Is The CIA Still Running Secret Prisons?

The Somali Connection -- James Taranto, Wall Street Journal

Further questions about Obama's interrogation and detention policies.

To what extent is the CIA still involved in detaining and interrogating terrorist enemy combatants? Yesterday we noted that past Petraeus paramour Paula Broadwell had claimed on Oct. 26 that the agency was holding three Libyan detainees in Benghazi at the time of the 9/11 attacks there. Fox News Channel's Jennifer Griffin mentioned the three detainees in a report the same day. Yesterday Griffin added that according to her sources, "other prisoners from additional countries in Africa and the Middle East" had also been held there, though "most . . . had been moved two weeks earlier."

The agency issued a categorical denial: "The CIA has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless."

Executive Order 13491, issued on President Obama's second full day in office, provides: "The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future." It also bans the enhanced interrogation techniques the agency used during at least part of the Bush administration: Detainees under U.S. custody or "effective control" are not to "be subjected to any interrogation technique or approach, or any treatment related to interrogation, that is not authorized by and listed in [the] Army Field Manual."

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My Comment: Is this the reason why candidate Mitt Romney stayed quiet on Benghazi .... through his intelligence briefings they told him the details. Is this the reason why the White House does not want to talk about it .... because they accused former President Bush of the same thing and vowed not to repeat it. These are all valid points and questions that need to be followed up on .... and fortunately (because of a stupid sex scandal), the details are slowing percolating out.