Columbus: Conversation on The Torture Report

Please join us on Wednesday, January 28th, at 7pm for a conversation on the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture (Melville House) between the book's editor, Mark Krotov and Harper's contributing editor, Scott Horton. The event will be introduced by Harper's publisher, Rick MacArthur.

Based on over six million internal CIA documents, the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture details secret prisons, prisoner deaths, interrogation practices, and cooperation with other foreign and domestic agencies. It also examines charges that the CIA deceived elected officials and governmental overseers about the extent and legality of its operations. Over five years in the making, and withheld from public view since its declassification in April, 2014, this is the full summary report as finally released by the United States government on December 9th, 2014.

Mark Krotov is a senior editor at Melville House.

Scott Horton is an attorney, journalist and law professor whose work concentrates on international public and private law, the law of armed conflict and human rights. A contributing editor at Harper’s magazine, Horton’s writings cover legal and national security issues and his work has received numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for Reporting in 2011, the industry’s highest recognition. He is a frequent contributor to other publications including Foreign Policy, the American Lawyer, and has appeared as a commentator for NPR, NBC, CNN, Al Jazeera and CBS News. Horton is an adjunct professor at Columbia University. As a life-long human rights advocate, Horton served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner among other human rights and democracy advocates in the former Soviet Union. His most recent book, Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Warfare, discusses the role played by secrecy in diminishing democratic process surrounding national security decision-making in the United States.