An internal U.S. intelligence memo warns that the release of a Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques could inflame anti-U.S. passions in the Mideast, resulting in potentially violent street protests and threats to U.S. embassies and personnel, U.S. officials tell Yahoo News.

The eight-page memo by the National Intelligence Council is being used by some in the intelligence community to argue for holding the line against Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s demands to release a more complete version of the report’s 480-page summary. The memo went to the White House late last month but, administration officials said, played no role in the redactions to the report that Feinstein is objecting to.

“The Mideast is a tinderbox right now and this could be the spark that ignites quite a fire,” said one U.S. intelligence official who was briefed on the findings.

That concern was echoed Friday by a former top U.S. intelligence official who helped oversee the interrogation program. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out if you release a report like this at a time when terrorism is surging all over the Mideast you are handing the other side a recruitment tool,” John McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy director, told Yahoo News. “It’s blindingly obvious.”

But Senate committee officials have countered that the intelligence community’s concerns are overblown and that the State Department has already taken steps to guard against any potential protests by ramping up security at U.S. embassies.

“The administration is taking prudent steps to be prepared for any reaction, “ said one committee official. The official noted “there was not [a] violent reaction after release” in 2009 of Justice Department legal opinions about CIA interrogation methods and a Senate Armed Services Committee report criticizing harsh techniques used by the Pentagon at Guantanamo.

The memo, with its stark warnings about potential violence, is the latest development in a struggle between Feinstein’s committee and the CIA over how many details should be made public about the agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation” — including the near drowning technique known as waterboarding — of top terror suspects. The techniques were authorized by the Bush administration in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, but were banned by President Obama when he took office .

Intelligence sources familiar with the report say it graphically describes — in some cases, with grisly details — the harsh tactics that agency officers and contractors used for weeks at a time to try to get top suspects like Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to talk. The report also recounts the death of an Afghan suspect after he was shackled and left half naked in freezing temperatures in an agency interrogation facility known as “the Salt Pit” in 2002.

The committee accuses CIA officials of misrepresenting the program to Congress and the Justice Department, claiming it yielded important intelligence about potential terror plots that were actually learned elsewhere, the sources said. Another charge is that the agency undercounted the number of detainees who were subjected to such harsh methods, asserting in 2006 it was no more than 100, leaving out about 20 others who received similar rough treatment in Afghanistan. Both findings have been sharply challenged by former CIA officials who are planning a lengthy rebuttal when the report is released.

When the intelligence committee approved, on a partisan vote, the report last April, Feinstein said “the results were shocking” and that the report “exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation.”

“This will be an ugly story when it comes out,” agrees one U.S. intelligence official familiar with the findings of the report.

The National Intelligence Council is an interagency group that conducts strategic analysis. The memo was requested by the office of the director of national intelligence, James Clapper. An official familiar with the memo says its analysis is largely based on violent protests that erupted in the past after disclosures embarrassing to the United States, such as the release of photographs of abusive treatment at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

“The memo notes that the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was a flashpoint for violent extremists and played a prominent role in their propaganda,” said the official. But the official acknowledged that the memo cited no hard intelligence about the likelihood of demonstrations if the report is released. “There are a lot of ‘could’ves’ in there,” the official said.

But it’s not clear now when, or how much of, the Senate report will see the light of day. The intelligence community provided a partially redacted summary of the full 6,200-page report to Feinstein’s panel last Friday, and Obama administration officials had been bracing for it to be made public this week.

But committee officials, after reviewing the edited summary, were irate, concluding that the intelligence community’s redactions papered over and in some cases rendered meaningless key criticisms of the agency’s interrogation program.

Intelligence officials counter that the redactions were “minimal,” amounting to no more than eight percent of the summary’s text and 15 percent of the total content (including footnotes.) The changes include the use of pseudonyms to obscure the names of CIA officers who participated in the interrogations and, in some cases, the countries where they took place.

Still, Feinstein fired off a letter to President Obama on Tuesday spelling out which redactions she wants restored before she releases the report. "I have concluded the redactions eliminate or obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions," Feinstein said in a statement this week, after deciding she would not release the redacted report in its current form. "Until these redactions are addressed to the committee’s satisfaction, the report will not be made public.”

A White House official told Yahoo News that the White House did not request the NIC memo. "This was an intelligence community initiative to provide information to policymakers," the official said, emphasizing that redactions to the Senate report were made as part of a separate process based on concerns about the exposure of intelligence sources and methods as well as the identity of agency officers. President Obama's homeland security advisor Lisa Monaco is now overseeing a process to review Sen. Feinstein's request to make more portions of the report public, the official said.

A warning on CIA torture report's release

An internal memo warns it could inflame anti-U.S. passions in the Middle East, officials tell Yahoo.
'Exposes brutality'

WASHINGTON (AP) — After years of resisting the pull of more Mideast conflicts, President Barack Obama has sent the military back into action in Iraq, where he once accused his predecessor of waging a "dumb war."

U.S. planes on Friday bombed Islamic militants who were towing artillery outside Irbil near U.S. personnel, the Pentagon said.

