The Daily Outrage

The CCR blog

President Obama: What Are You Waiting for? Confront CIA Torture

Remember the horrific accounts of CIA torture exposed in the executive summary of the Senate Torture Report? It gets worse. Today, declassified details describing the torture of CCR client Majid Khan at the hands of the CIA were made public for the first time by Reuters. The degrading and humiliating torture our client experienced in secret detention goes far beyond what was revealed in the Senate report released in December 2014. Khan was waterboarded, raped, threatened with harm to himself and his family, and spent most of 2003 living in total darkness. What will it take for President Obama to finally confront the CIA about these heinous crimes? Under U.S. law, torture is a crime that can lead to life in prison – so why hasn’t it?

The CIA has obfuscated and lied about the torture program every step of the way. The agency has publicly maintained that only three men were waterboarded – yet today's news refutes that claim. Meanwhile, John Brennan – who was a senior CIA official when the torture program was designed and implemented, and has refused to state that waterboarding constitutes torture – continues to head President Obama’s CIA, even after the release of the Senate report. To this day there has been no new investigation into the brutal torture regime of any sort.

This total lack of accountability must not stand. Send this letter to President Obama urging him to fire CIA Director John Brennan, declassify and make public the full Senate Torture Report and the CIA’s internal Panetta review, and open a criminal investigation into the torture program—how it was authorized, carried out, and covered-up. To prevent torture, we must prosecute torturers. It’s that simple.

Last modified 

December 14, 2015