Take the CIA Out of the Loop on the Torture Report

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me three times? Good grief, no one should ever be fooled three times.

But that's exactly what will happen to the Senate Intelligence Committee – and the American people – unless President Obama puts a leash on an unchecked CIA. He now must stop them from taking any more steps to try to hide its record of torture, secret prisons and the kidnapping program known as extraordinary rendition.

The committee voted Thursday to submit its torture report to the executive branch for a declassification review and then public release.

Under the leadership of Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the committee conducted a five-year investigation into the CIA's use of torture between 2001 and 2006. Senators and their staffs reviewed more than 3 million pages of CIA documents, resulting in a report of more than 6,000 pages.

One of the very few conclusions of the report that's been made public is that the CIA repeatedly misled Congress, the White House and the Justice Department on the facts of the torture program.

An entire section of the report is dedicated to CIA falsehoods, presumably including lies to the very committee charged with overseeing the CIA.

Fool the Senate once, shame on the CIA.

Read the rest at CNN.com.

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