The SSIC "Torture" Report

I kept seeing and hearing reports on the news — radio and television — about the report on CIA torture released by the Senate Select Intelligence Committee. All the news stories characterized the report that way. None of the stories noted that it was a report by the committee staff, not the committee. And not the whole staff, but only the Democrats' staff (the "majority staff" until next month). None of the stories mentioned that the minority staff also released their report today, and none mentioned what was in that report. All the news stories stated the Democrat staff's claims as if they were true; none noted that these claims were contradicted by all involved at the time as well as the statements made at the time by the very Democrat officials now attacking the agency. And none mentioned the statement/report released by six men — all three CIA directors and all three CIA deputy directors during the years in question. That statement begins

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Central Intelligence Agency detention and interrogation of terrorists, prepared only by the Democratic majority staff, is a missed opportunity to deliver a serious and balanced study of an important public policy question. The committee has given us instead a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation — essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks.

How did the Democrats' staff get so much so wrong? For one thing, they interviewed none of the agency's senior leadership from that time period. That is, they interviewed none of the people who could definitively confirm or deny the statements they were making in their report. That was deliberate; it was not an oversight. And who could make that decision? It would almost certainly have to be the Democrat senators and, in particular, the (temporary) committee chair Senator Diana Feinstein.

And why was the news media so one-sided in their coverage? I'd have to guess it was because the Feinstein Report story fit their agenda. A more balanced coverage didn't.

UPDATE: It's even worse than I thought. While in the Senate, former Senator Bob Kerrey served as one of the Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In that capacity, he participated in investigations of CIA procedures. In those cases, he writes, "the committee staff examined documents and interviewed all of the individuals involved. The Senate's Intelligence Committee staff chose [in this case] to interview no one." John Yoo adds another important detail: "Worse yet, Feinstein and her staff refused to interview the very officials at the CIA, the White House, and other agencies responsible for the interrogation program." And, before the report was released, CIA veteran Jose Rodriguez noted in the Washington Post that

The report’s leaked conclusion, which has been reported on widely, that the interrogation program brought no intelligence value is an egregious falsehood; it’s a dishonest attempt to rewrite history. I’m bemused that the Senate could devote so many resources to studying the interrogation program and yet never once speak to any of the key people involved in it, including the guy who ran it (that would be me).

Why? I think Senator Kerrey has the answer:

I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.