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President Barack Obama decided to place the report in his official presidential record. | Getty Obama won't declassify Senate 'torture report' now, but will preserve it

President Barack Obama has moved to preserve a Senate report on harsh interrogation tactics used by the CIA during the war on terror, but he's passed up options that could have led to declassification of broad swaths of the review in the near future.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), other lawmakers, and human rights and transparency advocates have been pressing Obama to declassify the nearly 7,000-page unabridged version of the Senate Intelligence Committee "torture report," or to have it declared an official record of one of the agencies that has a copy.

Obama decided instead to place the report in his official presidential records, according to a letter White House Counsel Neil Eggleston sent to Feinstein on Friday. That means the full-length report will be subject to public requests in 2029, which would trigger a declassification process at that time.

"I write to notify you that the full Study will be preserved under the Presidential Records Act," Eggleston wrote. "The determination that the Study will be preserved under the PRA has no bearing on copies of the Study currently stored at various agencies. ... At this time, we are not pursuing declassification of the full Study."

In a statement, Feinstein expressed mixed feelings about Obama's decision.

"It’s my very strong belief that one day this report should be declassified. The president has refused to do so at this time, but I’m pleased the report will go into his archives as part of his presidential records, will not be subject to destruction and will one day be available for declassification," she said.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) was more blunt in his disappointment with Obama's action.

"The American people deserve the opportunity to read this history rather than see it locked away in a safe for 12 years," Wyden said. "When the president-elect has promised to bring back torture, it is also more critical than ever that the study be made available to cleared personnel throughout the federal government who are responsible for authorizing and implementing our country’s detention and interrogation policies."

While an executive summary of the report was released in 2014, the Obama administration resisted a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for the unabridged report, arguing that it was a congressional record, not an executive branch one. Courts accepted that argument, although the American Civil Liberties Union has asked the Supreme Court to take up the issue.



White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest declared that "ample information" in the report is already public.

"A substantial portion of the report has already been declassified. There is an executive summary and other critically important parts of the report have been declassified and released, so the American people could consider it," Earnest said.

Feinstein, who was chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee panel at the time the report was prepared, has long favored declassifying the full-length review.

However, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) has opposed release of further information about the investigation and the underlying CIA interrogation program.

Since classification policy is largely a matter of presidential discretion, incoming president Donald Trump would have authority to declassify the report or portions of it if he wished, but that seems unlikely since he has advocated a return to waterboarding and other techniques the report sharply criticizes.

Brent Griffiths contributed to this report.