The aggressive insurgency threatens to undermine Obama's legacy as the commander in chief who ended a long and unpopular war in which nearly 4,500 American troops died.

It also raises fresh questions about whether Obama's desire to end the war clouded his assessment of the risks of fully withdrawing U.S. troops, as well as his judgment about the threat posed by the extremists.

Obama insisted the U.S. was not moving toward a protracted conflict.

"I will not allow the United States to be dragged into fighting another war in Iraq," he said late Thursday at the White House.

He also said the U.S. had completed airdrops of humanitarian aid to Iraqi religious minorities who are under siege.

The moves are, so far, more limited in scope than the invasion undertaken by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The chief rationale for Obama's authorization for military strikes in Iraq was to protect American forces serving in Irbil. They include some of the forces the president sent in this summer to help train and assist Iraq's struggling security forces.

In trying to help Iraq protect civilians, Obama said the U.S. has a responsibility to stop imminent massacres. It's an echo of the argument he used when the U.S. joined NATO's bombing campaign in Libya in 2010.

Obama has not followed the same path in Syria's civil war, where more than 170,000 people have died.

The conditions that returned the U.S. to military action in Iraq can be traced back months — or years, as the president's critics contend.

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As recently as January, Obama was dismissive of the al-Qaida breakaway Islamic militants. In an interview with the New Yorker magazine, he said comparing the group to the terrorist network established by Osama bin Laden was like comparing a junior varsity basketball team to an NBA squad.

Yet U.S. intelligence and defense officials were warning about the potential threat from the Islamic State, which had strengthened in Syria.

Obama's comments reflected his limited appetite for wading back into Iraq or starting a military engagement in Syria, where he authorized an air assault last summer but never gave the order to go ahead.

Obama's critics draw a direct connection between that approach and his decision to withdraw all American troops from Iraq in late 2011. He did so in large part because Iraq's government refused to sign a security agreement providing U.S. troops immunity.

But White House opponents say the president should have pushed harder for a deal in order to avoid the type of situation now unfolding.

"We are already paying a very heavy price for our inaction, and if we do not change course, the costs of our inaction will only grow," said Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

They called on Obama to extend his authorization of airstrikes against the Islamic State beyond Iraq and into Syria.

The flurry of action comes as Obama's approval ratings have plummeted, and the public's opinion of his foreign policy moves is lagging.

He has faced questions about his ability to influence world events, from Russia's provocations in Ukraine to the fighting between Israel and Hamas.

Obama long has been skeptical about the effectiveness of military action, and he made clear that U.S. airpower would not solve Iraq's problems.

"There's no American military solution to the larger crisis in Iraq," he said.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — White House Correspondent Julie Pace has covered the White House for the AP since 2009. Follow her at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC

An AP News Analysis

WSJ Live
President Obama on Iraqi Airstrikes, Aid Drops

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama on Saturday proposed a broader long-term strategy to confront Islamic militants in Iraq, who have surprised U.S. intelligence with the fast pace of their approach on the Kurdish capital of Irbil.

Obama warned Americans that the new campaign to bring security in Iraq requires military and political changes and "is going to be a long-term project." He wouldn't give a timetable for how long the U.S. military involvement would last, saying it depends on Iraq's political efforts.

"I don't think we are going to solve this problem in weeks," Obama said. "I think this is going to take some time."

The president said Iraqi security forces need to revamp to effectively mount an offensive, which requires a government in Baghdad that the Iraqi military and people have confidence in. Obama said Iraq needs a prime minister — an indication that he believes he's written off the legitimacy of the incumbent, Nouri al-Maliki.

Obama said he won't close the U.S. Embassy or the Irbil consulate, which means American troops and diplomats will remain on the ground who will need protecting. He said where U.S. personnel are threatened, it's his obligation as commander in chief to protect them.

The president said humanitarian efforts continue to airdrop food and water to persecuted religious minorities stranded on a mountaintop, and he said planning was underway for how to get them down.

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President Barack Obama speaks on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, Saturday, Aug. 9, …

Obama made his comments and took a few questions from reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, just before boarding Marine One for his summer vacation in Massachusetts.

He went back inside for his wife, Michelle, and daughter Malia, and then quickly departed for Martha's Vineyard. The White House did not immediately reply to inquiries about younger daughter Sasha's whereabouts.

Obama sharply rejected the premise that it was his decision to pull out from Iraq and said it was because Iraqis didn't want U.S. troops there.

He repeated that the U.S. is not going to have us combat troops in Iraq again. "We are going to maintain that because we should have learned a lesson from our long and immensely costly incursion into Iraq," Obama said.

The president said there's "no doubt" the Islamic State advance on the Kurdish capital of Irbil "has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates."

U.S. military jets launched several airstrikes Friday on isolated targets, including two mortar positions and a vehicle convoy. U.S. officials announced Friday night the second airdrop of food and water in as many days for the imperiled refugees.

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Associated Press writers Julie Pace and Erica Werner, and Nedra Pickler in Edgartown, Massachusetts, contributed to this report.

