McClatchy:
Feinstein said the [CIA torture report] declassification vote now likely will be April 3 ...[after]... Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats ... have added substantially to the material they want made public from their study ... added 100 pages to the study’s 300-page executive summary. ...The full report, which cost $40 million and runs in excess of 6,300 pages, likely won’t ever be released.
More on winners and losers below the jump.
McClatchy's quotes of explanations (which require no further explanation):
“The reason for the delay is a couple of members wanted more time to go over the material,” [Feinstein] said.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, agreed more time was needed to read the revamped version. After all, she said, “It’s a work in progress.”
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the holdup is partly because some members want more time to read the report, and partly because some Republicans “object to everything.”
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., another committee member, insisted there were errors in the report, though he would not specify what. But he expected separate Republican views to be issued when the report is final.
Losers:
1. The CIA, for finally paying a price for its overreach in torture and cover-up.
2. Foreign security agencies and governments, for losing the ability to easily justify their actions by saying “our secrecy and torture comply with the international standards ratified by the CIA and the USA”.
3. ME-Sen Susan Collins, for having the hollowness of her self-professed moderation highlighted by her transparent participation in Republican attempts to subordinate the public interest to the CIA’s and the Republican Party’s interests in avoiding embarrassment and accountability.
Winners:
1. American public, by learning 1/3 more information about what has been done, with what effectiveness, in their name, and at their expense, and by being reassured that there is still substance in the USA’s governing principles of “checks and balances” and “separation of powers”
2. Advocates for disclosure of the entire 6300 page report, by obtaining 1/3 more public evidence that continued secrecy serves mainly the bureaucratic interests of the CIA and the political interests of Republicans and other supporters of immoral and illegal activities.
3. Democratic Senators Mark Udall, Dianne Feinstein and Harry Reid, who will have protected the Senate’s political relevance by imposing penalty on the CIA for trying to intimidate the Senate Intelligence Committee.
4. Every future potential target of the CIA’s previously easy and perhaps customary intimidation of low-visibility suspects and other ‘enemies’ and rivals for political power and budgetary allocations.
5. The US military, for having been less willing to rush into torture, and more willing to admit its mistakes, than the CIA.
6. ME-Sen Angus King, for having an opportunity to highlight his understanding that Senatorial independence in today’s politics requires voting against Republican Senators.
7. ME-Sen candidate Shenna Bellows, for the national highlighting of her signature issue of (and her opponent Collins’ political vulnerability on) protecting civil liberties against the worst excesses of the security state’s tendencies toward panic, groupthink, barbarity, lawlessness, secrecy, power-accumulation and corruption.
3:57 AM PT: Two bits of background:
Coburn's insistence on "errors" and prediction of "separate Republican views" should be considered in light of the recent disclosure that all Republican members of the committee have boycotted the investigation and preparation of the report. This is one of the "buried ledes" in this diary: http://www.dailykos.com/....
Collins' subordination of the public interest to partisan interests was previously clarified by her staff's comment (when Collins herself refused to comment) that her primary goal is to "ensure that the report ... does not become a political issue that can be used by either party," as reported here: http://collinswatch.blogspot.hk/...