The report, which is more than 6,000 pages, came to be known as the Panetta Review, named after then-CIA director Leon Panetta, who ordered the review be conducted in 2009. The CIA has publicly distanced itself from the report’s findings, arguing that it was incomplete when obtained by Senate investigators, and doesn’t represent a consensus view within the agency.
CIA critics say the document falls in line with last month’s Senate Intelligence Committee report, which showed that the CIA misled the White House and public about its torture of detainees after 9/11, and acted more brutally than it acknowledged.
Senator Richard M. Burr, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, wrote to President Obama last week, saying Burr’s Democratic predecessor, Senator Dianne Feinstein, never should have released the top-secret report to numerous departments within the Executive Branch and requested all copies be returned, the New York Times reported.
Since Feinstein released the report just before the holiday recess, control of Congress has been transferred to Republican lawmakers like Burr, who view investigations into CIA interrogation practices as a partisan attempt to smear the spy agency and the Bush administration.
Feinstein, who is still the Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, opposed the report’s return in a statement released on Tuesday.
"Doing so would limit the ability to learn lessons from this sad chapter in America’s history and omit from the record two years of work, including changes made to the committee’s 2012 report following extensive discussion with the CIA,” she stated.
While the report’s 500-page executive summary was released publicly last year, the full document remains classified. By withdrawing the report from the White House, Senator Burr would prevent its possible release under the Freedom of Information Act.
The White House declined to comment on Burr's request or whether it would return the copies in its possession.
The Panetta Review was removed from a secure facility unbeknownst to the CIA sometime in 2010 and brought back to the Democratic Intelligence Committee’s secure headquarters.
One of the report’s findings was that the CIA repeatedly claimed that intelligence used to thwart terror plots and track down al Qaeda operatives had come from the interrogation of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed when, in fact, the intelligence had other origins, the Times reported.
The agency has long maintained that the interrogation of Mohammed, a chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, was critical to disrupting multiple terror plots. Mohammed was one of the CIA detainees subjected to the most brutal interrogation methods, including being waterboarded 183 times.
