US: Senate Republicans demand probe into leak on CIA’s gulag

In a letter to the chairmen of the Senate and House intelligence committees, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Republican of Tennessee, and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, Republican of Illinois, wrote, “If accurate, such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences, and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks.”

The CIA’s general counsel has also sent a letter to the Justice Department complaining that a release of classified information occurred in connection with the Post article.

The Post’s November 2 report on the global gulag created outrage around the world. The conditions in these “black sites,” established to circumvent US and international law, are clearly hellish. In certain locations, prisoners, who have never been charged with any crime, are kept in underground cells, in the dark. CIA interrogators are permitted to use such barbaric methods as “water boarding,” a kind of mock asphyxiation.

The Post revealed that US intelligence was holding some of its allegedly most important captives at a Stalinist-era compound in eastern Europe, and that at least two eastern European nations were hosting these illegal jails.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/nov2005/cia-n11.shtml