CIA's Prison Secrets

Apparently, the CIA is fond of secrets. It has urged a federal judge to block the release of 65 documents that the ACLU has sought for some years in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, The Washington Post reports. The documents describe the CIA's videotaped interrogations in secret prisons, along with the destruction of those videotapes. In an affidavit, CIA Director Leon E. Panetta said that releasing "explicit details of specific interrogations" was very different from the recent release of memos that described how torture was authorized. The interrogation details, he argued, would give al-Qaeda ready-made propaganda. Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's national security program, said Panetta's defense amounted to the idea that "the greater the abuse, the more important it is that it should remain secret."