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A Senate report found the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, were not effective. The agency is accused of misrepresenting management of the program. Um, these are the same techniques former vice president Dick Cheney praised.
Here are some key points from the NY Times on the CIA interrogation report:
1. The C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques were more brutal and employed more extensively than the agency portrayed.
The report describes extensive waterboarding as a “series of near drownings” and suggests that more prisoners were subjected to waterboarding than the three prisoners the C.I.A. has acknowledged in the past. The report also describes detainees being subjected to sleep deprivation for up to a week, medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” and death threats. Conditions at one prison, described by a clandestine officer as a “dungeon,” were blamed for the death of a detainee, and the harsh techniques were described as leading to “psychological and behavioral issues, including hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation.”
2. The C.I.A. interrogation program was mismanaged and was not subject to adequate oversight.
The report cites dissatisfaction among intelligence officers about the competence and training of interrogators. Those found to have violated agency policy were “rarely held accountable.” The architects of the program had never carried out a real interrogation. The report states that the C.I.A. resisted congressional oversight, restricted access to information, declined to answer questions about the program and “impeded oversight” by the agency’s inspector general by providing false information.
3. The C.I.A. misled members of Congress and the White House about the effectiveness and extent of its brutal interrogation techniques.
The report says that the C.I.A. provided false and misleading information to members of Congress, the White House and the director of national intelligence about the program’s effectiveness. It asserts that a review of cases, in which the agency claims to have collected “actionable intelligence” it would have been unable to obtain by other means, calls into question the connection between the information and any “counterterrorism success.”
In other words, Dick Cheney lied, but of course, he would never admit to that.
This was cross-posted from The Hinterland Gazette.
graphia via shutterstock.com
