A major report on the United States government’s use of torture was released on April 16. The product of a two-year intensive study. It examined discussion involving President George W. Bush and his top advisers after 9/11 and the how they had considered inflicting “pain and torment on detainees” in custody as part of challenging the “global terrorist threat.” It also examined how detainees were treated by President Bill Clinton and how they have been treated under President Barack Obama.

The German newspaper Spiegel has an interview with a German prosecutor, who ultimately decided not to file indictments in the case of Egyptian Muslim cleric Abu Omar. Omar was kidnapped in a CIA operation in Italy and rendered to Germany and then Egypt, where he was tortured.

Because of a ten year mainstream media whitewash, it’s been generally accepted that “mistakes” resulted in a war that claimed over 4,800 US troops. But this week, MSNBC will rock the boat, suggesting false pretenses took us to war, meaning the nation should start debating consequences.

Nobody doubts that Obama’s counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, who has been serving as an assassination czar developing a targeted killing program, will be confirmed to the position of CIA chief. In that sense, Jeremy Scahill was completely right to describe what the press and public saw yesterday during the confirmation hearing as “kabuki oversight.”

A confirmation hearing for President Barack Obama’s national counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, who Obama nominated to head the CIA, took place yesterday and lasted for more than three hours. Senators on the Select Committee for Intelligence questioned him about targeted killings and the use of drones, the CIA’s interrogation program under President George W. Bush and national security leaks.

A major report on the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program was released today by the Open Society Justice Initiative. It is one of the most comprehensive examinations of the program to date.

From “credible public sources and information provided by reputable human rights organizations,” the organization was able to figure out that “as many as 54 foreign governments reportedly” hosted CIA prisons on their territories; detained, interrogated, tortured and abused individuals; assisted in the capture and transport of detainees; permitted the use of domestic airspace and airports for secret flights transporting detainees; provided intelligence leading to the secret detention and extraordinary rendition of individuals and interrogated individuals who were secretly being held in the custody of other governments.

Kiriakou pled guilty to the charge of violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) by revealing the name of an undercover officer on October 23 in a federal court in Alexandria, Virginia. He faced the potential of going to jail for more than a decade and did not want to be separated from his wife and five children for that long.

The three men picked up in Somalia are wanted for fighting in a group that the US has designated as a “terrorist organization” against forces backed by the US. There is no evidence of the time that they plotted any attacks or were coming to America with al-Shabaab fighters intent on carrying out some kind of nefarious plot. This means a court is going to try and prosecute these men essentially for being on what the US government considers to be the wrong side of a conflict in Somalia.

The Senate Intelligence Committee recently adopted a six thousand page report on CIA torture and abuse. The report, a product of a three-year review of CIA practices, including its rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program, remains classified. It stems from at least six million CIA documents and could be the most comprehensive record to-date of what happened with the CIA while George W. Bush was president.

A landmark ruling was issued by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) holding the European Union responsible for its role in the CIA’s detention and rendition of German national Khaled El-Masri. The ECHR unanimously found Macedonia had been responsible for his “unlawful detention, enforced disappearance, torture and other ill-treatment, and for his transfer out of Macedonia to locations where he suffered further serious violations of his human rights,” according to Amnesty International. And the court also found the country had failed to conduct a proper investigation.