PoliticoDianne Feinstein set to move on CIA report By BURGESS EVERETT | 3/31/14 7:48 PM EDT
Sen. Dianne Feinstein is racing toward declassification of long-awaited report on the CIA’s interrogation policies — with or without Republican support.
The Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman said Monday that she plans to hold a committee vote Thursday to make public the key findings and summary of the full 6,300-page report, which the panel has been working on for five years. That investigation has raised tension between the Central Intelligence Agency and Feinstein, who has accused the CIA of interfering in her committee’s probe into Bush-era detention and interrogation policies.
Now Feinstein says her committee is poised to make the summary public when it convenes in a classified setting in a secure Capitol Hill office later this week. And she believes the White House will approve declassifying the summary so Americans can all have access to the committee’s years of work.
“I believe they will, hopefully quickly,” Feinstein said of declassification in a brief interview.
This is all news to the committee’s seven Republican members, who Feinstein does not need to vote for declassifying the report as long as the panel’s eight Democratic Caucus members support her as is expected.
“I don’t know for sure what she’s going to do. She hasn’t told me yet,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), the committee’s top Republican, who said he was unaware of the Thursday vote. “It’s no surprise it’s coming. I fully expected her to do so at some point.”
The committee voted to approve the massive final report in 2012, mostly along party lines. Since, Feinstein and her staff have been going back and forth with the CIA on declassifying the report’s 300-page executive summary that she says will reveal the “brutal” nature of the controversial intelligence programs.
