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CIA Admits It 'Mistakenly' Destroyed Copy of Senate Torture Report
Monday, May 16, 2016 12:49 PM
By: Joe Crowe
The CIA's Inspector General's office has confirmed that it destroyed its only copy of a Senate torture report, according to Yahoo News.
The destruction of the copy was revealed to the Senate Intelligence Committee in summer of 2015, and was not publicly announced.
Justice Department lawyers had assured a federal judge that copies of the report were being saved.
Inspector General officials deleted an uploaded document, then accidentally destroyed a disk that it was contained on, according to Yahoo News.
Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who originated the report, sent a letter to CIA Director John Brennan urging him to send a new copy to the Inspector General's office "immediately."
Douglas Cox, a City University of New York law professor who tracks the preservation of federal records, expressed surprise that the destruction could have happened within the CIA.
"They're the ones that are supposed to be providing accountability within the agency itself," Cox said, according to Yahoo News.
Copies of the 6,700-page report still exist. Dean Boyd, the agency's chief of public affairs, said that the full report is locked in a vault at CIA headquarters.
The document detailed reports about torture, including sleep deprivation and waterboarding. Feinstein released a 500-page summary of the report in 2014.
The full report has never been released. A U.S. Court of Appeals ruling said that it is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, because Congress is not an "agency" that is subject to FOIA rules.
Sen. Feinstein has been joined by Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy to seek to have the report declared a federal record that must be preserved "in the public interest."
