On Tuesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein suggested that there was just one more issue of contention between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House, one last redaction that they were working out, before releasing the Senate report on CIA torture. Then it
all blew up.
On Tuesday night, when Senate and administration staffers from the intelligence community sat down to cross the t's and dot the i's, negotiators learned that they were much further apart than they had thought. "It surprised everyone that the position was so hellbent on the part of the administration," said a Senate source briefed on the meeting. "It appeared to our side they weren't actually looking for a compromise."
The sticking point between the two sides is the inclusion of pseudonyms in the Senate report. The CIA has rejected many of the report's conclusions, and has argued that including identifying pseudonyms of officials gives the public and media the means to determine their identities and potentially compromise their cover, jeopardizing ongoing operations or intelligence personnel. […]
"The committee had moved drastically in meeting them more than halfway. [The CIA] still stuck to this red line of no pseudonyms," said the Senate source […].
If the two sides do not reach a consensus soon, the committee and its members will be left with only extreme options. One would be to release the heavily redacted version that the CIA has already agreed to, which would be a capitulation on the part of the committee. The alternative would be for Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) or another member of the committee to read the report—or sections that the committee believes should be released—into the Senate record, as then-Sen. Mike Gravel (D-Alaska) did with the Pentagon Papers in 1971.
Sen. Udall is
considering doing just that. He's been disturbed by the extensive redactions the White House has demanded and has been frustrated by the slow progress of negotiations.
"Transparency and disclosure are critical to the work of the Senate intelligence committee and our democracy, so I'm going to keep all options on the table to ensure the truth comes out," Udall said.
Udall has been one of the few stand-outs in the Senate on toture and on the excesses of the intelligence community. He has been a champion of civil liberties and a strong voice for transparency. He can secure a legacy as a statesman of principle by releasing this report into the congressional record. He can bring the sunlight that has been so needed in the past decade to disinfect this stain on the nation.
Please sign this petition to Sen. Udall letting him know that if he releases the report, we'll have his back, and telling Sen. Feinstein and President Obama that it's time for the truth to be told to the American people.