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To the credit of CBS--and the discredit of its rivals--it was the only network to assign coverage to the CIA torture story. NBC's substitute anchor Ann Curry mentioned it in passing. ABC did not--neither did ABC mention last week's torture story that NBC's Andrea Mitchell covered, the secret approval memoranda from the Justice Department. A factor in CBS' decision to lead with the CIA case was that its own 60 Minutes obtained the scoop of plaintiff Khaled el-Masri, an innocent German who was targeted by CIA spies because of mistaken identity and subjected to so-called rendition, "the kidnapping and handing over of terror subjects for harsh interrogation in secret overseas prisons," as CBS' Wyatt Andrews defined it.
The 60 Minutes story was not isolated. Andrews recalled "massive global publicity" plus official European investigations documenting el-Masri's claims of abuse. Yet the United States Supreme Court refused to hear his lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency on the grounds that "it is all still secret--that el-Masri's case could be made only with evidence that exposes how the CIA organizes its most sensitive intelligence operations." As Andrews paraphrased the arguments of civil libertarians: "If the most publicly discussed rendition case cannot go to court because it is secret--then almost anything can be secret."
CBS' David Martin followed up with the official word from CIA Director Michael Hayden that dozens of suspects have been tortured--Hayden used the phrase "special methods of interrogation"--by his spies. Hayden did not actually say dozens; he said "fewer than a third" of the "fewer than 100" held in the CIA's secret prisons. Martin ruefully commented that Hayden's statistic was "meant to reassure." Martin added that those secret prisons had been officially "but only temporarily" emptied last year, with all inmates being transferred to military custody at the Guantanamo Bay base. How many, if any, are in CIA prisons today "is what the Bush Administration calls a state secret."
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