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Sen. Dianne Feinstein discusses the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's interrogation of suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks. VPC
This frame grab provided by Senate Television shows Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. speaking on the floor of the Senate on Dec. 9, 2014, about the CIA torture report.(Photo: AP/Senate Television)
WASHINGTON — The CIA's interrogation of suspected terrorists after the 9/11 attacks was far more brutal than the agency disclosed and failed to elicit information about any imminent threats to the USA, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a report released Tuesday.
The use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and chaining prisoners in cold dungeons led some detainees to give false confessions, sending U.S. law enforcement officials in the wrong direction as they chased bad information, the report says.
One detainee interrogated by the CIA falsely confessed to trying to recruit African-American Muslims in Montana — a state where blacks make up less than 1% of the population.
The report also refutes claims by the CIA that its "enhanced interrogation techniques" helped gain Information that lead to the U.S. capture and killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. That information, obtained from al Qaeda terrorist Hassan Ghul,
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said it was important for the report to be released to show that the nation is willing "to face an ugly truth and say never again." President Obama banned the use of torture in CIA interrogations shortly after taking office in January 2009.
Feinstein also defended the timing of the release, saying there was never going to be a perfect time to make it public given the ongoing instability in the Middle East and other parts of the world.
"There may never be the right time to release this report," she said during an hourlong speech on the Senate floor. "But this report is too important to shelve indefinitely."
Federal officials braced Tuesday for possible violence by extremist groups at U.S. facilities around the world in response to the report.
Senior Obama administration officials, in a background briefing with reporters Tuesday, said U.S. officials overseas are in a "pre-determined period of heightened alert" that will continue to be assessed by the U.S. diplomatic, intelligence and military community now that the report has been released. Administration officials said they will be monitoring social media closely for threats against the U.S.
The committee released a 500-page declassified summary of a 6,700-page report that took the panel nearly six years to produce. Committee staff sorted through more than 6 million pages of CIA records as part of an investigation that began in the spring of 2009. The report examines the CIA's secret overseas detention of at least 119 people and the use of coercive interrogation techniques that Feinstein said sometimes amounted to torture.
The report's 20 findings and conclusions are grouped into four central themes:
• The CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" were not effective and did not produce any "ticking time bomb" information crucial to save lives.
• The CIA gave "extensive inaccurate information" about the operation of its detainee interrogation program to Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, the CIA inspector general, the media and the public. Even the former secretaries of state and defense during the Bush administration were left out of the loop for about two years, the report said.
• The interrogation program was far more brutal than the CIA represented to policymakers and the American public. One detainee died from apparent hypothermia after being chained naked on a cold cement floor. Another nearly drowned from waterboarding.
• The CIA's management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed. The agency used two outside contract psychologists with no experience as interrogators or knowledge of detainees' language or culture to develop, operate, and assess its interrogation program.
CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged Tuesday that "the agency made mistakes," especially early on in the program as it struggled to carry out an unprecedented global program of detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists.
But Brennan disputed the report's key assertion that the interrogation techniques did not produce important results.
"Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives," Brennan said in a statement. "The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qa'ida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day."
Brennan said the CIA also disagrees with the report's contention that the agency "systematically and intentionally misled" Congress, the executive branch and the public about the interrogation program.
"No interviews were conducted of any CIA officers involved in the program, which would have provided members (of Congress) with valuable context and perspective surrounding these events," Brennan said.
The report cites interviews of top Bush administration CIA officials by the CIA's inspector general.
The report says that former Secretary of State Colin Powell and former secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were intentionally left out of the loop on the interrogation techniques. The White House "is extremely concerned that Powell would blow his stack if he were to be briefed about what's been going on," said a July 2003 e-mail from CIA senior deputy general counsel John Rizzo.
Powell and Rumsfeld were eventually briefed for the first time in a 25-minute presentation on Sept. 16, 2003.
Some Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee denounced the report as a partisan waste of money.
"The one-sided report that will be released by Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence cost U.S. tax-payers over $40 million dollars to produce, and its authors never interviewed a single CIA official," GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Jim Risch of Idaho said in a joint statement.
But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he knows from personal experience that torture does not work in prying reliable information from prisoners. McCain, a Navy pilot whose plane was shot down in enemy territory during the Vietnam War, was tortured by the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war.
"I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence," McCain said during a speech on the Senate floor. "I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights."
President Obama said in a statement Tuesday that the CIA has played a profound role in protecting the nation and advancing democracy and freedom. But he also called the details of the interrogation techniques "troubling."
"It reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests," Obama said.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who last week asked Feinstein to consider delaying the release of the report in part because of America's continuing fight against the Islamic State, said the report's release affirms that America is willing to acknowledge mistakes and correct course.
"It was right to end these practices for a simple but powerful reason: they were at odds with our values," Kerry said. "They are not who we are, and they're not who or what we had to become, because the most powerful country on earth doesn't have to choose between protecting our security and promoting our values."
Contributing: Gregory Korte
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