What America should really learn from Dianne Feinstein

It seemslikeCIACIA another age—almost a different America, shrouded in a different dark cloud—but it was just nine years ago, on a Friday: Dianne Feinstein, then the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, got a call from John Kerry, the secretary of state and an old friend. Ms Feinstein, a Democrat from California, had just dispatched to the printer the executive summary of her committee’s report on the ’s use of torture after the attacks of September 11th 2001. She was planning to release the findings the next week, despite intense resistance not just from the but from Barack Obama’s White House, which had demanded so many redactions she had feared the report might be “decimated”.Now Mr Kerry was making one more effort, admonishing her that revealing the report could provoke violence around the world. His warning was echoed over the weekend by American intelligence agencies, which issued a threat assessment that the committee’s disclosures would not only lead to violence but also significantly damage American relationships with other countries.