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Photo by Patrick Semansky / AP

Despite McCain’s call to conscience, the U.S. Senate confirmed Haspel as CIA director, thereby ensuring the CIA’s record of impunity remains unblemished.

Not a single CIA officer has ever been held criminally liable for any of the systemic torture practised worldwide during the George W. Bush era. This reflects the politicization of the prosecutorial function, which skewed toward U.S. President Barack Obama’s statements that “I’m more interested in looking forward than looking backwards.”

Nor was there ever a successful civil suit against U.S. officials or the U.S. government. American law provided ample and effective shields to protect torturers and the architects of torture policy. Their courts are highly deferential to Congress and the executive when it comes to finding liability in the national security context and come close to viewing such matters as non-reviewable political matters. One after another, lawsuits were dismissed without proceeding to the macabre merits.

For example, Khalid El-Masri tried and failed to sue CIA officials who assisted in his extraordinary rendition from Macedonia to Afghanistan, where he was allegedly tortured. He was eventually released on the grounds that his capture was a mistake. He later noted: “it seems the only place in the world where my case cannot be discussed is in a U.S. courtroom.”

Photo by Christian Hartmann / The Associated Press

In the end, no U.S. official or institution was held accountable, though it took plenty of dirty hands for all that sweeping under a massive, rancid rug.