On Wednesday, state senators Susan Collins and Angus King of the US Senate Intelligence Committee expressed their support in the declassification of the report on the Central Intelligence Agency's now-defunct detention and interrogation program, of which The New York Times said has been long-delayed. The newspaper said the endorsement of the senators is just two steps away from releasing the much-anticipated report to the public.
Although concerns that committee chairwoman and Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California will not be able to garner enough votes to declassify the 6,300-page report's conclusions and executive summary because of the initial opposition from the other Republicans, Collins and Angus' endorsement will provide a veneer of bipartisanship to the committee's vote, the Times said.
The vote on releasing the report will be held on Thursday afternoon, and will bring partial closure at least to years of jousting in the committee about the publication of the report. The Times said the report will provide albeit a harrowing picture of the Bush administration's controversial response to the September 11, 2001 attacks. According to people who have read the report, the CIA has repeatedly misled the US Congress, the White House and the general public about the value of the program, which entailed brutal interrogation methods.
According to Feinstein, she will send the report directly to the White House for declassification once the committee approves the release. She felt short of providing a timeline how long the process of declassification would be.
The Times said the vote came in the middle of a public dispute between the CIA and the committee over concerns that the federal agency has hacked computers of the committee to review its staff's progress on their review of the CIA report. CIA, on the other hand, accused the committee of accessing restricted parts of its computer network without authorization. The Times said the Justice Department is currently reviewing all allegations by the two parties against each other.
