Update, Dec. 14: The intelligence committee voted 9 – 6 yesterday to approve its report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. It’s still not clear when, or if, it will be declassified.

A Senate committee is
close to putting the final stamp on a massive report on the CIA’s
detention, interrogation and rendition of terror suspects. Senator Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., who heads the Select Committee on Intelligence, called the
roughly 6,000-page report “the
most definitive review of this CIA program to be conducted.”

But it’s unclear how much, if any, of the review you might
get to read.

The committee first needs to vote to endorse the report.
There will be a vote next week.

Republicans,
who are a minority on the committee, have been boycotting the investigation
since the summer of 2009. They pulled back their cooperation after the Justice
Department began a separate investigation into the CIA interrogations.
Republicans have criticized that inquiry, arguing that the interrogations had been authorized by
President George W. Bush’s Justice Department.  (In August, Attorney General Eric
Holder announced
the investigation was being closed without bringing any criminal charges.)

Even if
the report is approved next week, it won’t be made public then, if at all.
Decisions on declassification will come at “a later time,” Feinstein said.

According
to Reuters, the Senate report focuses on whether so-called “enhanced
interrogation” tactics – including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other
techniques – actually led to critical intelligence breakthroughs.
Reuters reported earlier this year that the investigation “was expected to find
little evidence” that the torture was in fact crucial.

Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and others have repeatedly
said that such tactics produced important information. They’ve also said
waterboarding was used on only a handful of high-level detainees, a claim which
recently
came into question. Feinstein has previously
disputed claims that such interrogations led to Osama Bin Laden. (It is also still
unclearwhat key members of Congress knew
about the program, and when they knew it.)

Much about the CIA’s program to detain and interrogate terror
suspects has remained officially secret, despite widespread
reporting and acknowledgement
by Bush.  Obama banned
torture upon taking office and released documents
related to program, including
a critical report from the CIA’s Inspector General.

But the Obama administration has argued in courts that
details about the CIA program are still classified. (As we
have reported, this has led the administration to claim in some cases that
Guantanamo detainees’ own accounts of their imprisonment are classified.)