June 3, 2017–Now for an update on the other coverup underway in Washington. The other day I framed the CIA’s former director, John O. Brennan, as “The Flying Dutchman” (see “John Brennan: The Flying Dutchman,” May 24, 2017). Mr. Brennan received that sobriquet for his brash promises of compliance with accountability norms followed by maneuvers to avoid accountability at any cost. This was apparent when Brennan worked in the White House as Obama’s NSC director for intelligence, where he had a leading role masterminding the drone war. It became glaring when Brennan took up the reins at CIA, then in the throes of a knock down-drag out fight to prevent the Senate intelligence committee from releasing its investigative report on CIA torture. At his nomination hearings Brennan spoke positively of the investigation, the report, and forthrightly defined “torture.” Once ensconced at Langley the CIA director joined heartily in the fight against release. Like the Flying Dutchman the Brennan accountability ship disappeared into the mists.

The point a few days ago was that Brennan’s performance on torture left him up the creek when it came to trying to convince congressional overseers that the evidence he saw for a Russian Caper was real. Now the fight over the torture report has developed even more ramifications–it appears the Trump administration will use it as part of its effort to evade investigation of the Russian Caper itself. It happened this way:

When the Senate torture report emerged at the end of 2014 it became a political football in the partisan wars of Washington. Republicans hastened to picture the investigation as somehow inappropriate, even unpatriotic. The Senate changed hands in the election of that year, and Richard M. Burr (R-NC), the new chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), demanded the return to his oversight unit of all copies of the torture report. The Justice Department eventually met this demand by instructing agencies not to open their copies of the report. Nothing happened–except in Brennan’s shop where the CIA director contrived to eliminate those copies at his agency. But there were lawsuits seeking release of the SSCI report, others to convert it to a “federal” record (putting it beyond SSCI reach), requests to President Obama to release it, and court orders reserving copies for use in several cases involving terrorist detainees.

Mr. Brennan’s successor at the CIA, Mike Pompeo, previously sat as a congressman on the House intelligence committee. Like the Flying Dutchman, at his nomination hearing Pompeo promised the senators he would safeguard the torture report–and even read all 6,700 pages of it. Instead Pompeo supported Senator Burr when the SSCI chairman renewed his call for the return of the report copies.

Meanwhile at this very moment Senator Burr and his committee are mounting one of the key investigations of the Russian Caper, making President Donald J. Trump highly vulnerable. By returning copies of the SSCI torture report to the committee, Trump is doing a favor for the chairman of the unit investigating him, handing Burr a political win. President Trump also does a favor for the CIA, currying support from a rank and file who have felt threatened by the report and its revelations of CIA high handedness. For the moment it looks like Mr. Trump has scored a two-fer.