The release of the long-awaited CIA inspector general report on torture has been postponed once again.
The ACLU, which is suing to have the report released, just announced that the government is asking for yet another postponement on the date of the report’s release — this time, until August 31. The CIA had earlier said it would release the report June 19. That was then pushed back to June 26, and then again to July 1.
A heavily redacted version of the report was released last year, but at issue here is a version that would contain more information.
The ACLU says it has told the court it opposes the new delay. Jameel Jaffer, who directs the group’s National Security Project said in the release:
The CIA has already had more than five months to review the inspector general’s report, and the report is only about two hundred pages long. We’re increasingly troubled that the Obama administration is suppressing documents that would provide more evidence that the CIA’s interrogation program was both ineffective and illegal. President Obama should not allow the CIA to determine whether evidence of its own unlawful conduct should be made available to the public. The public has a right to know what took place in the CIA’s secret prisons and on whose authority.
It hasn’t been a good day for the Obama administration’s claims to represent a new era of transparency and openness. Earlier today, a good-government group revealed that the Justice Department is arguing, as it did under President Bush, that it should not be required to release Dick Cheney’s interview with federal investigators on the Valerie Plame affair.
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