Udall says CIA still lying and calls for purge of those linked to torture, including Brennan

Meteor Blades

Daily Kos Staff

Wednesday December 10, 2014 · 9:59 AM PST

2014/12/10 · 09:59

Senator Mark Udall blasted the CIA for lying in a speech Wednesday, probably his last in the Senate.

Senator Mark Udall blasted the CIA for lying in a speech Wednesday, probably his last in the Senate.

In what will probably be his last Senate speech, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall blasted the Central Intelligence Agency Wednesday morning and repeated his call for the resignation of the agency's director, the serial liar John Brennan, as he first did last July. He also may have revealed some classified information from an earlier report. But he did not choose to insert the full 6,700-page torture report into the Senate record as some civil libertarians and other activists, including Daily Kos, have urged him to do.

The Colorado senator, who lost his re-election bid last month, has been a leading advocate for declassifying the entire torture report instead of just the 524-page executive summary that was released Tuesday. He has also been aggressive in his pushback of CIA officials who have sought to discredit the report and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence of which he is a member.

In his 48-minute speech, Udall said, "Director Brennan and the CIA are continuing to willfully provide inaccurate information and misrepresent the efficacy of torture ... in other words, the CIA is lying." He noted that "there has been no accountability for the CIA's actions or for Director Brennan's failure of leadership."

Udall also took aim at President Obama, saying, "Despite the facts presented, the president has expressed full confidence in Director Brennan and demonstrated that trust by making no effort at all to rein it in." He also called on the president to "purge" the CIA of everyone linked to the torture program. "Torture just didn't happen after all," Udall said. "Real, actual people engaged in torture. Some of these people are still employed by the CIA":

Udall said it was bad enough not to prosecute these officials, but to reward or promote them, Udall said, was incomprehensible. Udall called on Obama "to purge" his administration of anyone who was engaged in torturing prisoners.
"He needs to force a cultural change at the CIA," Udall said.

Read below the fold to see how Udall did not stop at criticism of the administration for its continuing support of Brennan.

“One would think this administration is leading the effort to right the wrongs of the past and ensure the American people learn the truth about the CIA’s torture program. Not so. It’s been nearly a six-year struggle in a Democratic administration to get this study out,” Udall said. “For a while I worried, that this administration would succeed in keeping this study entirely under wraps.
“While the study clearly shows that the CIA detention and interrogation program itself was deeply flawed, the deeper more endemic problem lies in the CIA, assisted by a White House that continues to try to cover up the truth,” the senator added.

It wasn't immediately clear whether the senator also revealed information from a still-classified 2011 torture report carried out under former CIA director Leon Panetta. Asked about that by Politico after the speech, Udall was cryptic, “Of course I’m always aware of my role. But I also think the truth had to come out and the Panetta review needs to be declassified and released.”

That is especially the case if the Panetta review, said to be highly critical of the agency's role in torture, conflicts with some information in the Senate panel's report.

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