I find it hard not to agree.

By way of background, the Senate spent several years and millions of dollars studying the interrogation of War on Terrorism prisoners during the Bush Administration, addressing both whether torture was perpetrated and whether the methods used were effective at eliciting useful intelligence. That report has been suppressed for well over a year. Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to make a very small portion of the finished report public. Even those pages are still secret, pending a declassification review by the White House.

Most objectionable of all: the fact that the White House and Congress both agree that the CIA should play a significant, influential role in the declassification process.

Think about that for a minute.

This report apparently suggests that the CIA used ineffective interrogation techniques and lied about them to Congress, arguably jeopardizing the very counterterrorism efforts intended to keep us safe. It suggests that CIA employees perpetrated acts that are not only illegal but that the United States government is bound by treaty to investigate and prosecute. The report also suggests that the CIA engaged in behavior that many Americans regard as morally abhorrent and shameful. The CIA has as significant and intractable a conflict of interest here as any imaginable. Surely it shouldn't be given a black highlighter to use on the report.

Yet the intelligence agency is playing precisely that role.

Little wonder that some are reacting like the Freedom of the Press Foundation's Trevor Timm. Under the headline "Leak the CIA report: it's the only way to know the whole truth about torture," he writes, "Parts of the report are now in the hands of Senate staffers, White House officials, State Department employees, CIA spooks and soon maybe more. It would not come without great personal risk, but the American people may only be served well if someone with a conscience is brave enough to leak the full report and hold the CIA accountable for its crimes."

After all, he notes:

Leaks have been critical to the public knowledge of Bush-era torture since the first hints of Abu Ghraib, and as longtime torture investigator Katherine Hawkins noted, "The Senate report would likely never have existed ... if it were not for previous investigations by journalists and non-governmental organizations."

Once again, CIA misbehavior is prompting concerned Americans to call for leaks.

Of course, the public doesn't need to read every word in the torture report. If it includes the names of CIA agents, for example, I'd have no objection to blacking them out, as I presume the New York Times or the Washington Post would do if it were leaked to them. There may well be other parts of the report that should stay classified too. Anyone who gets their hands on it should consult with the government before publication. But in this case, I trust newspaper reporters and editors much more than the CIA to decide what information is in the public interest to release. Likewise, I trust Glenn Greenwald more than CIA Director John Brennan. After all, only one of them served high up in the CIA during the torture years.