Today the Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a momentous vote. The subject: what Americans are allowed to know about crimes perpetrated in our names.

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush Administration empowered the CIA to torture human prisoners. This was done in secret, without any due process. In some ways, the people involved were like 15th-century Spanish inquisitors: They tortured because they thought that it was the right thing to do, which won't save them from being remembered by history as agents of moral depravity. Under domestic and international law, these torturers should be in jail. Instead, they're lobbying to hide the extent of their unlawful acts from the public.

This subterfuge is cowardly and indefensible. Some Americans believe that it isn't torture to blindfold a prisoner, strap him to a board, gag him, and force water into his nasal cavity until his lungs fill with water, inducing the experience of drowning. Even they should recognize the public's interest in determining the efficacy of whatever interrogation methods were used to prevent terrorist attacks.

That's why the Senate Intelligence Committee spent millions of dollars and countless hours of its staffers' time producing a 6,300-page report on CIA torture—and why a majority of the committee, composed of its Democratic members plus two senators from Maine, want a portion of the report to be declassified. They're expected to prevail in today's vote to submit the report for declassification. Most Republicans on the committee would prefer to shield intelligence bureaucrats from accountability and to keep the public ignorant about torture. As a result, even ineffective methods are more likely to be used again.