CIA Will Not Release Rest of Memos Per Cheney’s Request; UPDATE: Cheney Will Appeal Initial Memo Decision
The Obama administration has turned down former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request for the declassification of two CIA reports on the effectiveness of the Agency’s detainee program, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. A letter dated May 7, 2009, from the CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator, Delores M. Nelson, rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.
“In researching the information in question, we have discovered that it is currently the subject of pending FOIA litigation (Bloche v. Department of Defense, Amnesty International v. Central Intelligence Agency). Therefore, the document is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review,” Nelson wrote in the letter to the National Archives, the agency responsible for handling Cheney’s request.
This is bad news, but also good – it means that these memos do in fact exist, they are just unfortunately caught up in bureaucratic red tape. This will most likely lead Dick Cheney to continue his offensive against the “truth commission,” the reference of “torture,” and the release of the CIA memos in the first place.
UPDATE:
Former Vice President Dick Cheney will appeal a CIA decision denying his request for the release of memos he’s contended are crucial to proving the success of “enhanced interrogation techniques” of detainees.
Cheney’s office released a two-sentence statement reacting to the denial, “The Obama Administration has denied Vice President Cheney’s request for the declassification of two documents that provide information about the effectiveness of the detainee program. Vice President Cheney is preparing his appeal to this denial.”
