Sen. Mark Udall accused the CIA of continuing to mislead Congress and the public about his agency’s use of extreme interrogation techniques and called on President Obama to purge the agency of its top leadership, including Director John Brennan.
The Colorado Democrat, who lost his re-election bid and will be leaving Congress at the end of the month, on Wednesday delivered an impassioned speech on the Senate floor about the Senate Intelligence Committee’s efforts to investigate the CIA’s extreme interrogation techniques used in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In his wide-ranging remarks, Udall, a member of the intelligence panel, accused Brennan of lying to Congress and of taking an “openly hostile and dismissive” response to the committee’s oversight role. He also skewered the White House for failing to hold the CIA accountable and for directly withholding thousands of documents from the committee.
In order to restore public trust in the CIA and morale at the agency, Udall said Brennan must resign. He also argued that the next director should come clean on the agency’s extreme interrogation program.
“It’s incumbent on government leaders,” he said, to make the necessary changes to ensure that the CIA’s dedicated employees can once again be proud to work there.
“For Director Brennan, that means resigning, and for the next CIA director, that means immediately correcting the false record,” he said.
Udall was still making his speech when White House spokesman Josh Earnest began his daily briefing with reporters. Earnest said he could not respond directly to his comments and accusations because he hadn’t heard them.
But Earnest defended Obama’s leadership on the issue, citing an executive order the president signed on his second day in office banning the extreme interrogation practices.
“The most important question is, should we have done it?” he said. “The president does not believe enhanced interrogation techniques are good for our moral authority. In fact, he believes it undermines it.”
Earnest also said Obama unequivocally backs Brennan, calling him a “decorated” public servant and a “patriot” whom the president has relied on both as a top national security adviser and as CIA director.
“The president believes he has done an exemplary job in both of those roles,” Earnest said.
The comments sharply contrast Udall’s description of Brennan’s record at the CIA and the White House.
Udall accused the 25-year veteran of the CIA of trying to cover up a review of the extreme interrogation practices undertaken by Leon Panetta, Obama’s first CIA director. He also charged Brennan with “clinging to a false narrative about the effectiveness of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program.”
Peppered with questions about the effectiveness of the interrogation tactics, Earnest repeatedly declined to say whether the program produced actionable intelligence that helped save American lives, as Brennan forcefully argued in a statement reacting to the report’s release Tuesday.
In outlining his criticisms of the CIA’s “dismissive” reaction to the Senate investigators, Udall cited factual disparities between Brennan’s responses to committee questions and the Panetta Review. He said Senate staff obtained a partial version of the review when the agency inadvertently provided access to it during the panel’s nearly six-year investigation.
“In my view, the Panetta Review is a smoking gun,” he said, calling for the declassification and release of the entire review.
The entire Senate review, he said, leads to a “disturbing” discovery — that Brennan and the CIA are continuing to provide inaccurate information about the efficacy of the interrogation program.
“In other words, the CIA is lying,” he said.
Shifting his aim to Obama, Udall went on to accuse the White House of withholding 9,000 documents from the Intelligence Committee even though its lawyers have never formally said they were protected under executive privilege.
He also blamed Obama for failing to provide accountability for the CIA’s actions and for Brennan’s “failure of leadership.”
“Instead, he has expressed full confidence in Director Brennan and has shown no interest in trying to rein him in,” Udall said.
“If there is no moral leadership from the White House, then what’s to stop the next White House and CIA director from supporting torture?” he asked. “The White House has not led on transparency as Obama promised he would” during his 2008 campaign.
Udall also took issue with the Justice Department’s failure to bring charges or prosecute anyone involved in the extreme interrogation practices once Obama took office.
He noted that some of the people involved in the program remain at the CIA in senior-level positions.
“It’s bad enough not to prosecute these officials — to reward or promote them is incomprehensible,” he said. “The president needs to purge its administration of high-level officials responsible for this program. He needs to force a cultural change at the CIA.”
Earnest said Obama accepted the Justice Department decision not to prosecute CIA officials and declined to say whether the president agrees with it.
“That is the way our criminal justice systems works … it’s not the president of the United States that conducts a criminal inquiry,” he said. “The president has confidence in our criminal justice system.”
