“Enhanced interrogation” techniques used by the CIA on militants detained in secret prisons were ineffective and never produced information which led to the disruption of imminent terrorist plots, a declassified report by the Senate Intelligence Committee found.
The report released on Tuesday said the CIA misled the public and government policymakers about the effectiveness of the programme, which ran from 2002 to 2006 and involved questioning al-Qaeda and other captives around the world.
The report prepared by the Intelligence Committee after a five-year investigation said the techniques used were “far more brutal” than the CIA told the public or the ever told policymakers or the public.
“This document examines the CIA’s secret overseas detention of at least 119 individuals and the use of coercive interrogation techniques – in some cases amounting to torture,” committee chair Dianne Feinstein said.
Specific examples of brutality by CIA interrogators cited in the report include the November 2002 death from hypothermia of a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor at a secret CIA prison.
Some were deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, at times with their hands shackled above their heads, and “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” without any documented medical need.
The report describes one secret CIA prison, whose location is not identified, as a “dungeon” where detainees were kept in total darkness, constantly shackled in isolated cells, bombarded with loud noise or music, and given only a bucket in which to relieve themselves.
It says that during one of the 83 occasions on which he was subjected to a simulated drowning technique the CIA called “waterboarding,” an al-Qaeda detainee known as Abu Zubaydah became “completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open full mouth,” though he later was revived.
President Barack Obama said the report reinforces his opinion that the interrogation methods did not serve broader counterterrorism efforts and significantly damaged the United States’ global standing.
CIA director John Brennan acknowledged that the CIA detention and interrogation programme “had shortcomings and that the agency made mistakes” but the agency pushed back against the panel’s criticism.
The agency insists that information gleaned from detainees held and questioned in the CIA programme “advanced the strategic and tactical understanding of the enemy in ways that continue to inform counter-terrorism efforts to this day.”
It was unclear whether the report would lead to further attempts to hold those involved accountable. The legal statute of limitations has passed for many of the actions.
Did we torture people? Yes. Did it work. No
The executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony Romero, said in an opinion piece in The New York Times that Obama should issue formal pardons to senior officials and others to make clear that these actions were crimes and help ensure that “the American government never tortures again.”
Preparing for a worldwide outcry from the publication of the graphic details, the White House and US intelligence officials said on Monday they had beefed up security of US facilities worldwide.
The report charts the history of the CIA’s “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation” programme, which President George W. Bush authorised after the September 11 attacks. Bush ended many aspects of the program before leaving office, and Obama swiftly banned “enhanced interrogation techniques,” which critics say are torture, after his 2009 inauguration.
Two Republican lawmakers issued a statement calling the release of the report “reckless and irresponsible.”
“We are concerned that this release could endanger the lives of Americans overseas, jeopardise US relations with foreign partners, potentially incite violence, create political problems for our allies, and be used as a recruitment tool for our enemies,” senators Marco Rubio and Jim Risch said.
Senator Angus King, an independent, told CNN releasing the report was important because it could persuade a future president not to use these techniques.
“We did things that we tried Japanese soldiers for war crimes for after World War Two. This is not America. This is not who we are. What was done has diminished our stature and inflamed terrorists around the world.”
“Did we torture people? Yes. Did it work. No,” King said.
The 500-plus page report that the Intelligence Committee has prepared for release, a summary of a much more detailed, 6,000-page narrative which will remain secret, includes a 200-page narrative of the interrogation programme’s history and 20 case studies of the interrogations of specific detainees.
Major findings
Ten major findings from the newly released summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation programme:
• Enhanced interrogation techniques used on terror detainees, including simulated drowning and sleep deprivation, were ineffective in gaining intelligence leads that led to important operations against terrorist groups or prevented attacks on the US.
• The prison conditions and harsh interrogations of detainees were more brutal than the CIA officials acknowledged to the American public and in contacts with Congress and the White House. The simulated drowning technique of waterboarding was “physically harmful,” with effects that included vomiting and convulsions.
• The CIA’s management of coercive interrogations and its system of “black site” prisons was “deeply flawed.” Personnel were sometimes poorly trained, medical personnel assisted in harsh treatment and record-keeping was mismanaged.
• The agency’s use of coercive interrogations was based on a programme developed by two psychologists who had no experience in interrogations or counter-terrorism.
• The CIA actively impeded or avoided congressional oversight. CIA senior officials repeatedly gave inaccurate information to congressional leaders and at one point under-counted the number of terror detainees who were subjected to harsh treatment under questioning.
• CIA officials often gave inaccurate information about its interrogation programme to Bush administration White House and legal officials, preventing a proper legal analysis of the prison operations. Bush legal officials relied on erroneous CIA data to codify the use of waterboarding and nine other enhanced interrogation techniques.
• Interrogators sometimes used harsh tactics not condoned by CIA superiors or White House legal officials. But interrogators and prison officials who violated CIA policies were rarely disciplined or reprimanded.
• Much of the information that the CIA provided to the media about its interrogation and detentions programme was inaccurate, preventing clear scrutiny of detainees’ treatment.
• The CIA’s reliance on harsh interrogations complicated the national security missions of other federal agencies. The FBI abandoned its traditional role in interrogations as the CIA began to rely on harsh methods. And the CIA often resisted efforts by the agency’s inspector general to investigate the use of harsh interrogations and conditions in black sites.
• The CIA’s harsh interrogations and secret detentions in overseas prisons damaged the reputation of the US around the world.