The US stepped up security at diplomatic and other sites around the world on the eve of the release of a report expected to reveal details of harsh CIA interrogations.  The 480-page US Senate Intelligence Committee report is being released on midday Tuesday.

“The administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place,” said White House Spokesman Josh Earnest.

It is believed that graphic details will not be redacted, and it will spell out the CIA’s torture program under the George W. Bush Administration.  At least some of those details will include waterboarding, which we knew about – but there are also accounts of sexual humiliation and rape threats, as well as threats to plunge an electric drill into a subject’s skull.  It will also suggest that CIA officers in the field misled their superiors in Washington.

Torture is a war crime, illegal under international and expressly prohibited by US law.  US President Barack Obama campaigned for office in opposition to the use of torture, and he disavowed it immediately after taking office in 2009.  Mr. Obama ordered his Justice Department to withdraw the memorandums written by Bush-era lawyers that purported to justify torturing captured terror suspects.

But the Obama administration has not held anyone accountable – not former President George Bush, not former Vice President Dick Cheney who to this day claims that “enhanced interrogation techniques” worked (it didn’t).  And the Obama Justice Department repeatedly claim “state secrets” to derail lawsuits brought by the victims of US torture.  There are reports that US Secretary of State John Kerry tried to pressure Senators to redact certain passages from the report.