C.I.A. Detentions

According to the NYT this morning,

The White House is maintaining extraordinary restrictions on information about the detention of high-level terror suspects, permitting only a small number of members of Congress to be briefed on how and where the prisoners are being held and interrogated, senior government officials say.

Some Democratic members of Congress say the restrictions are impeding effective oversight of the secret program, which is run by the Central Intelligence Agency and is believed to involve the detention of about three dozen senior Qaeda leaders at secret sites around the world.

Surely secrecy is precisely what is called for, no? Expanding knowledge of who is held where strikes me as silly, given the single-minded determination of his compatriots to free him, of the loonly Left to make a human-rights martyr out of him (and make sure that the temperature in his cell is between 75 and 80, that he not offended by any interregation techniques that are being used on him, etc), and of kooky righties to kill 'em all.

With CIA, it is an unfortunate fact that our lawmakers either don't believe that they will leak the information sooner, rather than later, or that they don't trust the CIA to do its job. In both cases, our nation is worse off. Good job, Democrats.