US lawmakers say CIA censored torture report to avoid embarrassment

CIA1

Democratic senators today spoke out against the CIA's redactions to a Senate intelligence committee's report on torture used in the interrogations of war-on-terror detainees during the Bush era.

"The redactions that CIA has proposed to the Intelligence Committee's report on CIA interrogations are totally unacceptable," Senator Carl Levin, chair of the armed services committee, said today regarding the censored torture report. His committee conducted a separate investigation into Bush-era interrogation. "Classification should be used to protect sources and methods or the disclosure of information which could compromise national security, not to avoid disclosure of improper acts or embarrassing information."

From the Washington Post:

U.S. officials familiar with the redacted document said the administration stripped out material that showed that pieces of information long attributed to detainees — and that led to the disruption of terrorism plots or the capture of additional suspects — had actually come from other intelligence sources such as intercepted communications.