Obama Administration Should Release CIA Inspector General Report Without Substantial Redactions, Says ACLU

CIA Officials Persist In Effort To Suppress Evidence Of CIA’s Illegal Conduct

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union today renewed its call for the Obama administration to release a CIA Inspector General report on the CIA’s interrogation and detention program. The government is facing a June 19 deadline to reprocess the report in an ongoing ACLU Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking documents related to the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas. According to a report in the Washington Post today, CIA officials are pressuring the Obama administration to suppress significant portions of the report.

The following can be attributed to Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project:

“It’s not surprising that the CIA is fighting for the suppression of documents that would provide further evidence that its torture program was both ineffective and illegal. Over the last few weeks, the agency has also suppressed cables relating to illegal interrogation methods and transcripts in which prisoners explain the torture that was inflicted upon them in the CIA’s secret prisons. President Obama should not allow the CIA to determine whether evidence of its own unlawful conduct should be made available to the public. The president has rightly recognized the importance of restoring the rule of law at home and the moral authority of the United States abroad, but neither of those things will be possible as long as the CIA is permitted to conceal evidence of its crimes. The public has a right to know what took place in the CIA’s secret prisons, and on whose authority.”