Senate plans release of torture report by year's end

WASHINGTON, Nov. 26 (UPI) -- A Senate committee plans to release its long-delayed report on CIA interrogation practices before the end of the year.

Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., have said the summary, on the "enhanced interrogation" practices allegedly used during the administration of George W. Bush, could be submitted before the current Senate's last session on Jan. 3.

"It will come out by the end of the year. We are going to find a way," Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said.

Feinstein's committee will be led, in the upcoming Senate, by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., who initially voted against release of the report. The decision to publicly release the report, in the new year, would be his.

Negotiations between the Senate and the Obama administration have bogged down in recent weeks over redactions in the report, which is expected to explain the CIA's use of detention, rendition and interrogation methods, including waterboarding in the post-Sept. 11, 2001 era. CIA methods have been condemned by legal scholars, human rights activists and the Obama administration as examples of torture.

"We are down to essentially one item in the redaction. It happens to be a very sensitive and important item," Feinstein said earlier this week. "It is going to get done, so don't worry about that."

Wednesday an open letter to President Obama was circulated by the United Nations, encouraging the administration to release the report "in the most complete and comprehensible form possible. Your decision on this issue will have far-reaching consequences for victims of human rights violations everywhere and for the credibility of the United States."

The letter was signed by seven U.N. Special Rapporteurs involved in investigations of arbitrary detention, judicial independence and torture and punishment.