Senate report on CIA torture a highly political hatchet job

The shock and outrage at the report by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) about CIA torture techniques is rather overdone. Most of the revelations were in the public domain beforehand, if you knew where to look.

Some of them make for unpleasant reading but the scale of the abuse of prisoners seems to have been limited: the worst physical torture, such as waterboarding, was confined to just a handful of high-profile prisoners such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, widely regarded as the principal architect of the brutal 9/11 massacre of 2,997 innocent civilians from 90 countries, including 67 British subjects.

British readers should be aware that the report is entirely the work of Democratic senators and their staffs who rushed it out before the Senate passes under Republican control on 20 January 2015, as a result of the recent mid-term elections.

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The final report was approved two years ago - on 13 December 2012 - by a vote of 9–6, with seven Democrats, one Independent and one Republican voting in favour of publication and six Republicans voting against. (If a jury in a criminal trial were to split 9-6, it would not be enough to secure a conviction.)

The two years since have been spent in organising the highly complex declassification process – including consulting the major intelligence allies, in particular the other members of the Four-Eyes group – Australia, Canada and the UK (AUSCANUKUS).

At the same time as the report was finally released last week, the six Republicans who voted against it issued their own 167-page critique of both the procedures and conclusions of the majority report.

The CIA vehemently disagrees with nearly all the findings and has also produced a detailed rebuttal. They believe that their enhanced interrogation techniques did produce actionable intelligence on terrorist plots and crucially, the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden.

• Senate report: How the Middle Eastern press reacted
• Coline Covington: no better than our enemies

The Senate report was issued under the signature of the committee’s chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, a former Mayor of San Francisco and long-time opponent and critic of President George W Bush.

She is a highly partisan politician who loathes the Republicans and is loathed back by many for her militant pro-abortion beliefs. It’s like getting Dennis Skinner to write a report on Mrs Thatcher and alleged MI5 activities during the miners’ strike.

Nevertheless, the report is being commented on across the globe as if Feinstein and her colleagues are disinterested observers.

More humbug has been apparent on this side of the Atlantic with politicians of all parties queuing up to demand yet another judicial inquiry. Why on earth do people think that an institutionally left-wing judiciary is to be trusted?

There is a tendency in Western democracies to use the law to hem in an elected government’s proper freedom of action. Contributing 0.7 per cent of the UK’s GDP to ‘international development’ (as much a euphemism as ‘enhanced interrogation’) is now the law of the land. The UK’s border controls, surely an executive responsibility, are now subject to endless legal challenges – which the UK taxpayer is forced to pay for.

I am of the old-fashioned view that border control is essential to national security and God in his wisdom gave us the Channel to allow us to maintain the British way of life against all kinds of ghastly threats from Napoleon through Hitler to Islamist extremists.

My views are not shared by the senior judiciary: on Monday this week the Court of Appeal struck down efforts by the Justice Secretary Chris Grayling to limit legal aid in immigration cases. The trio of judges delivering the verdict were the Master of the Rolls, Lord Justice Dyson, Lord Justice Richards and Lord Justice Sullivan. The impartial majesty of the law was on full display as they humiliated the elected Justice Secretary.

A photograph from Sydney hugely moved me a few hours ago: it showed a young waitress escaping from the horrors of the Lindt Café into the arms of a heavily armed New South Wales policeman.

Ask yourself this question: if you were caught in some ghastly hostage situation somewhere, who would you want in attendance – a human rights lawyer or someone prepared to do what was necessary to get you out alive?