U.S. Sen. Mark Udall (Post file)
WASHINGTON — Interrogation techniques used by CIA agents or allies in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks were not only harsh — comparable to torture — but also ineffective, according to a made public Tuesday by the U.S. Senate.
Its release marked the end of a tangled investigation by Senate officials, who combed through more than 6.3 million pages of documents over five years to better understand how CIA operatives treated terrorism suspects or detainees in response to the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center.
“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,” said U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in a statement.
The California Democrat heads the Senate intelligence committee and she took to the Senate floor on Tuesday to unveil an executive summary of the committee’s findings, which comes from a larger report said to run .
Many details already have been made public — including the near-drowning method of interrogation known as “water-boarding” — but its release Tuesday exposed new details about the program started under President George W. Bush.
A synopsis of the investigation noted that terrorism suspects were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques in near non-stop fashion for days or weeks at a time.” Methods included water-boarding, sleep deprivation for “up to 180 hours” and living conditions that were almost medieval.
“CIA detainees at one detention facility, described as a ‘dungeon,’ were kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste,” according to synopsis released by Feinstein’s office.
Senate investigators also claim the CIA consistently lied about the program and “provided extensive inaccurate information.” This includes over-estimating the usefulness of information gleaned from its treatment of detainees and false explanations of “how interrogation techniques were applied.”
Due to the sensitivity of the report — as well as its dark findings — policymakers in Washington have feuded for years over its release. Much of the past year has seen bare-knuckled negotiations between the White House and Senate about how much information should be redacted. Recently, U.S. officials overseas were placed on alert in anticipation of global reaction to its contents.
Among the legislators who pushed hard for its release was U.S. Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., who at one point threatened of reading the document aloud on the Senate floor to force the information into the public arena.
He ultimately did not have to do that, and on Tuesday described its release as a win for transparency.
“The release of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s study of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program is an historic victory for our nation, the Constitution, and our system of checks and balances,” he said in a statement.
“This study ensures that the truth about the CIA’s brutal torture program finally comes out and that the agency can learn from its repeated missteps and start to restore its integrity.”
