Dianne Feinstein* is Right, Both on the Principal, and the Form

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is asking the White House, and not the CIA to conduct the declassification review of the Senate torture report:

The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has called for the White House – not the Central Intelligence Agency – to lead the declassification process for the panel’s summary of its massive, scathing report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

In a letter to President Barack Obama, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., challenged both the White House and CIA, which have suggested in recent days that the agency would spearhead the declassification.

“The CIA, in consultation with other agencies, will conduct the declassification review,” Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said after the Intelligence Committee voted last week to declassify the 481-page executive summary.

Attorney General Eric Holder said the Obama administration wanted a thorough review.

“I agree that as much of the report as possible should be made public, of course allowing for redactions that are necessary to protect national security,” he told the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. “So I was pleased that the committee voted to send portions of the report forward for declassification.”

Holder recalled that Obama “believes that bringing this program into the light will help the American people understand what happened in the past and can help guide us as we move forward so that no administration contemplates such a program in the future.”

In her letter, Feinstein calls for swift action on the summary, findings and conclusions of the report. The summary, she says, should be released quickly and with minimal redactions.

“As this report covers a covert action program under the authority of the president and National Security Council, I respectfully request that the White House take the lead in the declassification process,” the letter reads.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that while only the CIA could declassify, “We’re trying to build up pressure on the White House and the CIA. It’s not just declassify. It’s to do a minimum of redactions.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a longtime critic of the CIA’s interrogation methods – widely regarded as torture – said he fully understood Feinstein’s concerns.

“She doesn’t trust the CIA. I think she’s probably right. I don’t trust them either,” he told McClatchy.

“This is the same outfit that destroyed the videos of the interrogations. That’s one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.

Also note that a target of the investigation, whose name was mentioned more than 1600 times in the Senate report, was the one who supervised CIA "Cooperation" (i.e. hacking into) Senate computers while staffers were reviewing documents.

The CIA is not to be trusted.

What's more, they don't have the authority to take lead on declassification, because they did not classify the program in the first place.

That was the White House:

Five years ago, I reported (BREAKING) that the Bush Administration (aka Dick Cheney) made the torture program a Special Access Program in unusual fashion. Rather than CIA Director George Tenet make torture a SAP, as mandated by the Executive Order governing such things, unnamed people in the National Security Council did so.

………
Since that time, I’ve asked experts in classification and they agree that something funky went down (note, too, that torture wasn’t a SAP at the very beginning).
I believe torture’s odd SAP status is one of the things that has implicated the Presidency, which the Obama Administration went to some lengths to cover up.

But it also should dictate the White House take the lead on declassification of the torture program.

Don’t take my word for it — take Dianne Feinstein’s word. In a letter to the White House, she invoked torture’s status as a “covert action program under the authority of the President and National Security Council” to call for the White House to lead declassification.

In a letter to the President dated April 7 and obtained by McClatchy, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called for swift action on the summary and the findings and conclusions of the report, which members voted last week to declassify. The summary, Feinstein said, should be released “quickly and with minimal redactions.”
“As this report covers a covert action program under the authority of the President and National Security Council, I respectfully request that the White House take the lead in the declassification process,” the letter reads.

Note, Dianne Feinstein has just formally confirmed the same detail the Obama Administration appealed to keep secret: torture was authorized by the President, not by OLC, not by George Tenet, not by John Rizzo. The President.

Which is why the President should take responsibility for releasing the report.

For some reason Barack Obama has the protection of Bush and Cheney as one of the most important goals of his presidency.

He may think that this position prevents a political schism, but what it really does is normalize corruption and create a criminogenic environment.

H/t Garrett at Daily Kos.

^*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.