There’s an unfortunate impulse, when you or someone you’re close to does something wrong, to turn the situation around so that you can seem like the victim. That ugly human defense mechanism was on display on ABC‘s nightly newscast for two days running as the network previewed the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program.

The report revealed shocking, even sickening treatment of the intelligence agency’s captives, more than two dozen of whom turned out to have no connection at all to militant groups. But ABC‘s focus (12/7/14) wasn’t on the US government abuses detailed in the report, but “the fear that its release could threaten American lives.”

With a graphic reading “ON ALERT: WILL REPORT PUT AMERICANS IN DANGER?,” correspondent Martha Raddatz told viewers that the report includes “some details never heard before, and many people fearing tonight that revealing them will lead to violence.”

Raddatz makes clear who she expected to become violent: “The Muslim world has erupted many times before when the US and the West have been accused of religious and cultural slights.”

“Cultural slights”–perhaps that’s a reference to the report’s revelation that the CIA made “threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee”?

Raddatz’s chief source for the claim that releasing the report would put Americans in danger was House Intelligence chair Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who stated this speculation as fact: “It will in fact incite violence, and it’s likely to cost someone their life.” Raddatz brought Rogers back later in the report to make the case that (in Raddatz’s words) “if this report is released, groups like ISIS will take full advantage.”

The next day (12/8/14), Raddatz was back to warn that “diplomatic and military facilities around the globe are bracing for potential violence targeting Americans.” And not only could the report lead to violence, but Raddatz’s CIA sources suggested that the lack of torture might be dangerous in itself, as “the CIA argues that waterboarding was key…in stopping future plots against America.”

In that report, Raddatz says the report revealed “shocking detail about waterboarding and other interrogation methods the CIA conducted during the dark days after 9/11.” According to the CIA, the Agency’s torture (or “Enhanced Interrogation”) program lasted until December 2007–so that would make it approximately 2,300 dark days after 9/11.