Guest Speaker: Torture and Public Policy with Daniel Jones

Date: 

Monday, April 17, 2017, 11:45am to 1:00pm

Location: 

Malkin Penthouse, Littauer Building 4th Floor

Please join us for "Torture and Public Policy," a class led by Carr Center Faculty Director Douglas Johnson and Senior Fellow Alberto Mora. Daniel Jones will be presenting, and the class is open to members of the Harvard community.

danjonesDaniel J. Jones is a senior vice president and policy advisor at The Daschle Group, is President of the Penn Quarter Group, and the chief  investigator of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, among the longest and most impactful investigative reports in Senate history.

More about Daniel Jones:

From Wikipedia:

Jones was the lead investigator and author of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture, the largest investigation in U.S. Senate history at 6,700 pages with over 38,000 footnotes. The report[3] details actions by CIA officials, including torturing prisoners, providing misleading or false information[4] about classified CIA programs to the media, impeding government oversight and internal criticism, and mismanaging of the program. It also revealed the existence of previously unknown detainees, that more detainees were subjected to harsher treatment than was previously disclosed, and that more forms of torture were used than previously disclosed. It concluded that torturing prisoners did not help acquire actionable intelligence or gain cooperation from detainees and that the program damaged[5] the United States' international standing. Republican Senator John McCain noted that the report "is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose -- to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the US and our allies -- but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world."[6]

The investigation lasted more than six years[7] and found that the CIA’s torture was far more brutal than the agency had told the Bush administration or Congress. It found unequivocally that torture produced no valuable counter-terrorism intelligence.[8] Following the completion of the report in 2014,[9] it was revealed that the CIA had been surveilling[10] the work of the committee. Due to public outcry[11] to release the full findings of the report before the inauguration of pro-torture[12] businessman and television producer Donald Trump to the US presidency, the Obama administration agreed to preserve[13] the findings of the report in his presidential library. A heavily redacted 500 page summary of the report is public.[14]

The completion of the report and Jones' departure from the Intelligence Committee was heralded by former Intelligence Committee vice chair Dianne Feinstein in a tribute submitted to the congressional record.[15] Jones has been interviewed on the record regarding his work on the investigation and the subsequent controversy of the CIA [16] and DOJ's inadequate response to the report.[17]