The opening salvos on the partially declassified CIA Inspector General's report on detainee abuses included hair-raising anecdotes about threatening captives with power drills, guns to the head and the mock deaths of other prisoners.

Now the story is the dogs under the porch: what's beneath all those blacked-out paragraphs in the still heavily redacted, 2004 report by the spy agency's IG.

The National Security Archive, a nonprofit research center at George Washington University, today released a massive file of more than 83,000 pages of primary source documents "related to the detention and interrogation of individuals by the United States, in connection with the conduct of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the broader context of the 'global war on terror.'"

The Department of Homeland Security said today that reports on antiwar groups gathered by John Towery, an undercover Army spy in Washington State, did not make their way into DHS intelligence data banks.

An Army civilian from a Fort Lewis, Wash., "force protection division" infiltrated a Seattle-area antiwar group posing as an anarchist who could steal classified information for the organization, according to little-noticed news reports.

A member of the antiwar group said documents obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that his friend and fellow activist "John Jacob" was actually military spy John Towery.

A Fort Lewis spokesman confirmed that Towery was employed on the base but would offer no additional information because he "performs sensitive law enforcement work with the installation law enforcement community." 

Don't expect the CIA to turn over the family jewels on its interrogation videotapes to the American Civil Liberties Union, just because it lost a legal round this week.

"There's nothing wrong with the government seeking to do a better job of properly sharing legitimately acquired information about law enforcement investigations -- indeed, that is one of the things that 9/11 tragically showed is very much needed," the report's executive summary states.

"But in a democracy, the collection and sharing of intelligence information--especially information about American citizens and other residents--need to be carried out with the utmost care. That is because more and more, the amount of information available on each one of us is enough to assemble a very detailed portrait of our lives. And because security agencies are moving toward using such portraits to profile how 'suspicious' we look."

"There are a couple of ways to look at the issue," Rollins told me. "The first is that the centers are efficiently organized and capable of undertaking domestic intelligence collection activities -- they are not.

"Second, nefarious intentions are afoot by the leaders within these centers with the desire to sacrifice civil liberty protections in the name of thwarting a possible terrorist attack -- I don't believe this is the case." 

"The lack of a clear national strategy and undefined federal-state expectations, roles, and responsibilities," he said, "has led to instances where state and local employees have drifted outside the bounds of acceptable law enforcement activities."

A study last February, obtained by my colleague Dan Fowler, identified several problems with DHS's fusion-center efforts.

The American Civil Liberties Union vowed Wednesday to sue President Bush before the ink is dry on his signature putting new electronic snooping measures in play.

"This fight is not over. We intend to challenge this bill as soon as President Bush signs it into law," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. "The bill allows the warrantless and dragnet surveillance of Americans' international telephone and email communications. It plainly violates the Fourth Amendment."

The Senate approved legislation earlier in the day overhauling the 30-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which includes legal immunity for telecommunications companies which collaborated with the administration's warrantless monitoring of Americans' e-mails and telephone calls.   

The White House hailed passage of the act.

We know that information we have been able to acquire about foreign threats will help us detect and prevent attacks on our homeland," Bush said in a statement. "Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, has assured me that this bill gives him the most immediate tools he needs to defeat the intentions of our enemies. And so in signing this legislation today I am heartened to know that his critical work will be strengthened and we will be better armed to prevent attacks in the future.

The ACLU called the bill "a blatant assault upon civil liberties and the right to privacy." See its full statement, here.