WASHINGTON — The Senate intelligence committee reached an agreement Thursday on the framework of a wide-ranging review of the CIA’s past treatment of terrorism detainees, even as members acknowledged that the bulk of the panel’s work will be conducted in secret.
The panel’s Democratic and Republican leaders settled on a blueprint for a year-long probe that will examine the agency’s detention and interrogation of about 100 suspected al-Qaeda operatives held in secret overseas prisons between 2002 and 2006. Committee members last week confirmed their intention to conduct such an inquiry.
The scope of the bipartisan review will include the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and whether such methods actually produced significant intelligence, as the Bush administration said, the panel said in a prepared statement. But how much of their findings will be made public remained unclear.
The Senate inquiry will run parallel to a separate White House review of Bush administration detention and interrogation practices. Neither review is expected to result in recommendations for criminal charges.
CIA Director Leon Panetta said he would cooperate, calling the inquiry an “exercise in legitimate oversight.”
