The CIA told a federal court on Monday that it would not turn over a slew of documents related to the George W. Bush administration's controversial detainee interrogation program.
Last week, the Justice Department released a redacted CIA report from 2004, and hundreds of pages of other records, that had been sought by the American Civil Liberties Union in Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation. That material fueled calls by Democrats and liberal activists for a full investigation of the interrogation program.
But the administration on Monday told New York district judge Alvin K. Hellerstein that it would not hand over other records related to the interrogation program, which critics say amounted to torture.
"The documents at issue contain information that implicates intelligence activities, sources, and methods, and information relateing to the foreign relations and activities of the United States," CIA official Wendy M. Hilton said in a declaration filed at the court. "This information is classified, as its unauthorized disclosure could reasonably be expected to result in serious or exceptionally grave damage to the national security."
Long described the records in question as mostly related to "closed investigations" by the CIA into "alleged improprieties in the treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan."
The ACLU said the records in question include a presidential directive authorizing secret CIA prisons for detainees, known as "black sites."
"The American public has a right to know the full truth about the torture that was committed in its name," said Alex Abdo, a legal fellow with the ACLU's National Security Project.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has commissioned a preliminary probe into conduct that fell outside guidelines established by the Bush Justice Department.
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