CIA Used Sexual Threat And Other Brutal Methods: US Senate Report Exposes Details Of Torture
By Countercurrents.org
09 December, 2014
Countercurrents.org
The CIA carried out "brutal" interrogations of al-Qaeda suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the US, a US Senate report has said. The CIA used sexual threats, waterboarding and other brutal methods to interrogate terrorism suspects and all were ineffective at eliciting critical information, according to a US Senate report released on Tuesday. The report also shows dissent and disarray within the CIA. The summary of the report, compiled by Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that the CIA misled Americans about what it was doing.
The report took years to produce, charts the history of the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" program, which US president Bush authorized after the Sept. 11 attacks.
A Reuters report said:
“The [Senate] report on government-sanctioned interrogation at sites around the world for questioning captured al Qaeda and other militants prompted the United States to warn its facilities abroad to shore up security in case of violent reactions.
“Sources familiar with the document said it includes graphic details about techniques the Central Intelligence Agency used in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
“The sources said tactics meant to force detainees to divulge information on terrorist plots and cells went beyond the techniques authorized by White House, CIA and lawyers working for President George W. Bush's Justice Department.”
The more than 500-page report that the Intelligence Committee has prepared is a summary of a much more detailed, 6,000-page narrative which will remain secret. The report includes a 200-page narrative of the interrogation program's history and 20 case studies of the interrogations of specific detainees.
In a statement, the CIA insisted that the interrogations did help save lives.
"The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day," Director John Brennan said in a statement.
However, the CIA said it acknowledged that there were mistakes in the program, especially early on when it was unprepared for the scale of the operation to detain and interrogate prisoners.
A few of the main points included in the Senate report are the following:
# At least 26 of 119 known detainees in custody during the life of the program were wrongfully held, and many held for months longer than they should have been.
# Aggressive techniques were used on suspects from the start, despite CIA claims that interrogations would begin with less coercive methods.
# Methods included sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours, often standing or in painful positions.
# Waterboarding was physically harmful to prisoners, causing convulsions and vomiting.
# The CIA misled politicians and public, giving inaccurate information to obtain approval for using techniques.
# At no time did coercive interrogation techniques lead of collection of intelligence on imminent threats.
# None of 20 cases of counterterrorism "successes" attributed to the techniques led to unique or otherwise unavailable intelligence.
# The CIA claimed falsely that no senators had objected to the program.
# Management of the program was deeply flawed, for example the operation of the second detention facility, known as COBALT.
The Washington datelined Reuters report said:
“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.”
The Reuters report added:
“The report describes how al Qaeda operative Abdel Rahman al Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened with a buzzing power drill, the sources said. The drill was never actually used on him.”
Citing sources the report documents the way at least one detainee was sexually threatened with a broomstick.
The report on CIA concludes that “harsh interrogations did not produce a single critical intelligence nugget that could not have been obtained by non-coercive means. Former CIA and government leaders, including former U.S. vice president Dick Cheney, dispute that conclusion.”
The Reuters report observed:
“It was unclear whether the report would lead to further attempts to hold those involved accountable. The legal statute of limitations has passed for many of the actions.”
Introducing the report to the Senate, Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein described the CIA's actions as a stain on US history.
"The release of this 500-page summary cannot remove that stain, but it can and does say to our people and the world that America is big enough to admit when it's wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes," she said.
Earlier, on Monday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the US president Barack Obama supported making the document public "so that people around the world and people here at home understand exactly what transpired."
The Reuters report cited the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Anthony Romero. Anthony said in an opinion piece in The New York Times that Obama should issue formal pardons to senior officials and others to make clear that these actions were crimes and help ensure that "the American government never tortures again."
Bush ended many aspects of the program before leaving office, and Obama swiftly banned "enhanced interrogation techniques," which critics say are torture, after his 2009 inauguration.
Two Republican lawmakers issued a statement calling the release of the report "reckless and irresponsible." Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Intelligence Committee, is due to make the report public in a Senate floor speech.
"We are concerned that this release could endanger the lives of Americans overseas, jeopardize U.S. relations with foreign partners, potentially incite violence, create political problems for our allies, and be used as a recruitment tool for our enemies," senators Marco Rubio and Jim Risch said.
Senator Angus King, an independent, told CNN releasing the report was important because it could persuade a future president not to use these techniques.
"We did things that we tried Japanese soldiers for war crimes for after World War Two. This is not America. This is not who we are. What was done has diminished our stature and inflamed terrorists around the world."
"Did we torture people? Yes. Did it work. No," King said.
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