The CIA's Tortured Historical Amnesia

It’s too bad the trial of two CIA contract psychologists who created the “torture” interrogation program in the wake of 9/11 was canceled and the case settled out of court.

The trial, scheduled for September 5, might have provided publicity that could help prevent future abuses in the name of national security.

Such publicity could also call attention to the need for creating a stronger institutional memory in order to remember similar cases from the past before making the same mistakes in the present.

This isn’t the first time the CIA has been censured publicly and by Congress for outlandish, unethical and illegal interrogation programs.

The CIA’s “mind control” program of the 1950s and 1960s was the most egregious interrogation program in the CIA’s history. The episode became public in the 1970s as part of a broader investigation into intelligence abuses that culminated in the so-called Church Committee reports. ...