1/ This thread is intended to highlight some of the reasons the Senate might oppose the nomination of Michael Morell to be CIA Director. For background, see reporting on the possible nomination by @attackerman, @ZcohenCNN, @mattshuham, @NatashaBertrand, & others.
2/ While it’s unclear if Morell will be nominated, Morell’s defense of torture, continued propagation of inaccurate facts about the CIA torture program, dismissal of oversight, & failure to hold CIA officers accountable; appear incompatible w/President-Elect @JoeBiden
3/ Biden was one of the first elected officials, along with Senator McCain, to eloquently detail the need to “straight forwardly” acknowledge the facts of the CIA torture program. See April 2013 @McCainInstitute video@39.46mins bit.ly/39ibVV3 @SenWhitehouse @cindymccain
4/ As Acting CIA Director, Morell failed to “straight forwardly” confront the facts of the CIA torture program and oversaw the CIA’s defiant response to the Senate Torture Report, based on CIA records & fully consistent w/ the “Panetta Report,” a classified internal CIA review.
5/ As background, the U.S. “Senate Torture Report” is based on 6.3 million pages of classified CIA records. The final classified report, which took 7 years to complete, is 6,700-pages+ & includes 38,000 footnotes to the CIA’s own records. There are 20 conclusions & findings.
6/ A 500-page summary of the Senate Torture Report was released in December 2014. A free, 19hr audio reading of the Exec Summary of the Senate Torture Report is available here adbl.co/3o2DKEW - as is a free PDF at bit.ly/2HMboQ8
7/ After the Senate approved an initial report in Dec. 2012, w/a bipartisan vote, the Senate sought comment from the Exec. Branch. Morell oversaw the CIA’s 2013 response, which defended the torture program, made several outrageous analytical claims, & contained factual errors.
8/ While Morell oversaw the CIA Response, he later told @mitchellreports (5/15/15) that he only read “300 pages” of the Senate’s 6,700 report, and that he “skimmed the rest.” At the time, Morell was promoting his book that defended the torture program. See bit.ly/3ln29Ul
9/ The Senate Report critiqued the CIA’s failure to “contact other elements of the U.S. Government with interrogation expertise” & instead hire two private contractors to design an interrogation program based on tactics the U.S. had long considered to be torture.⬇️
10/ The contractors who devised, applied, & trained others to use the torture techniques, were paid $81 million. They had never conducted an interrogation & had no cultural or linguistic expertise. CIA records showed the torture tactics failed to elicit reliable intelligence.
11/ The CIA pursued the torture program without an examination of the CIA’s past findings that coercive tactics were “ineffective” & produce “false answers.” U.S. Gov’t interrogation experts: @SMKleinman, @Ali_H_Soufan, @MarkMFallon, Jack Cloonan, & David Petraeus.
12/ Morell continues to defend the CIA’s decision to hire contractors to design and implement the CIA torture program. Morell asserts in the CIA’s response that it “would have been derelict had [the CIA] not sought them out.” For good measure, Morell underlined “not.” ⬇️
13/ In another example, the Senate found the CIA subjected detainees to torture techniques not previously known, including: rectal feeding and rectal rehydration. The outrageous nature of this abuse is detailed succinctly in this video by @LastWeekTonight
14/ Morell defends the CIA’s use of rectal rehydration as a “well acknowledged medical technique,” despite there being no references to medical need. Instead, CIA officers describe the technique being used to “clear a person’s head” & exhibit “total control" of a detainee.
15/ Morell has also failed to “straight forwardly” acknowledge that the torture program was ineffective in eliciting the intelligence the CIA had claimed. His analytical contortions require some background.
16/ The CIA claimed torture was “necessary” to produce “otherwise unavailable” intelligence to stop specific plots, capture specific terrorists, and save lives. The “necessity” of torture was incorporated into the legal & policy assessments.
17/ The CIA consistently provided 20 examples where torture was “necessary” and claimed, “as a direct result of [torture],” the CIA obtained “unique” intelligence that saved lives by directly thwarting a plot, or capturing a terrorist.
18/ In Morell’s response, he inexplicitly claims it is now “unknowable” if the information the CIA claimed was derived from torture could have been obtained “through other means.” But, it is not only knowable, the Senate Report details how the cited info was actually obtained.
19/ In fact, CIA Records show conclusively that intelligence CIA claimed came from torture was, according to their own records, actually acquired “through other means or from other individuals” (not torture & knowable). See below for details. ⬇️
20/ Here is an example: The CIA claimed that torturing KSM resulted in intel that led to the “capture of Majid Khan.” Morell would have you believe it is “unknowable” if Khan would have been captured without KSM’s torture. This is ridiculous. See p. 334 of the Senate Report & ⬇️.
21/ The CIA later acknowledged factual flaws in Morell’s 122-page response. For example, the CIA admitted that the Senate was right, and Morell's response was wrong: the leads to Bin Ladin’s location did not come CIA detainees who were tortured.
22/ In addition to Morell’s defense of torture, his dismissiveness of oversight, & the analytical errors in the CIA’s response; he failed to hold CIA officers accountable for the destruction of CIA tapes depicting torture when last in CIA leadership. See bit.ly/39nkCOc
23/ The CIA tapes were destroyed despite instructions by the CIA Director, CIA’s General Counsel, & the White House to preserve the tapes. And while Morell failed to hold officers accountable for the destruction, he acknowledged CIA accountability issues in the CIA’s response.
24/ Of course, accountability issues at the CIA have continued: threadreaderapp.com/thread/1331003…
25/ The CIA is a diverse organization. Many CIA officers objected to torture. Others quietly provided key info to the Senate for its investigation. They deserve leadership capable of “straight forwardly” acknowledging wrongdoing. So does President-elect @JoeBiden
⬇️🇺🇸
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