the congress. barack obama responded tonight. the findings in the intelligence report were brutal. and it constituted torture. it s not who we are. it s about potential ramifications overseas and we ve taken precautionary steps to try to mitigate any additional risks. i think it was important for us to release this so that we can account for it so people understand precisely why i banned these practices as one of the first acts i took when i came to office. here s a sample of the details about cia interrogation
the president is, in fact, on the organizational chart, the executive head of all those departments including the cia. it s understandable he talks about it today. the senators on the senate floor were much more blunt. more of that next.
that doesn t tell you very much because the credit for passing legislation is usually far too complex to assign to any individual. jay rockefeller dependent run for senate thinking i want to get there so that i can someday investigate the cia. that was a role that history presented to senator rockefeller and that he accepted and for ten years became the subject of his singular focus and relentless effort. 1/3 of his senate career was devoted to the work that was presented to the senate today. 1/3 of jay rockefeller s senate career was dedicated to doing something that possibly no other government on earth would do, dig into an important secret activity that the government got very wrong and tell the world about it and leave that government in a position where it will not be able to make that similar mistame again. if that s the only thing he did in his lifetime, it would be a great accomplishment.
by car and were instructed we couldn t talk to each other on the way back from one of those meetings. it was absurd. questions or follow up requests were rejected and at times i was not allowed to consult with my couns counsel. i m not a lawyer. there are legal matters involved here. they said we couldn t talk to any of our staff, legal counsel or not. or other members of the kmiet te who knew nothing about this because they had not balanced budget informed at all. it was clear that these briefings were not meant to answer any questions but were intended to only to provide cover for the administration and the cia. it was infuriating to me to realize that i was part of a check box exercise that the administration planned to use and later did use so they could disingenuously claim that they had, quote, in a phrase that i will never be able to forget, fully briefed the congress. joining me now is michael
careful examination of a record that is now available to the government. some of it may not be public information for some time, probably in the course of time more of it can be, but all of it is now in the possession of the executive branch and of the white house and can be a teaching tool within the government for years to come. michael davidson, thank you very much for joining us tonight. thank you. we re joined now by glen greenwald, the co-founding editor of the intercept. glenn, you ve anticipated a lot of what is in this report today, but now we have the actual documents. a lot of the documents, a lot of memos, a lot of e-mails. a lot of what was going on here. and with senator rockefeller s description of how much misleading was going on for years with the cia, i think we can all now see the pent-up frustrations on that committee trying to ovsee what the cia wa