That is during the Bush era.
At a time when Bush greatly wanted to present evidence of Sadaam's tyranny - and was reaching for straws, such as the fake "people shredding machine" story - why would they cover up the presence of a torture room in New York?
Why wouldn’t they? Bush is a liberal like the rest of them; why wouldn’t he also cover up the evidence of WMDs like he did? (which popped up later in some cases, most notably the yellowcake they shipped to Canada.)
And here I thought that this would be consistent with the current narrative of Sunni extremists being the primary danger out of Islam, too. But that’s OK; there must be no danger from Islam at all, is that it.