Jeremy Scahill: White House Censoring What US Public Can Know About Torture Program

Following news that the very same Central Intelligence Agency officials involved with the CIA torture program are being allowed access to the still classified U.S. Senate torture report, journalist Jeremy Scahill said Tuesday that "the White House, at the highest levels, is basically going through and editing what the American people can and can't read" about the damning findings that show systematic cruelty imposed on detainees.

Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the 6,000-page report, the summary of which is expected to be declassified in the coming days, "exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our nation." The report is said to show that the CIA impeded oversight of the torture program and misled Congress about its use.

Speaking on MSNBC's NOW With Alex Wagner, Scahill said, "Let's remember this is a report from one body of government, from the United States Senate, that is going to be examining this whole program."

"And what's essentially happening is that the White House, at the highest levels, is basically going through and editing what the American people can and can't read in this report about one of the definitive, moral questions and legal questions of our time, the extent to which we were involved in systematic torture, with lying to lawmakers, with misleading not only Congress but the American people on a wide range of issues that resulted in our country going to war and being involved in systematic acts of torture," he said.

Asked by host Wagner why the White House would give this special treatment to "CIA officials who may have been--who are--implicated in [torture]?" Scahill said, "It became very clear early on in the Obama presidency that he made a political decision--and it probably was a survival decision in terms of his respect at the CIA--that he was not going to prosecute individuals that were involved with the torture program. And what's happened since then is he's done a lot of running of defense for the CIA."

"It would be very interesting to see Senator Obama debate President Obama on these core issues," Scahill continued, "because when you look at the national security policy of the Obama administration, the counter-terrorism policy of the Obama administration, what you're looking at is a very hawkish defender of some of the most egregious practices of the CIA. Not that he's cheerleading torture--Obama's never going to come out and say that. It's that he's protecting the very people who built this infrastructure, so he's co-signed the Bush administration's program by refusing to have any effective accountability be possible from one other branch of government. The Senate is not allowed to investigate this thoroughly."

New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti, who also appeared in the segment, told Wagner that the access would allow the officials like former CIA head George Tenet to prepare a "rebuttal" to the report.

Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said this week that they were considering the use of a special rule to bring the torture report findings to the public eye.

Watch the segment below: