Let’s take the CIA at its word for a minute and consider the implications of this from the standpoint of oversight.

By removing the names of those the CIA had flipped while at Gitmo, the CIA permitted politically motivated people — including the guy who had a key role in “releasing” them — to call those detainees “recidivists.” While it might be great cover to have Dick Cheney screaming about what dangerous people these people were, it was lethal for Obama’s effort to close Gitmo.

By hiding the names of the double agents, the CIA also hid the true details about the actions those double agents would go on to commit. Which may have permitted CIA to use those double agents in ways that weren’t just intelligence gathering.