Senator Whitehouse on Torture

Read the full speech here.

Or just read this paragraph:

While it is going on, I want my colleagues and the American public to
know that measured against the information I have been able to gain access to, the story line we have been led to believe--the story line about waterboarding we have been sold--is false in every one of its dimensions.

Or this somewhat longer excerpt:

At the heart of all these falsehoods lies a particular and specific problem: The ``declassifiers'' in the U.S. Government are all in the executive branch. No Senator can declassify, and the procedure for the Senate as an institution to declassify something is so cumbersome that it has never been used. Certain executive branch officials, on the other hand, are at liberty to divulge classified information. When it comes out of their mouth, it is declassified because they are declassified. Its very utterance by those requisite officials is a declassification. What an institutional advantage. The executive branch can use, and has used, that one-sided advantage to spread assertions that either aren't true at all or may be technically true but only on a strained, narrow interpretation that is omitted, leaving a false impression, or that sometimes simply supports one side of an argument that has two sides--but the other side is one they don't want to face up to and don't declassify.

One can hope the Obama administration will be more honorable. I suspect and believe they will be. But the fact is that a cudgel that so lends itself to abuse will some day again be abused, and we should find a way to correct that imbalance. It is intensely frustrating to have access to classified information that proves a lie and not be able to prove that lie. It does not serve America well for Senators to be in
that position.

Chairman Levin has already done excellent work in the Armed Services Committee, and there is no reason to believe that good work won't continue. Chairman Rockefeller has done excellent work in the Intelligence Committee, and his successor, Senator Feinstein, has picked up the mantle and continues forward with energy and determination. We can be proud of what she is doing. Chairman Leahy has begun good work in the Judiciary Committee, and more will ensue when we see the report of the Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility about what went wrong in the Office of Legal Counsel.

The new administration, I hope and expect, is itself drilling down to the details of this sordid episode and not letting themselves be fobbed off with summaries or abridged editions. In short, a lot is going on, and a lot should be going on.

While it is going on, I want my colleagues and the American public to know that measured against the information I have been able to gain access to, the story line we have been led to believe--the story line about waterboarding we have been sold--is false in every one of its dimensions.

I ask that my colleagues be patient and be prepared to listen to the evidence when all is said and done before they wrap themselves in that story line.