Trump Administration Starts Returning Copies of C.I.A. Torture Report to Congress
By MARK MAZZETTI and MATTHEW ROSENBERGJUNE 2, 2017
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has begun returning copies of a voluminous 2014 Senate report about the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention
and interrogation program to Congress, complying with the demand of a top Republican senator who has criticized the report for being shoddy and excessively critical of the C.I.A.
After Republicans took over the Senate in early 2015, Senator Richard Burr of North Carolina, the Republican chairman of the committee, asked the Obama administration to return all the copies of the report
that had been sent to the C.I.A., the Pentagon, the Justice Department and other executive-branch agencies.
program by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, telling the story of
how — in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — the C.I.A.
The committee, which was then run by Democrats, also sent copies of the entire classified report to at least eight federal agencies, asking
that they incorporate the report into their records — a move that would have made it subject to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.
The Trump administration’s move, described by multiple congressional officials, raises the possibility
that copies of the 6,700-page report could be locked in Senate vaults for good — exempt from laws requiring that government records eventually become public.
The central conclusion of the report is that the spy agency’s interrogation methods — including waterboarding, sleep deprivation
and other kinds of torture — were far more brutal and less effective than the C.I.A.
