The Central Intelligence Agency has completed a Freedom of Information Act request filed by The Black Vault in August 2013, releasing records in April 2025 under case F-2013-02345, nearly twelve years after the request was submitted. (The Black Vault has a large backlog of documents that have yet to be put online, hence the delay in getting this document published).
The records consist of the CIA’s June 27, 2013, response to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) regarding the Committee’s Study of the Agency’s former Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation (RDI) Program. A previous version of this same document was previously released publicly in December 2014 following publication of the SSCI’s executive summary on CIA detention and interrogation practices.
A comparison of the two releases shows that the substantive content remains largely unchanged, with extensive redactions carried forward to this new release. Within the report, the CIA disputes claims that it systematically misled Congress or the Executive Branch, while acknowledging that some past representations were inaccurate.
“We cannot vouch for every individual statement that was made over the years of the program, and we acknowledge that some of those statements were wrong.”
Although there are very few new tidbits of information released, the newly released version does make more explicit reference to internal oversight structures, including the Covert Action Review Group (CARG). While CARG’s existence is now known even prior to this document and is not newly revealed, its role is more clearly articulated in this document, particularly in the section outlining lessons learned and recommended reforms.
The CIA states that the Executive Director, acting as head of CARG, should oversee expanded reviews of sensitive covert action programs, and that CARG would consider whether new covert actions warranted special scrutiny at their inception.
“At the inception of a new covert action program, the CARG would consider and recommend to DCIA whether a special review is warranted.”
The Agency describes such reviews as particularly applicable to operations that carry high potential diplomatic or national security consequences if disclosed or if they fail.
The most notable aspect of the release is not what it reveals, but how long it took to formally release material that had already entered the public domain more than a decade earlier. The CIA’s response letter closing the case is dated April 2, 2025, reasserting classification and withholding determinations for a document first approved for public release in 2014.
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Document Archive
F-2013-02345 Release [142 Pages, 24MB]
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