The “False Narrative” of the Feinstein Report is a Dark Stain on America’s Image

Flopping Aces ^ | 05-20-15 | Wordsmith

[Starman417]

Lawfare Blog:

Following an American special forces raid on the compound of Islamic State operative Abu Sayyaf, U.S. interrogators, who are part of the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group, have flown to Iraq in order to question Umm Sayyaf, the wife of Abu Sayyaf, who was taken during the operation. Umm Sayyaf was allegedly involved in the workings of the Islamic State and could possibly have played a role in “the enslavement of women in Iraq and Syria.” U.S. interrogators plan to talk to Umm Sayyaf about U.S. hostages held by the militant group. However, according to the Washington Post, officials have yet to determine whether Umm Sayyaf will remain in Iraq or will be brought back to the U.S.

The High Value Detainee Interrogation Group is President Obama's replacement of the CIA Retention, Detention and Interrogation Program. It was created in August of 2009 (8 months after newly-elected President Obama signed Executive Order 13491):

President Obama has approved the creation of an elite team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects, part of a broader effort to revamp U.S. policy on detention and interrogation, senior administration officials said Sunday.

Obama signed off late last week on the unit, named the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG. Made up of experts from several intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the interrogation unit will be housed at the FBI but will be overseen by the National Security Council -- shifting the center of gravity away from the CIA and giving the White House direct oversight.

Seeking to signal a clean break from the Bush administration, Obama moved to overhaul interrogation and detention guidelines soon after taking office, including the creation of a task force on interrogation and transfer policies. The task force, whose findings will be made public Monday, recommended the new interrogation unit, along with other changes regarding the way prisoners are transferred overseas.

Apparently, PBS' Frontline feels "threatened" by the "false narrative" in the movie, Zero Dark Thirty, and feels the moral obligation to "correct" the record.

In the days leading up to the nationwide release of Zero Dark Thirty, the 2012 blockbuster movie about the U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden, Senator Dianne Feinstein was given an advanced screening. How did the then-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose investigators were working on their own story about the hunt for bin Laden and the role that torture may have played, react to Hollywood’s depiction?

“I walked out of Zero Dark Thirty, candidly,” Feinstein says. “We were having a showing and I got into it about 15, 20 minutes and left. I couldn’t handle it. Because it’s so false.”

False, in Feinstein’s estimation, because she says the film inaccurately portrays torture as a key tool in obtaining information about bin Laden’s whereabouts. Feinstein recounts her revulsion in a new documentary from Frontline, airing Tuesday night on PBS, about the CIA’s torture program and whether brutal interrogations of detainees helped surface intelligence that led to bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, where U.S. special operations forces killed him in 2011.

The documentary is short on news and revelations. But it concisely lays out the the dueling narratives between the CIA’s version of its so-called “rendition, detention, and interrogation” program, and the Senate Intelligence Commitee’s years-long investigation of the same. The committee’s findings conclude that the agency tortured detainees and failed to come up with useful intelligence about terrorist attacks. If you haven’t been following the minutiae of this now-decade-long controversy, the documentary will bring you up to speed.

Investigative journalist Michael Isikoff told Frontline that many more people will see Zero Dark Thirty than will read the countless newspaper articles about the CIA’s interrogation techniques. The movie, he thinks, will stand as the dominant narrative for what really happened in the search for bin Laden.

The Frontline producers seem conscious of that fact, and perhaps in the hopes that more people will watch a TV piece about the CIA program than read about it, they set out to poke holes in Langley’s version of events—and in Hollywood’s.

Zero Dark Thirty is hardly a pro-CIA torture propaganda piece. It's entertainment, based upon an interpretation of live events. Anyone who believes it to be real in the sense of a documentary is an idiot. Like the producers of Frontline, I suppose.

Here's a Frontline newsflash: Zero Dark Thirty isn't a documentary. It's a dramatization that freely admits to taking liberties with details.

Now let's talk about that other "false narrative", the Feinstein Report which paints a distorted, lopsided, partisan perspective.

How about we not let that one off the hook?

So the Frontline special purports to be a "documentary". Perhaps, but it's also propaganda that will present a lopsided perspective if it is basing its "facts" on the Feinstein narrative.

Former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morell on Hugh Hewitt had some choice words for Feinstein's Report:

[MeshugeMikey]

the Feinstein Report ?

even with glancing at it ...I’d give a Feinstein Reportt as much creedence as anything from Obie from Nairobi

[Sasparilla]

Feinstein is a dark stain on America.

[MeshugeMikey]

a very dark and very smelly stain at that!!!

[TBP]

This is what liberals do.

[Bogey78O]

The worst part is they foolishly think their slander gives them credit with those who hate America. All it does is fill our enemies with a sense of righteousness over what they intend as political grandstanding.

The knife cuts their neck the same as a Republicans.

[zzwhale]

I’d like her to explain the NO BID CONTRACTS her husband has
She is a STAIN on the flag
These congressfolks sit on their fat stinking lazy asses while people sacrifice for the country and then these crooks and hypocrites have the gall to criticize...... next troop deployment should require EVERY MEMBER OF CONGRESS TO SERVE ON POINT FOR A MONTH..... then let’s discuss WATERBOARDING...
waterboarding is mild compared to a the body bags our troops come home in....

[Valin]

FYI

FRONTLINE: Secrets, Politics and Torture
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365492758/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=pbsofficial&utm_campaign=frontline_2015
Aired: 05/19/2015

One could say what we have here is a 54:30 pile of absolute BullS**t

A very well done piece of Leftest Spin. Your 1st clue is starting out with world famous lying scumbag Jane Mayer...goes rapidly downhill from there.