Read the Senate Committee’s summary on CIA interrogation and detention
Front of the report
On December 9, 2014, the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a summary of a six year investigation into CIA operations in black sites around the world.
The 499-page summary documents in meticulous detail how CIA agents used what are described as a variety of interrogation techniques on 119 individuals. These procedures included waterboarding, systematic beatings, and hitherto unknown tortures such as “rectal feeding”.
The report concluded that the CIA’s use of such methods on individuals was not effective in acquiring accurate information. In the foreword the chair of the intelligence committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, writes that the report is “highly critical of the CIA’s actions, and rightfully so”.
The torture of detainees was “brutal” and far worse than the CIA told policymakers, the report finds, and their justification for the program rested on “inaccurate claims” of its effectiveness.
Inaccurate information – on the conditions in which detainees were confined, and the use of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” – was repeatedly given to the US Department of Justice by the CIA.
The CIA’s operation and management of the detention and interrogation program was also “deeply flawed” says the report.
Read the full published summary here.
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