USA-INTELLIGENCE/TORTURE CIA interrogation techniques used after September 11 to be detailed in Senate report

Record ID: 402176

  • Title: USA-INTELLIGENCE/TORTURE CIA interrogation techniques used after September 11 to be detailed in Senate report
  • Date: 8th December 2014
  • Summary: GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA (FILE - APRIL 27, 2010) (REUTERS) BARBED WIRE FENCE WITH U.S. FLAG
  • Embargoed: 23rd December 2014 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAAKQ24892RDDQCAZBP2LOYA6P6
  • Story Text: NOTE: CONTAINS MATERIAL THAT WAS ORIGINALLY 4:3.
    A congressional report charting the activities of a CIA program launched under President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on the Pentagon is expected to be released on Tuesday (December 9).
    The U.S. government has taken precautionary measures to shore up its facilities around the world before the release of the report, which is highly critical of the spy agency's coercive interrogation program.
    Graphic details about sexual threats and other harsh interrogation techniques the CIA meted out to captured militants will be detailed by a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the spy agency's anti-terror tactics, sources familiar with the document said.
    Preparing for a worldwide outcry, and possibly even violence, from the publication of such graphic details, the White House and U.S. intelligence officials said on Monday they had taken steps to shore up security of U.S. facilities worldwide.
    Intelligence committee Democrats are expected to post the report on the panel's website on Tuesday, along with lengthy critiques of it by committee Republicans and the CIA.
    The report, which took years to produce, charts the history of the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" program, which Bush authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
    Some interrogation tactics meant to force detainees to divulge information on terrorist plots and cells, went beyond the harsh techniques authorized by White House, CIA and Justice Department lawyers working for President George W. Bush's Justice Department, according to the sources familiar with the report.
    According to unclassified documents and extensive news reports, sites included facilities where the spy agency secretly imprisoned detainees as part of its now-defunct program included Poland, Romania, Thailand and Afghanistan, as well as the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
    Human rights activists and some U.S. politicians have labeled as "torture" some of the physically stressful interrogation techniques, such as simulated drowning known as waterboarding that were authorized under former-President George W. Bush.
    Bush ended many aspects of the program before leaving office, and Obama swiftly banned so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," which critics say are torture, after his 2009 inauguration.
    The committee's bottom-line conclusion is that harsh interrogations did not produce a single critical intelligence nugget that could not have been obtained by non-coercive means.
    That conclusion is strongly disputed by many intelligence and counter-terrorism officials, who say that there is no question such interrogations led to major breakthroughs.
    Cases in which CIA interrogators threatened one or more detainees with mock executions - a practice never authorized by Bush administration lawyers - are documented in the report, the sources said, including interrogation practices in which one suspect was kept awake and interrogated for five days without a break.
    The 500-plus page report which the Intelligence Committee has prepared for release -- a summary of a much more detailed, 6,000-page narrative which will remain secret - includes a 200-page narrative of the interrogation program's history and 20 case studies of the interrogations of specific detainees.
    CIA Director Michael Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2008 that "waterboarding has been used on only three detainees."
    Those subjected to waterboarding were al Qaeda suspects Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hayden said. The three are currently being held at Guantanamo.
    He said waterboarding was used then because of concerns of imminent catastrophic attacks on the United States and because authorities had limited knowledge of al Qaeda.
    Both the CIA and committee Republicans, who criticized the Democrats' methods and participated in the committee's investigation to a limited extent, are expected to publish rebuttals.
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