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Obama: Iraq airstrikes have been successful

The president says the U.S. offensive has accomplished part of its mission by destroying militant arms and equipment.
No timetable given

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - The West warned Russia on Saturday that any attempt to enter Ukraine on "humanitarian" grounds would be considered an "illegal" invasion after Kiev claimed Russian troops had tried to cross the border in the guise of aid workers.

Moscow denied the claim, saying "Russian troops made no attempt to penetrate" Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels in the east admitted that their stronghold Donetsk had been surrounded by Kiev's troops.

"We have difficulty understanding what the Ukrainians are talking about," Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the Interfax news agency.

But US President Barack Obama, Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and Germany's Angela Merkel made it clear they would not brook any attempt by Russia to use humanitarian excuses to sneak troops and military equipment into the conflict-torn east of Ukraine.

"The Prime Minister and President are absolutely clear that such a so-called humanitarian mission would be unjustified and illegal," Downing Street said in a statement following a phone call between Obama and Cameron.

Obama and Merkel also spoke on the phone on Saturday, with both agreeing that any Russian intervention would be "unacceptable", the White House said.

The West has accused Russia of abetting the insurgency by supplying it with weapons, and Kiev said it had scuppered an attempt by Russia to send troops across its porous eastern borders under the guise of aid workers.

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People fix their broken windows after shelling in Donetsk on August 9, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dimitar Dilko …

"A huge convoy moved towards the Ukrainian border, accompanied by Russian troops and military hardware," Valeriy Chaliy, deputy head of President Petro Poroshenko's office said late on Friday in a television interview.

Although it denied the allegations, Moscow nonetheless called on Western countries to back its plans for a "humanitarian mission" to east Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov phoned his US counterpart John Kerry on Saturday "to underline the need for urgent measures to avert the imminent humanitarian crisis" in the region, according to a statement from the Russian foreign ministry.

Poroshenko said his government would be willing to accept an aid mission to the rebel bastion of Lugansk -- where local authorities said was on the verge of a humanitarian catastrophe, but only under strict conditions.

"We are ready to accept humanitarian aid if the mission is an international one, without any military escort and if it passes through border checkpoints controlled by Ukrainian guards," Poroshenko told Merkel in a phone conversation, according to a statement issued by his office.

He added he was already in discussions with Red Cross chief Peter Maurer over a possible mission.

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A woman walks through wreckage after shelling in Donetsk on August 9, 2014 (AFP Photo/Dimitar Dilkof …

- 'New Stalingrad' -

Meanwhile, heavy bombardment continued to rock the rebel stronghold of Donetsk, which has become the key battleground in the four-month-old conflict between the Ukrainian military and pro-Russian separatists.

An AFP journalist heard repeated shelling in the city throughout the morning and again in the afternoon. Local authorities said mortar fire hit neighbourhoods north and southwest of the centre, and one person was killed.

Ukraine reported 13 casualties in the last 24 hours.

The new prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, admitted on Saturday that the city of one million was surrounded by Ukrainian forces.

The rebel leader called for a truce to stop the city becoming a "new Stalingrad" but warned that if Ukrainian forces do not stand down, "the fight will take place in every street, every house, for every meter of our land."

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New prime minister of Ukraine's self-proclaimed "Donetsk People's Republic" Alexan …

"We will defend our right to freedom and independence... Victory will be ours!" he said in a statement.

The Red Cross announced it was stepping up its aid activities in Donetsk and the second main insurgent bastion of Lugansk.

Local authorities in Lugansk said on Saturday that the situation was "critical," with no power, running water or phone connections for a week now, while fuel had run out and food supplies were running low.

- 'Unacceptable' intervention -

NATO says Russia has 20,000 troops along the Ukrainian border, fuelling fears that Moscow could send them into its former Soviet neighbour.

US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power on Friday slammed Russian proposals to set up humanitarian corridors to east Ukraine.

A "unilateral intervention by Russia in Ukrainian territory, including one under the guise of providing humanitarian aid, would be completely unacceptable and deeply alarming and would be viewed as an invasion of Ukraine," she said.

She drew a parallel with the 2008 crisis in South Ossetia, when Russia justified sending troops into the Georgian territory in response to civilian suffering.

Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Power’s comments demonstrated the extent of "anti-Russian hysteria" in Washington.

"Our proposal has clearly humanitarian objectives but our initiative is tossed aside and they only talk about how Russia would supposedly try to slip into Ukraine under the guise of humanitarian aid," he told ITAR-TASS news agency.

Tensions between Russia and the West have hit their highest point since the Cold War over the crisis in Ukraine, leading to tit-for-tat sanctions.

So far, the conflict has claimed more than 1,300 lives, according to the United Nations.

Some 285,000 people have also fled their homes in four months of what the Red Cross calls a civil war.

West warns Russia against Ukraine invasion

Any attempt to enter the country on "humanitarian" grounds would be illegal, world leaders say.
Moscow responds

• Bill Code
• theguardian.com, Monday 21 July 2014 03.40 BST