Senate ‘Torture Report’ shows a brutal, ineffective program under CIA

After five years, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing report on the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques used after 9/11 during the George W. Bush administration. The report found that water-boarding was more prevalent than previously admitted, that there was sexual violence threatened against the mothers of detainees, and that detainees were force fed and abused. Additionally, it found that the CIA misled the government and the president and produced no useful intelligence.

The Washington Post outlines some of the key findings in the report, including this one:

Interrogation techniques such as slaps and “wallings” (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity. Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an “an open, nonthreatening approach,” or that interrogations began with the “least coercive technique possible” and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary.

Speaking about the report, Sen. Dianne Feinstein said it was “morally, legally and administratively misguided and that this nation should never again engage in these tactics.”

The New York Times takes a closer look at the misleading claims that torture produced useful intelligence, showing again and again that it did not.

You can read the unclassified report here.