By Michael Meurer, Truthout | News Analysis
A slender but welcome ray of light has been shone on the darkened chambers of CIA torture with the December 9, 2014, release of a report on the agency’s detention and interrogation programs by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence chaired by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California).
However, the 528-page “summary version” of the report’s “Findings and Conclusions” has, by the admission of Feinstein herself, been heavily redacted and is focused only on CIA torture. It reports only one prisoner death and does not include more damning information and photographic evidence on US torture and prisons operated by the US Army, US Navy and other Department of Defense (DOD) agencies.
For example, in March 2005, CBS’s “60 Minutes” reported that 108 prisoners had already died in US custody in Iraq and Afghanistan prisons. A July 5, 2005, follow-up review of government documents on torture from multiple DOD agencies and the CIA, including the results of criminal investigations by the US Army and Navy, was conducted by Steven H. Miles, M.D., under the joint auspices of the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), National Library of Medicine (NLM) and National Institutes of Health (NIH). Under the heading, “How Many Detainees Died of Homicide by Torture?” the Miles review said: In March 2005, the US Armed Forces said that it suspected that 26 deaths were due to criminal homicides.
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