The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warns that public disclosure of a Senate report on the agency's torture methods will trigger violent street protests in the Middle East, endangering US embassies and personnel.

"The Mideast is a tinderbox right now and this could be the spark that ignites quite a fire," a US intelligence official who was briefed on the findings told Yahoo News.

That concern was echoed Friday by a former top US intelligence official. "It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if you release a report like this at a time when terrorism is surging all over the Mideast you are handing the other side a recruitment tool," John McLaughlin, a former CIA deputy director, told Yahoo News. "It's blindingly obvious."


Comment: Interestingly, the fact that torturing people creates enemies of the state is not as 'blindingly obvious.' These officials see no problem with actual torture, it's disclosing that torture happens, that's the problem from their perspective.


It took the US Senate Intelligence Committee nearly four years to compose a 6,300-page report which details the CIA's torture techniques -- including water-boarding, wall-slamming, and shackling -- during the presidency of George W. Bush.

Committee chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein's push for the release of a complete version of the report's 480-page summary has been met with fierce resistance from the intelligence community.

The Senate committee accuses CIA officials of misrepresenting the torture program to Congress and the Justice Department, saying the controversial techniques yielded intelligence about potential terror plots that were actually learned elsewhere.

According to a CIA Inspector General's Office report, agency employees in 2009 hacked Senate computers being used to compile the torture report.

Following the spying scandal, an increasing number of senators are now calling on CIA director John Brennan to resign.

However, Brennan has received robust support from the White House with President Barack Obama maintaining that he continues to have "full confidence" in the CIA leader.