US Senate report: Harsh CIA tactics didn’t work

Senate Intelligence Chair Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. is pursued by reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington

U.S. Senate investigators delivered a damning indictment of CIA practices yesterday, accusing the spy agency of inflicting pain and suffering on prisoners beyond legal limits and deceiving the nation with stories of life-saving interrogations unsubstantiated by its own records.
Treatment in secret prisons a decade ago was worse than the government told Congress or the public, said the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee, the first official public accounting after years of debate about the CIA’s brutal handling of prisoners.
Five hundred pages were released, representing the executive summary and conclusions of a still-classified 6,700-page full investigation.
President Barack Obama declared the past practices to be “contrary to our values” and pledged, “I will continue to use my authority as president to make sure we never resort to those methods again.”
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat and the committee chairman, branded the findings a stain on the nation’s history.
“Under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured,” she declared, commanding the Senate floor for an extended accounting of the harsh techniques identified in the report.
Tactics included weeks of sleep deprivation, slapping and slamming of detainees against walls, confining them to small boxes, keeping them isolated for prolonged periods and threatening them with death. Three detainees faced the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. Many developed psychological problems.
But the “enhanced interrogation techniques” didn’t produce the results that really mattered, the report asserts in its most controversial conclusion. It cites CIA cables, emails and interview transcripts to rebut the central justification for torture â that it thwarted terror plots and saved American lives.
In a statement, the CIA said the report “tells part of the story” but “there are too many flaws for it to stand as the official record of the program.”
The report, released after months of negotiations with the administration about what should be censored, was issued amid concerns of an anti-American backlash overseas. American embassies and military sites worldwide were taking extra precautions.
Earlier this year, Feinstein accused the CIA of infiltrating Senate computer systems in a dispute over documents as relations between the investigators and the spy agency deteriorated, the issue still sensitive years after President Barack Obama halted the interrogation practices upon taking office.
Former CIA officials disputed the report’s findings. So did Senate Republicans, whose written dissent accuses Democrats of inaccuracies, sloppy analysis and cherry-picking evidence to reach a predetermined conclusion. CIA officials prepared their own response acknowledging serious mistakes, but saying they gained vital intelligence that still guides counterterrorism efforts.
“The program led to the capture of al-Qaida leaders and took them off the battlefield,” said George Tenet, CIA director when the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks occurred. He said it saved “thousands of American lives.”
Not so, said Democratic Sen. Harry Reid, the Senate majority leader. “Not only is torture wrong, but it doesn’t work,” he said. “It got us nothing except a bad name.”
President George W. Bush approved the program through a covert finding in 2002, but he wasn’t briefed by the CIA about the details until 2006. At that time Bush expressed discomfort with the “image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper and forced to go to the bathroom on himself.” Bush said in his 2010 memoirs that he discussed the program with CIA Director George Tenet, but Tenet told the CIA inspector general that never happened.
After al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah was arrested in Pakistan, the CIA received permission to use waterboarding, sleep deprivation, close confinement and other techniques. Agency officials added unauthorized methods into the mix, the report says.
At least five men in CIA detention received “rectal rehydration,” a form of feeding through the rectum. The report found no medical necessity for the treatment.
Others received “ice baths” and death threats. At least three in captivity were told their families would suffer, with CIA officers threatening to harm their children, sexually abuse the mother of one man, and cut the throat of another man’s mother. Bradley Klapper, Ken Dilanian, Washington, AP