June 9, 2017–Some days are better than others. Yesterday North Carolina Senator Richard Burr seemed fairly reasonable in his questioning of James B. Comey before the Senate intelligence committee. Not long before that, Burr raised concern when he renewed earlier demands he had made that the federal executive return to the intelligence committee all copies of the SSCI report of its investigation into CIA torture and detention programs. That day was a pretty poor one.

The Obama administration took little formal action on Burr’s demand. Its Justice Department wavered on whether to declare the report a “federal record,” which would have ensured its perseveration and opened it to freedom of information requests. It ordered other agencies not to “open” their copies. The John Brennan CIA working to bury the report, interpreted that as an instruction to destroy copies in its possession. Now, under the Trump administration, Senator Burr is about to get his wish.

The publisher Melville House, which put out one of the printed editions of the executive summary of the committee study, is responding to this effort to put the report back in the secret vault by making its edition available to the public for free. Get in touch if you are interested.