This evening's music features New Orleans songwriter, pianist and singer Allen Toussaint.

Here are some stories from tonight's post:

“New Torture Files”: Declassified Memos Detail Roles of Bush White House and DOJ Officials Who Conspired to Approve Torture

Last week, I wrote, both here and in the New York Times, that after reading all 828 pages of the released SSCI report on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program and responses to it from the CIA and Republican committee members, I had concluded that the report’s focus on whether the techniques used by the CIA were “effective” was misguided, and essentially gave a pass to too many culpable actors beyond the CIA, especially in the White House, the Cabinet, and the Justice Department.

This week, in the name of correcting the record, and thanks, ironically, to the CIA’s own effort to defend itself, I want to place blame where it rightly belongs – with the CIA, to be sure, but also with specific high-level officials and lawyers outside the agency who were directly involved in reviewing the CIA’s tactics, and either said yes or failed to say no. It’s now been brought to my attention that lost in all the focus on the irresolvable “efficacy” debate were a series of recently declassified documents that fill out the picture of joint responsibility that is the real story of our descent into torture. These documents, not addressed in any other reporting on the subject of which I am aware, name names, describe specific meetings, and demonstrate that many well-respected lawyers and statesmen said yes when they should have said no. They provide an important – if likely uncomfortable for some – addition to the narrative, and show just how widespread the blame for the torture program really goes. ...

Feeling the heat of the SSCI inquiry, the CIA chose to declassify a series of memoranda and communications that reflect and record multiple high-level meetings at the White House and the DOJ involving the torture program. The CIA’s interest in declassification is clear. It wants to show that it repeatedly sought – and received – legal assurances from higher-ups that its actions were legal and authorized. But as is so often the case when co-conspirators try to deflect blame by pointing the finger at others, the CIA’s newly declassified documents don’t so much exculpate it as inculpate others. The documents are reproduced at the website launched by agency alumni last December and dedicated to defending the CIA, with a name only a security consultant could have dreamt up, “ciasavedlives.com.” They recount in detail multiple meetings and communications, in which White House and DOJ officials repeatedly gave the CIA a green light to torture. ...

The overall picture that the documents paint is not of a rogue agency, but of a rogue administration. Yes, the CIA affirmatively proposed to use patently illegal tactics — waterboarding, sleep deprivation, physical assault, and painful stress positions. But at every turn, senior officials and lawyers in the White House and the Department of Justice reassured the agency that it could — and should — go forward. ... At every point where the White House and the DOJ could have and should have said no to tactics that were patently illegal, they said yes.

Violence Caused by Far-Right Extremists Has Surpassed That Caused by Domestic Jihadists, Study Says

In both cases — radical Islamism and far right extremism — a majority of terrorist attacks on US soil have been at the hands of individual "lone wolves" acting outside established groups. But violence caused by far right extremism has surpassed that caused by domestic "jihadis," according to a study published last month by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

Still, much of the public's attention — and law enforcement's efforts — focus on the latter, the civil rights group said ahead of last month's White House summit on countering violent extremism.

"We felt that the report demonstrated pretty clearly that some attention should be paid to the domestic radical right," Ryan Lenz, a writer at the SPLC's Intelligence Project, told VICE News. "The domestic radical right has killed more people than radical Islam since 9/11 in the United States, without a doubt."

The report — titled "The Age of the Wolf," in reference to the lone nature of most attacks — surveyed violence carried out between April 1, 2009, and February 1, 2015, for a total of 63 victims of terrorism — ranging from migrants, to abortion providers, to FBI agents, to the victims of the Fort Hood shooting.

Almost half of the attacks during that time were apparently motivated by antigovernment sentiment, mostly carried out by people subscribing to the so-called "patriot" movement, while the other half came from ideologies of hate — ranging from white supremacy, to misogyny and anti-abortion ideologies, to radical Islamism.

That diversity of motives and ideology is hardly reflected in current conversations about homegrown violent extremism, the study suggests.

Revealed: Democratic Super PAC Architect Moonlights for Walmart, Cable Lobby

According to a disclosure document obtained by The Intercept, Susan McCue — Sen. Harry Reid’s chief of staff from 1999–2006 and now co-founder and president of Senate Majority PAC, which claims to “fight to elect Democratic senators who will put working Americans ahead of the Kochs and their corporate interests” — has also consulted for numerous corporate clients. (McCue’s central role in the creation of Senate Majority PAC was first reported by the Huffington Post.)

McCue, through her public affairs company Message Global LLC, provided consulting services for the Motion Picture Association of America, the American Gaming Association, the National Business Aviation Association, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and Walmart, among other clients. None of these clients are mentioned anywhere on the Message Global website, which instead highlights its work for Bono’s One campaign and Humanity United. (Humanity United was established by Pierre Omidyar, founder of The Intercept’s parent company First Look Media.)

McCue’s corporate clients are among the most politically active lobbying interests inside the Beltway. The Motion Picture Association of America has pushed hard for new copyright-related legislation such as the notorious Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA. The National Cable & Telecommunications Association has been engaged in a pitched battle in opposition to so-called “net neutrality” regulations. And Walmart is known for its engagement on an enormous range of issues including its successful effort to kill the Employee Free Choice Act, a top priority of labor which would have made union organizing easier.

Climate Change Is Likely a Cause of the Civil War in Syria, Researchers Say

An estimated 200,000 Syrians have died since the onset of the country's civil war in 2011 and another three million have been forced to flee the country.

Complex political and social forces worked to drive the unrest. But, researchers from University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Columbia University argue that a severe, multi-year drought spurred a massive migration to already stressed urban areas, agitating existing tensions — and that it was climate change that made the drought so bad.

"You can think of it as a natural drought that was made much worse by climate change," Colin Kelley, a climatologist at UCSB, told VICE News. "And because it was so severe, then you had this cascade of effects like the agricultural collapse and the mass migration and the population shock and the rise in crime and unemployment and nutrition-related diseases, and all that kind of stuff that happened just prior to the uprising."

The researchers' findings appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Of interest:

Playing Chicken with Nuclear War