WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's administration is directing all U.S. diplomatic posts overseas to review security, and the State Department said it will give additional help to embassies and consulates in need.
The initiative comes as the Senate Intelligence Committee edges toward releasing parts of a report documenting CIA abuses of terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The CIA has contested the conclusions of the report.
The State Department's disclosure of the move to tighten security was made in a letter to Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho. The department indicated in the letter that each American diplomatic post was reviewing security to protect American personnel, facilities and interests, including those of private citizens and businesses.
The State Department said the public disclosure of harsh interrogation methods could lead to a "range of reactions" worldwide. Risch and other Republicans had earlier expressed concerns about publicly releasing the summary and conclusions of the so-called torture report, fearing "another Benghazi-like" event.
"Based on these ongoing discussions with our posts overseas, we are prepared to respond to requests for additional security support," Chad Kreikemeier of the State Department said in an Aug. 29 letter to Risch. A copy was obtained by The Associated Press.
Concern about possible fallout from the release of the report has been particularly acute as the two-year anniversary approaches of the attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Thursday also marks 13 years since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S.
Legislative aides said a censored version of about 500 pages of the 6,600-page review won't be distributed this week. It could be made public later this month.
The CIA contests the report's findings, particularly its broad conclusions that waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" failed to produce valuable information and that the intelligence agency misled President George W. Bush's administration, Congress and the public about the value of the harsh treatment. The CIA also employed unauthorized techniques on detainees and improperly held others, and never properly evaluated its actions, according to legislative aides and report findings leaked in April.
Those findings are consistent with what senators have detailed about the investigation since its 2009 inception and what a host of news reports, human-rights organizations and various governmental and nongovernmental studies have suggested in the decade since the CIA's program started coming to light. Obama has likened the harsh interrogations to torture, but the spy agency has said much in the Senate committee's report is inaccurate.
The agency insists some detainees subjected to the interrogations produced solid intelligence that helped U.S. authorities to apprehend other terrorism suspects and break up attacks. It is prepared to acknowledge its interrogation and detention program was badly managed in the early years and point out that three successive CIA directors have repudiated the techniques as inconsistent with American values. But it won't accept the criticism that its methods proved useless.
In their July 30 letter to Secretary of State John Kerry, the GOP lawmakers raised the question of suspending embassy operations or closing diplomatic posts in particularly sensitive places.
"The men and women who work at these installations are patriots, often doing so at great personal risk in some extremely dangerous and harsh circumstances," they wrote. "Their security should be our utmost priority."
Kreikemeier's response didn't outline any such drastic steps.
"Protecting our people and our facilities is a top priority," he said. "While we can never eliminate all risk, we are continually and actively engaged in identifying and mitigating potential threats."
A Section on 09/09/2014