December 10, 2014

The Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday released its report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) “enhanced interrogation” techniques, considered by many to be torture. The techniques were used on al-Qa’ida terrorism suspects in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. These techniques included exposure to cold, confinement in small places, humiliation, slapping, sleep deprivation, and waterboarding. (Waterboarding involves pouring water over a cloth covering the face and breathing passages of an immobilized captive, causing the sensation of drowning.) The document that was published is actually a 480-page summary of the Senate committee’s report, which runs to more than 6,000 pages and includes huge quantities of evidence that remains classified.

The authors of the report drew the following conclusions about “enhanced interrogation”: The methods employed were more extensive and more brutal than previously admitted; the techniques  did not deliver life-saving intelligence to U.S. officials; and CIA officials “provided inaccurate information to the Bush administration, Congress, the Justice Department, the CIA inspector general, the media, and the American public.” The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Diane Feinstein (D., California), wrote in the report that it is her “personal conclusion that, under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which released a report criticizing CIA interrogation methods during the administration of President George W. Bush. (U.S. Senate)

Senator John McCain of Arizona was the only Republican senator to defend the findings of the Senate committee on the CIA’s interrogation techniques. McCain was tortured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. (U.S. Senate)

Nearly all Senate Republicans opposed the publication of the report, claiming that its revelations would place American lives in jeopardy and risk setting off a backlash overseas. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, and five other Republican senators issued a 100-page dissent refuting the report. They claimed that the CIA was advised that its methods were not torture and that the program was critical to the destruction of al-Qa`ida. However, Republican Senator John McCain praised the Intelligence Committee report, stating that the CIA’s conduct “stained our national honor” and had done “much harm and little practical good.” As a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War, McCain was tortured by his captors. Soon after taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama ordered the CIA interrogation program stopped.

Additional World Book articles:

• United States, Government 2004 (a Back in Time article)
• United States, Government 2007 (a Back in Time article)
• Terrorism: America’s New Enemy (a special report)