June 27, 2013 / by emptywheel

 

Shorter Mark Udall: Why Can’t John Brennan “Honor the Oath”?

Still reading the NSA IG Report, so I’ll just quote right from Mark Udall’s release:

As a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I am concerned to see news reports about the CIA’s response to the Committee’s Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program before the information was provided to the committee. Committee members have not yet seen this response, which we have been expecting for nearly six months.

The American people’s trust in intelligence agencies requires transparency and strong congressional oversight. This latest leak–the latest incident in a long string of leaks from unnamed intelligence officials who purport to be familiar with the Committee’s Study and the CIA’s official response to it–is wholly unacceptable. Even as these reports emerged today and over the past several months, the CIA and the White House have repeatedly rejected requests to discuss the Committee’s report with Members or Committee staff.

The continual leaks of inaccurate information from unnamed intelligence officials are embarrassing to the agency and have only hardened my resolve to declassify the full Committee Study, which is based on a review of more than six million pages of CIA records, comprises more than 6,000 pages in length and includes more than 35,000 footnotes. The report is based on CIA records including internal memoranda, cables, emails, as well as transcripts of interviews and Intelligence Committee hearings. The Study is fact-based, and I believe, indisputable.

I am confident the American people will agree once they have the opportunity to read the Study, as well as the CIA’s official response, that this program was a failure and a tragic moment in America’s history. The only way to correct the inaccurate information in the public record on this program is through the sunlight of declassification.

The other thing that leaked in the last day, in addition to CIA’s claim that millions of its reports are inaccurate, is this news:

CIA Director John Brennan is launching a new campaign aimed at pressuring CIA officers to keep the intelligence agency’s secrets secret, after a series of leaks to the media.

In a memo to the CIA workforce this week, Brennan says the “Honor the Oath,” campaign is intended to “reinforce our corporate culture of secrecy” through education and training.

Some leadership on “our corporate culture of secrecy” Brennan is showing, huh?

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2013/06/27/shorter-mark-udall-why-cant-john-brennan-honor-the-oath/