set about to enact 
change. Americans must learn from our mistakes. We learned about the 
Pentagon papers. They were helpful to us as a country. The Iran contra 
affair. I was here when it went on. It was hard on us, but it was 
important that we did this. More recently, what happened in that prison 
in Iraq, Abu-Ghraib.
  We have three separate branches of government, the judicial, the 
executive, and the legislative branches of government. To me, this work 
done by the Intelligence Committee, of which the Presiding Officer is a 
member, cries out for our Constitution, three separate, equal branches 
of government.
  We are here today to talk about the work done by the legislative 
branch of government. We can protect our national security as a country 
without resorting to methods like torture. They are contrary to the 
fundamental values of America. So I call upon the administration, the 
Intelligence Committee, and my colleagues in Congress to join me in 
that commitment, that what took place, the torture program, is not in 
keeping with our country.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

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