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Tuesday, March 19, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

ACLU Sues for Info on|CIA Rendition Program

MANHATTAN (CN) - Nearly a year after the release of the "torture report," the vast majority of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's findings of the CIA's rendition, detention and interrogation program remains classified.

On Thanksgiving eve, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal complaint to acquire details about the program that the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice and four of its component agencies continue to keep under wraps.

Until the "RDI program's" termination in 2008, the CIA flew suspected terrorists to a network of secret prisons known as "black sites" and tortured them.

President Barack Obama ordered these sites closed in 2009.

A partial glimpse into how these secret prisons operated came into view late last year upon the release of a heavily redacted summary of a 6,700-page, classified report titled the "Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program."

It is much better known, simply, as the torture report.

In a 524-page introduction , the public learned that the CIA used far more brutal techniques than previously disclosed, including sexual torture under the guise of rectal feeding and hydration.

Senate investigators found that the agency lied to the press, public and legislators to disguise the truth that the program was "ineffective" and "counterproductive."

The CIA sought to defend itself from these revelations by declassifying new information about the program on Jan. 28 of this year.

In its Nov. 25 lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act, the ACLU seeks "records and categories of records either identified in the [Senate] report or whose classification status is implicated by the report's public release, the CIA's public response, and the accompanying change in classification guidance."

The Department of Defense and four Department of Justice agencies - including the Office of Legal Counsel, Office of Information Policy, Department of State and CIA - all stonewalled the ACLU's requests, according to the complaint.

The ACLU is represented by attorney Dror Ladin.

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