Rendition Victims Urge Obama to Declassify Senate Torture Report

As officials continue to delay the release of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's report on post-9/11 CIA interrogation techniques, 10 victims of CIA rendition and torture have signed an open letter (pdf) to President Obama asking him to declassify the heavily redacted report.

The 500-page summary of the report, which includes details about secret overseas prisons, waterboarding of suspected enemy combatants, and rendition -- the practice of sending a terrorist suspect covertly to be interrogated in a foreign country -- was so extensively redacted as to render it "impossible to understand," as one critic put it. The report was expected to be released in August, but has been delayed and is currently thought to be sitting on President Obama's desk while negotiations over declassification continue.

The signatories to the letter want these blackouts removed, in order to force a public reckoning with and official acknowledgement of their experiences.

"Despite living thousands of miles apart and leading different lives today, a shared experience unites us: the CIA abducted each of us in the past and flew us to secret prisons for torture," reads the letter, which was coordinated by the international human rights group Reprieve. "Some of us were kidnapped with our pregnant wives or children. All of us were later released without charge, redress or apology from the US. We now want the American public to read that story, in full, and without redactions... You must now take responsibility for telling the world -- and more importantly the American people -- the whole truth about rendition and American torture."

The letter, which details prolonged confinement in small boxes and dark spaces, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and "bombardment with noise and weapons," continues:

Torture, we thought, was something only dictators did. Colonel Gaddafi's thugs were infamous for maiming and killing political opponents in Libya. In Egypt activists often disappeared. Moroccan interrogation techniques include "bottle torture," where bottles are used to violate prisoners. We understood the Syrian regime's brutality well before it murdered thousands of its citizens.

Before our abductions, though, none of us imagined the torturers standing over us one day would come from the United States.

Publishing the truth is not just important for the US's standing in the world. It is a necessary part of correcting America's own history. Today in America, the architects of the torture program declare on television they did the right thing. High-profile politicians tell assembled Americans that 'waterboarding' is a 'baptism' that American forces should still engage in.

These statements only breed hatred and intolerance. This is a moment when America can move away from all that, but only if her people are not sheltered from the truth.

In advance of an August 29 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filing deadline, Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has reportedly asked for an additional one-month delay due to "ongoing negotiations" between the Committee, the Obama administration, and the CIA regarding declassification.

Earlier this week, the ACLU filed a FOIA lawsuit demanding the CIA release all three reports about "its post-9/11 program of rendition, secret detention, and torture of detainees" -- the 6,000-page Senate Select Committee Intelligence Committee report; the CIA's report in response, defending the agency's actions; and a report commissioned by former CIA Director Leon Panetta, which is reportedly consistent with the Committee's investigative report findings, but contradicts the CIA's response to the SSCI.

The Guardian reports:

While Feinstein and the CIA have reached the nadir of their relationship -- the CIA intends to attack her report's credibility -- there are concerns that the CIA has weighed the scale in favor of secrecy. Obama allowed it to lead the declassification review, despite its interest in keeping the report secret. McClatchy reported this week that the main declassification interlocutor with Feinstein, top intelligence lawyer Robert Litt, represented CIA clients in private practice in undisclosed lawsuits.

"We believe the public should know the full story of what took place in the CIA's secret prisons and that all of these documents - the Senate report, the CIA response, and the Panetta review should be released to the public," said Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the ACLU, which filed the freedom-of-information case.

"It's disappointing that the government is seeking further delay, but, given Senator Feinstein's assurances, we're hopeful that all of the documents will be released with very limited redactions in September."