11/21/14 – Jason Leopold – The Scott Horton Show

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Hey, guys.
Welcome back to the show.
I'm Scott Horton.
It's my show, The Scott Horton Show.
All right.
Next up, it's our friend Jason Leopold.
Writing nowadays for ViceNews.
Vice.com.
The Senate report on CIA interrogation is about to reignite debate over the killing of Osama bin Laden.
And I just wanted to mention, too, here, this story at the Huffington Post I want everybody to look at today.
Torture report fight erupts in chaos.
And this is a meeting between the White House Chief of Staff and the Senate.
They're all fighting about just how much of the summary of the torture report we're ever going to be allowed to read.
Welcome back to the show, Jason.
How are you doing?
I'm doing well, Scott.
Thanks for having me back on.
Very happy to have you back on the show.
So, well, let's just start with the biggest, obvious question first.
How much of this summary are we ever going to be allowed to read and when?
I do think that we'll eventually get to see the 500-page summary.
And I believe that they're in the homestretch right now.
So there is quite a bit of pressure, obviously, on the White House and the CIA.
And I think that come December, before the Democrats have to relinquish control or when they go on their break, the report will be out.
But it's really important to note that this is only a 500-page summary.
The report itself is 6,300 pages.
So we're getting less than 10% of the entire report.
The executive summary is redacted.
The issue is revolving around the names.
I do believe that we'll eventually get to see this.
And eventually meaning before the Republicans take over.
Oh, that's good.
I mean, it's looking like people are saying, hey, man, we're going to have to have one of these outgoing senators just risk his life and get up there and read the damn thing into the record.
Well, here's what you should know.
The report itself is already declassified.
Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, can release it right now.
She can release it even though the White House and the CIA have said that the names or the pseudonyms should remain redacted.
So the report itself can be released.
They can also go on to the Senate floor and decide to declassify certain material themselves and read it into the record.
It's not as if the report will not or rather that the report could not come out at this point.
No one is blocking the report from coming out.
They want, obviously, as much detail as possible to be released.
And right now it revolves around the names.
I mean, it's not as if this document cannot – we won't get to see it.
They can release it.
I believe that the issue regarding the names is something that is a sticking point because it kind of removes some detail about who did what and when.
Right, like they're saying they're going to use pseudonyms, but they don't want to use the same pseudonym consistently for the different CIA officers who did this, that, and the other thing to anybody, which that's what you're talking about.
Yes, and the reason they don't want to do that is because then we'll be able to figure it out.
So, for example, there is a CIA officer who was in Thailand in 2002 and was involved with the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, who was held there.
And then this CIA officer ended up in Poland in 2003 and then in Guantanamo, say, in 2006.
And then this CIA officer was eventually promoted.
And if the report contains that pseudonym and we get to see the CIA officers sort of rise in the ranks, it will be very easy, Scott, to figure out who it is.
So that's what the CIA and the White House don't want to happen.
They don't want people like me, human rights groups, to be able to figure out who these people are and eventually unmask them.
Well, now, because what?
They're afraid that this will really change the game and there will be demands that these men are prosecuted?
I mean, it seems like if the story is told even without the specific names, the demand for prosecution isn't going to be more or less either way.
I think the only demand for prosecution would come from human rights groups, would come from perhaps some foreign government.
I guess it would be more powerful if they can really name names, yeah.
I highly doubt it.
It's the same excuse that we get, that journalists get when we go to Guantanamo, for example.
I cannot photograph a nurse who conducts force-beating at Guantanamo.
I can't photograph a guard or use a guard's name.
And the reason is because the officials at Guantanamo will basically say that I would be putting their lives in danger.
But when these same guards return home, their hometown newspapers not only photograph them but print their names.
So certainly there seems to be something else behind all of this.
I don't think that prosecution is the big issue behind this.
I think that it's trying to get some more detail about who was involved and ultimately what that would result in in terms of declassifying the entire program.
Right.
Yeah, I see what you mean.
So it really could be a game-changer.
You can see why they're trying to stifle it as much as they possibly can there.
Well, and now, so what about extra murders?
Because they've admitted to only two, the CIA, on the CIA's watch, and Durham already did a preliminary investigation to see if he would have an investigation into whether he would have an investigation into maybe prosecuting that, and then he decided forget it.
And yet there are three more who were apparently murdered by the CIA down at Penny Lane at Guantanamo, as the other Scott Horton has documented in his great journalism.
And surely, I mean, I know the military killed most of the hundred-something people that were tortured to death, but surely the CIA killed more than the two they admit to.
You think that's in the report?
Do you have any word about that?
No, I don't think that's in the report.
I think we'll see details about one death that took place at a CIA black site in Afghanistan.
But what you need to know is that this report, and this is based on my own investigation and a story that I recently published about the report, is that the report looks at 20 case studies, so 20 cases involving high-value detainees.
There are 119.
So the larger report that we will not get to see has 99 other CIA prisoners that contain case studies on them that we're not getting to see.
What we're getting to, what we'll eventually get to see, are the detainees that we've heard about quite a bit over the years.
We'll get to hear some details about the efficacy of the program.
So it doesn't even go into John Durham's prosecution.
It doesn't go into anything about the Geneva Conventions.
It just simply goes into details about the CIA's effectiveness statements about the high-value interrogation program.
And that's it.
So much of this, I don't mean to sort of burst the bubble here, but for people who have been following it for quite some time, the executive summary will seem familiar.
As I documented in my report, it deconstructs George Bush's September 6, 2006, statement in which he revealed details of the program.
And it undercuts statements that were made about the effectiveness of it.
All right.
Well, I know you've got to go.
But thanks again for coming on the show, Jason.
Talk to you again soon.
Thanks, Scott.
That's the great Jason Leopold, everybody.
He's at vice.com.
Hey, Al Scott here.
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