[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6433-S6434]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




      SSCI STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I had a chance briefly earlier, when 
Chairman Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Intelligence Committee and her 
predecessor as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Commerce 
Chairman Jay Rockefeller, were on the floor, to express my appreciation 
to them for the leadership they showed in bringing the Senate 
Intelligence Committee report through a very long ordeal and finally 
before the American public today.
  I am not going to revisit what the report says. I was on the 
Intelligence Committee as it was prepared. I was closely involved in 
its preparation. The points I would like to make here today are, first, 
to once again thank Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Feinstein for 
persisting through this process, particularly Chairman Feinstein, who I 
think saw very intense resistance both within the Senate and within the 
CIA to this effort. They, I think, have done something that is in the 
very best traditions of the Senate.
  The second thing I will say is that in my opinion, in America, an 
open democracy like ours lives and dies by the truth. If we have done 
something wrong, if we have done something we should not have done, 
then we should come clean about it. That is what this report does, in 
excruciating, painstaking detail.
  Let me credential the report for a minute. When the CIA was offered a 
chance to challenge the facts of the report, they had it for 6 months. 
My understanding is they came up with one factual correction which was 
accepted. You hear a lot of blather in the talk show circuit now about 
how the report is inaccurate. Well, the agency that least wanted to see 
this report come out and most wanted to hammer at it had 6 months with 
full access to all of the files and the underlying knowledge of what 
was done. The best they could come up with was a single correction. So 
I hope we can get past whether it was correct.
  The other thing we should get past is this was a bunch of second-
armchair thinking by people who approved the program originally and 
now, on reflection, want to look good. The Senate was not briefed on 
this program until the public found out about it. The Senate 
Intelligence Committee was not briefed on this program until the public 
found out about it. The only people who were briefed on it were the 
Chairs, the Chair and the Vice Chair on the House and the Senate side. 
They were told strictly not to talk to anybody, not to talk to staff, 
not to consult with lawyers, in some cases not even to talk with each 
other. So the idea that the Senate is now having some kind of second 
thoughts about this, having once approved it--part of the findings of 
the report are that the Senate was misled. Not only was the Senate 
misled, but it appears the executive branch was misled as well.
  The point that I would like to conclude with is that when you have a 
wrong, a considerable wrong that has taken place--and I think that for 
an American agency to torture a human being is a very considerable 
wrong--it tends to affect nearby areas. You cannot contain the wrong. 
So congressional oversight was compromised in order to protect this 
program. People simply were not told. When they were told, they were 
given watered-down, misleading, or outright false versions.
  The separation of powers has been compromised by this. A Federal 
executive agency has actually used its technological skills to hack 
into the files of a congressional investigative committee. That has to 
be a first in this country's history. A subject of a congressional 
investigation was allowed to file a criminal referral with the 
Department of Justice against members of the investigative committee's 
staff. That, I believe, is a first in the history of separation-of-
powers offenses in this country.
  The integrity of reporting not only through congressional oversight, 
but up into the executive branch, appears to have been compromised to 
protect this program with information that the government already knew, 
from legitimate, proper, professional interrogation, being ascribed to 
the torture program. You can line up the timeline. You can see that the 
information was disclosed first. You can see where higher-ups in the 
executive branch were told that that information was due to the torture 
which occurred after the

[[Page S6434]]

information was received. That simply does not meet the test of basic 
logic.
  The final thing is that it compromised the integrity of the way we 
look at our law. The Department of Justice and the Office of Legal 
Counsel wrote opinions designed to allow and protect this program that 
were so bad that they have since been withdrawn by the Department of 
Justice.
  The Presiding Officer is a very able and experienced lawyer. Those of 
us who have been in the Department of Justice know well that the Office 
of Legal Counsel stands at the pinnacle of the Department of Justice in 
terms of legal talent, ability, and acumen. Many of us believe the 
Department of Justice stands at the pinnacle of the American legal 
profession. So those are the people who ordinarily are the best of the 
best. When they write legal opinions so shoddy that they have to be 
withdrawn, when they overlook and fail to even address the U.S. Circuit 
Court decisions that describe waterboarding as torture when they are 
answering the question, is waterboarding torture, that is shoddy legal 
work.
  When I first got a look at this and came to the Senate floor to speak 
about it, I described it as ``fire the associate'' quality legal work. 
That is what we got from the very top of the Department of Justice. It 
is not because there was a lack of talent there. It is because things 
were bent and twisted to support this program. So it is very important 
that the truth just came out.

  I am very glad this has happened. It is a sad day in many respects 
because these are hard truths. These are hard facts to have to face. 
But we are better off as a country if we face hard truths and hard 
facts.
  I will close by saying this. I have traveled all over that theater 
looking at the way our Central Intelligence Agency operates and the way 
our other covert operations operate. I am extremely proud of what our 
intelligence services do. I am incredibly impressed by the courage and 
the talent of the young officers who go overseas into often very 
difficult and dangerous situations and do a brilliant job. In many 
respects, it is for them that I think this report needs to be out. It 
needs to be known that this was not the whole department, that there 
are many officers who had nothing to do with it and would want nothing 
to do with it and knew better. There were many people who were 
professionals in interrogation who knew how amateurish this was. It was 
done by a bunch of contractors, basically.
  So I think we should be well aware, as we reflect on this, of their 
courage and of the sacrifice and of the ability and of the discipline 
of the young men and women who put themselves in harm's way to make 
sure that this country has the information and the intelligence it 
needs to succeed in the world. I am proud of them.
  I am also proud of the Intelligence Committee and our staffs who 
worked so hard to perform this extraordinary service.
  I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call 
be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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