Alleged Torture of Enemy Combatants, Only Part of The Larger Problem

This is a greater problem than a few years of abusing suspects by the CIA. Neither the FBI or the CIA are mentioned in the Constitution. They are creatures of statute. Yet they ignore the constitution regularly as if it were an entitlement. It demonstrates that the FBI and the CIA anticipated the Obama-Holder Doctrine where inconvenient laws may be ignored. Elected officials, few of who have spines, seldom if ever scrutinize these agencies with enormous unchecked power. They kill law abiding civilians using employees (informants). They destroy evidence of their malfeasance. There is no accountability for destroying lives of individual civilians. And if by chance an injured civilian goes to court and obtains a damage award, it is the taxpayer who pays for the criminal conduct of the out of control government agent.

[From article]
President George W. Bush was never briefed by the Central Intelligence Agency on the details of harsh interrogation techniques and secret detention of terror suspects for the first four years of its controversial program, and when he did find out the details, he was “uncomfortable” with some of the practices, according to a long-awaited report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The 500-page declassified executive summary of the majority staff’s 6,700-page investigation into CIA rendition, detention and interrogation practices after Sept. 11 states that despite agency efforts to keep the Bush administration informed about the program, top White House officials repeatedly resisted having the CIA brief cabinet-level figures about the details, and CIA officials were not permitted to brief Bush directly until mid-2006, more than four years after the president signed a broad executive order authorizing the program, according to Senate Democratic aides who briefed reporters ahead of today’s release.
[. . .]
Based on CIA’s internal correspondence, the committee’s investigation will also state that CIA Directors George Tenet and Porter Goss admitted they had never briefed Bush directly on the techniques, despite that in 2004, the CIA Inspector General recommended they do so:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-09/cia-torture-report-bush-was-kept-in-the-dark

CIA Torture Report: Bush Was Kept in the Dark for Years
DEC 9, 2014 11:13 AM EST
By Josh Rogin & Eli Lake