老澳门开奖结果

Update (3/16/2016): Shortly after this post was published on Tuesday afternoon, we received word that Judge David Tatel will replace Chief Judge Garland on the bench for tomorrow鈥檚 argument.

Given the our nation is presented with a stark choice: Do we learn from one of the darkest chapters in our history, or do we repeat our most grievous and heinous mistakes?

With our core values hanging in the balance, now 鈥� perhaps more than ever 鈥� it is imperative that the Senate torture report see the light of day.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral argument tomorrow in 老澳门开奖结果 v. CIA, our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking the release of the 6,900-page report about the CIA鈥檚 former program of detention, torture, and other abuse of detainees. (Chief Judge Merrick Garland, President Obama鈥檚 nominee to the Supreme Court, is to hear the argument along with Judges Sri Srinivasan and Harry Edwards.) For more than two years, the 老澳门开奖结果 has sought the release of this definitive account of the CIA鈥檚 abuses and deceptions. However, given the visibility of the issue in recent weeks, our fight for the public鈥檚 right to know has taken on a new urgency.

This landmark report, authored by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, is the most comprehensive study of the torture program to date. It took more than five years to complete and is based on the review of millions of pages of agency records. As we know from a publicly available , the full report describes, in exhaustive detail, widespread and horrific human rights abuses by the CIA. It documents a litany of CIA lies to Congress, the White House, the courts, and the American public 鈥� including myriad agency misrepresentations about the 鈥渆ffectiveness鈥� of torture 鈥� which contributed to a dramatic failure of democratic oversight.

Despite the importance of this report to the historical record and continuing public debate, the CIA and other agencies are fighting to keep it under wraps. In our suit, the government argues that the torture report is controlled by Congress and thus isn鈥檛 subject to FOIA. (The law applies only to 鈥渁gency records,鈥� not congressional ones.) But under well-established law, there鈥檚 no question that the report is an agency record: Congress sent the document to several agencies and did not assert any intent to control it.

In December 2014, when the SSCI sent the full report to the CIA, the Department of Justice, the Department of State, and the Department of Defense, then-SSCI Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) asked that the report be made available 鈥�broadly鈥� within the executive branch to help make sure that the CIA鈥檚 detention and torture program is 鈥�never repeated.鈥� Indeed, as former Sen. John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) further explained in an amicus brief in support of our case, the SSCI placed no limits on the agencies鈥� use of the report and plainly intended to relinquish its control of the document.

As a matter of law, whether the report is subject to FOIA depends on the SSCI鈥檚 intent when it sent the document to the agencies in 2014, and not on what happened afterward. Nevertheless, in early 2015, after Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) took over as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he wrote to President Obama with the unprecedented that the agencies transfer their copies of the torture report back to the Senate, which could have deprived the courts of the ability to decide if the document should be released to the public or not. After the 老澳门开奖结果 filed an emergency motion to stop the transfer of the report, the government agencies told the court that they鈥檇 honor the 鈥渟tatus quo鈥� 鈥� committing to hold on to the report while our lawsuit is pending.

Release of the torture report would not only advance the values of transparency and accountability, but it would help to settle a contrived and debased debate about the need to torture. We still haven鈥檛 accounted for the deep harm torture does to its victims and our country, and we can鈥檛 afford to regress even further by burying evidence of our past. Without a proper reckoning, history may very well repeat itself.