The Bush administration was so adamant in its public statements against torture that CIA officials repeatedly sought reassurances that the White House officials who had given them permission to torture in the first place hadn’t changed their minds. In a July 29, 2003, White House meeting that included Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security […]

The outrageous whitewash issued Wednesday by the CIA panel John Brennan hand-picked to lead the investigation into his agency's spying on Senate staffers is being taken seriously by the elite Washington media. But it's just the latest element in a long string of cover-ups and deceptions.

Powerful and unaccountable, the Lords of Secrecy, as Scott Horton calls them, are in charge of our national security state.

Dick Cheney gave no ground in his “Meet the Press” interview on Sunday, but he did something arguably even better: He bared his twisted soul. Parrying questions from Chuck Todd with what he must have figured were winning talking points about the 9/11 terror attacks, Cheney unwittingly demonstrated how profoundly he has renounced fundamental American […]

Dick Cheney has always loved going on “Meet the Press.” It gives him the appearance of subjecting himself to scrutiny, while actually giving him a great platform to say whatever he wants. Cheney’s love for “Meet the Press” is not a matter of conjecture. The 2007 trial of Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, revealed […]

CIA Director John Brennan gave no ground to his critics during a press conference on Thursday, singing his agency’s praises and saying it “did a lot of things right” in its interrogation program. It was his first public appearance since a Senate report released on Tuesday exhaustively documented the CIA’s gruesome record of torture and […]

For the CIA officials involved in torture, one thing was clear from the very beginning: The only way they would be forgiven for what they did was if they could show it had saved lives. It was the heart of their rationale. It was vital to public acceptance. It was how they would avoid prosecution. The […]

After seven months of promising to release a report exposing CIA torture of terror suspects, the Obama administration Friday reportedly sent Secretary of State John Kerry to ask Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein to consider holding off “because a lot is going on in the world.” The White House has been negotiating with Feinstein […]

The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture is expected imminently. Here's what you should know before you read it.

Mike Gravel is urging Sen. Mark Udall to read the CIA torture report into the Congressional Record.