This makes perfect sense to Republican leaders. If an oversight committee actually oversees an agency like the CIA, writes a report and publishes a redacted version which puts them in a bad light, the only thing to do is hand the unredacted version over to the agency under investigation, right?
The new GOP chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee intends to give back to the CIA an explosive, secret document that has been at the center of a years-long struggle between Congress and the executive branch.
The chairman, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, is also asking executive branch agencies to return unredacted copies of the 6,600 page torture report, he told The Huffington Post in an interview Tuesday night.
The twin moves mark a sharp turn in a new direction for congressional oversight of the intelligence community. The secret document is known colloquially as the Panetta Review, and Democrats who have read it say it is a broad and detailed admission of wrongdoing by the CIA. The agency argues that the document was incomplete when obtained by Senate investigators and doesn’t represent a consensus view within the CIA.
Senator Dianne Feinstein is not pleased:
"I strongly disagree that the administration should relinquish copies of the full committee study, which contains far more detailed records than the public executive summary," the statement continued. "Doing so would limit the ability to learn lessons from this sad chapter in America’s history and omit from the record two years of work, including changes made to the committee’s 2012 report following extensive discussion with the CIA."
Burr thinks handing that report back to the CIA will somehow complete the record? More like erase it.
