Torture Report
7 Key Points From the C.I.A. Torture 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.”
The report includes dozens of examples from C.I.A. Director Michael Hayden's April 12, 2007, testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that highlight how his statements directly contradicted internal C.I.A records.
Hayden’s Testimony
“Now in June, after about four months of
interrogation, Abu Zubaydah reached a point where he refused to
cooperate and he shut down. He would not talk at all to the FBI
interrogators and although he was still talking to CIA interrogators no
significant progress was being made in learning anything of intelligence
value. He was, to our eye, employing classic resistance to
interrogation techniques and employing them quite effectively. And it
was clear to us that we were unlikely to be able to overcome those
techniques without some significant intervention.”
C.I.A. Records
C.I.A. records do not show that Abu
Zubaydah stopped cooperating with interrogators. He had provided
information on Qaeda activities, leadership and training, but had not
given information about future attacks on the United States, which the
C.I.A. believed he was witholding. He was put into isolation for 47 days
when the interrogation team traveled, and during his next
interrogation, the team used enhanced techniques, including
waterboarding.
4. Interrogators in the field who tried to stop the brutal techniques were repeatedly overruled by senior C.I.A. officials.
C.I.A. personnel reported on multiple
occasions to being “disturbed” by waterboarding and concerned over its
legality. Officials, including the program’s architects, described the
interrogation as a “template for future interrogation” of detainees. In
one instance, a senior official pushed back against concern over the
“legal limit” of brutal interrogation techniques by stating that the
“guidelines for this activity” had been “vetted at the most senior
levels of the agency.”
5. The C.I.A. repeatedly underreported the number of people it detained and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques under the program.
The report states that the C.I.A. never
produced an accurate count or list of those it had detained or subjected
to brutal interrogation techniques. The agency said it detained “fewer
than 100 individuals,” but a review of agency records indicated that it
held 119. It also underreported the number of detainees who were
subjected to torture.
The report includes the names of the 119
people detained from 2002 to 2008. Orange bars are those who were
subjected to the enhanced interrogation techniques.
’07
’05
’06
2002
2004
2003
HELD BY
C.I.A.
1 YEAR
2 YEARS
3 YEARS
Muhammed Rahim
About 240 days held
4 YEARS
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
About 1,260 days held
Abu Zubaydah
About 1,590 days held by the C.I.A.
6. At least 26 detainees were wrongfully held and did not meet the government’s standard for detention.
The report found that at least 26 detainees
“were wrongfully held,” including an “intellectually challenged” man who
was used as “leverage” to obtain information from a family member, two
former intelligence sources and two individuals identified as threats by
a detainee subjected to torture. Agency records were often incomplete
and, in some cases, lacked sufficient information to justify keeping
detainees in custody.
7. The C.I.A. leaked classified information to journalists, exaggerating the success of interrogation methods in an effort to gain public support.
The report found that the C.I.A. provided
classified information to journalists but that the agency did not push
to prosecute or investigate many of the leaks. C.I.A. officials asked
officers to “compile information on the success” of the program to be
shared with the news media in order to shape public opinion. The C.I.A.
also mischaracterized events and provided false or incomplete
information to the news media in an effort to gain public support.
More on NYTimes.com
-
Panel Faults C.I.A. Over Brutality and Deceit in Terrorism Interrogations
-
Report Portrays a Broken C.I.A. Devoted to a Failed Approach
The report paints a devastating picture of an agency that was ill equipped to question terrorism suspects, bungled the job and misrepresented the results. -
Does Torture Work? The C.I.A.’s Claims and What the Committee Found
-
A History of the C.I.A.’s Secret Interrogation Program
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