CIA torture was ineffective, Senate report concludes

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 concludes 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, according to a Democratic Senate aide familiar with the report.

In one of the more outrageous examples cited by the aide, a 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 percent of the population. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the report had not yet been released.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said it was important for the report to be released to prevent U.S. officials from ever using torture again. Federal officials braced for possible violence by extremist groups at U.S. facilities around the world in response to the report.

"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," Feinstein said.

The committee released a 500-page declassified summary of a 6,200-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's 20 findings and conclusions are grouped into four central themes:

• The CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" were not effective.

• 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.

• The interrogation program was far more brutal than the CIA represented to policymakers and the American public.

• The CIA's management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed.

Some Republicans on the 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.

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 said "The report documents a troubling program involving enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects in secret facilities outside the United States, and 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."

He said releasing the report is part of the nation's willingness to admit its imperfections, and added, "I hope that today's report can help us leave these techniques where they belong—in the past."

Former President George W. Bush and former CIA officials defended the agency in advance of the report's release.

"The report's leaked conclusion...that the interrogation program brought no intelligence value is an egregious falsehood; it's a dishonest attempt to rewrite history," wrote Jose Rodriguez, Jr., former head of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Friday.