December 10, 2014

A damning report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee's Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) on the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques has exposed the exaggeration of the program for what it really is: torture. MPAC calls upon all Americans to put pressure on Congress to ensure a more transparent and robust Intelligence oversight committee -- these “techniques” must never be something we engage in regardless of the national security challenges we face.

We need to call on Congress to support other members’ legislation to reform these rubber-stamped programs to ensure a culture shift from these ineffective, heavy handed practices to something more productive. We need to make the CIA come under the fold of oversight; the fact that they spied on the very Committee tasked to oversee them is an ironic and abysmal failure on our part to keep the agency under control.

The torture report will remain a stain in our history if the Agency continues to go rogue without the necessary oversight of programs. Not only is there a  constitutional and moral imperative not to torture, the CIA sidestepped its own policies outlined by the Department of Justice and its own lawyers.

The fact that the CIA and the White House  tortured these suspects and called them “enhanced interrogation techniques” is appalling and antithetical to the values our nation holds. What’s more concerning is the fact that the torture methods did not result in any credible information; at best we already knew that information, at worst the information was wrong. In fact, by CIA agents’ own admission, those techniques were not effective and yet they continued.