Rand Paul May Have Been Right That Congress Was 'Complicit' In Torture
by Andrew Perez
Posted: 04/08/2014 8:20 pm EDT
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) applauded Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) last month after she spoke out against the CIA for allegedly spying on congressional staffers investigating the agency's torture program. But Feinstein appeared to confirm Paul's past suspicions that leaders of congressional intelligence committees were "complicit" in allowing torture during President George W. Bush's (R) administration.
"The Republicans and the Democrats at high levels supported and at least knew that Bush had given these orders to allow torture to occur," Paul said in an interview with Antiwar.com in May 2009, months before he launched his bid for Senate. "My guess is that the leaders of all the intelligence committees, as well as the congressional leaders on both sides, knew very well of all the things that were going on."
Paul added that "all the leaders, both the Republicans and Democrats, are complicit in just about everything that happened."
Feinstein, who has led the Senate Intelligence Committee since 2009, alleged on the Senate floor last month that the CIA had interfered with her staffers' investigation of the agency's use of torture on terror suspects. She argued the committee's report should be declassified "to ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted."
In describing how the report came about, Feinstein said, "The CIA's detention and interrogation program began operations in 2002, though it was not until September 2006, that members of the Intelligence Committee, other than the chairman and vice chairman, were briefed."
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