On the heels of the CIA torture report released in December, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein plans to introduce legislation to prevent brutal interrogation practices by intelligence officials.
The
CIA report was released on Dec. 9 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which Feinstein chaired at the time. It alleged that CIA officials kept information about its interrogation practices from Congress and the White House.
Feinstein sent a letter to President Barack Obama, which was released Monday, detailing
her recommendations, including four bills she plans to introduce that will "codify" Obama's executive orders on interrogation tactics that he made in January 2009.
"These recommendations are intended to make sure that the United States never again engages in actions that you have acknowledged were torture," the California Democrat wrote.
Feinstein proposes a measure to "close all torture loopholes." She explains that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 allowed for "coercive and abusive interrogation techniques," and that her legislation will prohibit such techniques.
She also recommends expanding the "U.S. Army Field Manual as the exclusive set of interrogation techniques," which is currently limited to the Defense Department, saying that it should also be the rules used by the intelligence committee, as Obama's Jan. 22, 2009 executive order established.
In addition, Feinstein says the government should be required "to notify the Red Cross and provide timely access to all captured detainees."
She also says that the CIA should be prohibited from detaining terrorist suspects "beyond a short-term, transitory basis."
Those recommendations are also consistent with the president's January 2009 executive order, "Ensuring Lawful Interrogations."
Feinstein also recommends improving oversight of CIA covert programs including videotaping all interrogations.
The California Democrat says that the declassification process by the CIA also needs to be reformed, citing the fact that it took almost eight months for the Senate Intelligence Committee's final report to be declassified.
"Members of the Committee have found the declassification process to be slow and disjointed, even for information that Congress has identified as being of high public interest," she wrote.
Feisntein is asking for Obama's public support of her recommendations upon their release.
A CIA spokesperson
told Politico that several of the senator's recommendations have already been implemented.
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