“History will judge us,” Feinstein added, “by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say, ‘Never again.'”
The report detailed interrogation practices such as the simulated drowning method called waterboarding, sleep deprivation, painful stress positions, “rectal feeding” and “rectal hydration”.
Despite CIA claims that the practices had saved lives, the report concluded that such methods had played no role in disrupting any terrorism plots, capturing any militant leaders or finding al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden, who was killed by American forces in Pakistan in 2011.
The late Arizona Senator John McCain, tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, praised Feinstein’s release of the report and said, “Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises what most distinguishes us from our enemies.”
“PROTECTING AMERICA”
Feinstein defended US surveillance programs exposed in 2013 by a National Security Agency contractor named Edward Snowden, a leak she called “an act of treason”.
“It’s called protecting America,” Feinstein said of the NSA electronic surveillance of telephone data and Internet communications that critics called a vast government over-reach.
During Republican George W Bush’s presidency, Feinstein backed the 2002 Iraq war resolution but later voiced regret. She supported Bush’s Patriot Act to help track terrorism suspects but criticised him for authorising spying on US residents without court approval.
At times, critics on the left felt she was not liberal enough or insufficiently antagonistic toward Republicans. For example, some liberal activists called on her to resign in 2020 after she hugged Republican Senator Lindsey Graham following a Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing for Republican President Donald Trump’s conservative Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett.
She castigated Trump in 2021 after his supporters attacked the Capitol in a failed bid to overturn Democrat Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory. She said Trump was “responsible for this madness” for inciting people to violence with false claims of widespread election fraud.
Born on Jun 22, 1933, Feinstein grew up in San Francisco and graduated from Stanford University. She was elected in 1969 to the San Francisco County Board of Supervisors and became its president in 1978, a position she held until Moscone’s killing. She became San Francisco’s first woman mayor and was elected to two full terms.
She ran for governor in 1990, winning the Democratic primary but losing to Republican Pete Wilson in the general election. Feinstein then ran in 1992 for the Senate seat that Wilson had previously held, easily defeating the Republican appointed to the seat. She became California’s longest-serving senator and its first woman elected to the chamber.
Feinstein’s first marriage ended in divorce. She then married Bertram Feinstein, a surgeon. After his death, she married Richard Blum, an investment banker, in 1980. He died in 2022.
Source: CNA
