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The big news today is the Senate report on CIA interrogation programs. The report among other things claims “The CIA’s interrogation of suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks was far more brutal than the agency disclosed and failed to elicit information about any imminent threats to the USA…”

WSJ offers an interesting counterpoint to the Senate Report:

• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.

• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.

• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.

So why the discrepancy in the Senate Report? The Senate Select Commitee on Intelligence is run by a majority of Democrats. You have a majority of their staffers putting together this reports. These staffers pick and chose some information while ignoring other information that didn’t fit their agenda:

The excuse given by majority senators is that CIA officers were under investigation by the Justice Department and therefore could not be made available. This is nonsense. The investigations referred to were completed in 2011 and 2012 and applied only to certain officers. They never applied to six former CIA directors and deputy directors, all of whom could have added firsthand truth to the study. Yet a press account indicates that the committee staff did see fit to interview at least one attorney for a terrorist at Guantanamo Bay.

We can only conclude that the committee members or staff did not want to risk having to deal with data that did not fit their construct. Which is another reason why the study is so flawed. What went on in preparing the report is clear: The staff picked up the signal at the outset that this study was to have a certain outcome, especially with respect to the question of whether the interrogation program produced intelligence that helped stop terrorists. The staff members then “cherry picked” their way through six million pages of documents, ignoring some data and highlighting others, to construct their argument against the program’s effectiveness.

Like Ferguson, if the facts don’t fit your political agenda just make up your own. Go read the rest of the WSJ article and the Senate Report.

Update: I mean it’s not like we have anything to worry about.