'Shocking CIA torture methods damaged US'

Washington: A shocking laundry list of CIA interrogation methods has significantly damaged US global standing and America will never resort to those methods again, according to US President Barack Obama.

The reaction came after it emerged that the US spy agency “wrongfully” held at least 26 individuals detained in its interrogation and secret prison programme, according to the Senate report.

Meanwhile, it was announced that the US Justice Department has no plans to reopen criminal investigation into CIA interrogation programme, according to officials.

It also that the CIA's harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees during Bush presidency didn't work, were more brutal than previously revealed and delivered no "ticking time bomb" information that prevented an attack, according to an explosive Senate report released Tuesday.

The majority report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee is a damning condemnation of the tactics -- branded by critics as torture -- the George W. Bush administration deployed in the fear-laden days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

The techniques, according to the report, were "deeply flawed," poorly managed and often resulted in "fabricated" information.

The long-delayed study, distilled from more than six million CIA documents, also says the agency consistently misled Congress and the Bush White House about the harsh methods it used and the results it obtained from interrogating al Qaeda suspects.

The report is reigniting the partisan divide over combating terrorism that dominated Washington a decade ago. Democrats argue the tactics conflict with American values while leading members of the Bush administration insist they were vital to preventing another attack.

It contains grisly details of detainees held in secret overseas facilities being subjected to near drowning, or waterboarding, driven to delirium by days of sleep deprivation, threatened with mock executions and threats that their relatives would be sexually abused.

The central claim of the report is that the controversial CIA methods did not produce information necessary to save lives that was not already available from other means. That is important because supporters of the program have always said that it was vital to obtaining actionable intelligence from detainees that could not be extracted through conventional interrogations.

CIA Director John Brennan strongly disagreed with the finding.

"Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees (subject to enhanced interrogation) did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives," he said. "The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al Qaeda continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day."

Brennan said the agency had learned from its mistakes, but refuted the idea that it systematically misled top officials about its tactics and results.

Security threats

American embassies, military units and other US interests are preparing for possible security threats related to the release of a report on the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques at secret overseas facilities after the 9/11 terror attacks.

The report from the Senate Intelligence Committee will be the first public accounting of the CIA's use of what critics call torture on Al Qaida detainees held at "black" sites in Europe and Asia.

The committee on Tuesday was expected to release a 480-page executive summary of the 6,000-plus-page report compiled by Democrats on the panel.

The torture report's release follow four years of intense wrangling between the CIA and a US Senate oversight committee, as America faces a day of reckoning over use of torture.

The public airing of post-9/11 practices come after months of negotiation and is likely to draw attention worldwide.

480-page report

The 480-page report by the US Senate intelligence committee is expected to contain graphic details of how the CIA used “enhanced interrogation techniques”, including waterboarding against Al Qaida suspects who were held in an international network of secret jails.

President Barack Obama has already dubbed the techniques used as “torture”, in a televised press conference earlier this year, but the White House said it feared that the fresh details could spark recriminations abroad.

“The administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place at US facilities around the globe,” a White House spokesman said, warning the report could lead to “a greater risk” to US facilities and individuals.

The decision to publish the report, which is a declassified summary of a 6,000-page three-year review of more than five million highly classified CIA documents, has been fiercely contested by both Republicans and senior members of the administration of George W Bush, who authorised the programme.

Clash of views

“I think this is a terrible idea,” said Mike Rogers, the Republican chair of the House intelligence committee. “Our foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths... Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths.”

The White House said it “strongly supports” the decision to release the report, in order to be clear about “what American values are” and to be sure that “something like this should never happen again”.

However, human rights groups and anti-torture advocates have accused the Obama administration of dragging its feet over publication in order to shield the CIA and the US government from further embarrassment.

The report emerges from a bitter four-year running battle between the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Democrat chair Dianne Feinstein and the CIA, who earlier this year were forced to admit they had spied on her committee, causing outrage in Congress.

Its publication was then further delayed for another four months as Feinstein wrangled with the CIA over how much of the summary should be scratched out by the censor’s pen. She accused the agency of trying to “obscure key facts that support the report’s findings and conclusions”.

No useful intelligence

Last weekend it emerged that John Kerry, the US secretary of state, had directly asked Feinstein to reconsider the decision to publish the report, in what activists said was yet another attempt by the administration to avoid a reckoning on the issue.

Early leaks of the report suggest it will conclude that torture did not yield useful intelligence, that the CIA used torture in excess of its remit and repeatedly lied to Congress to cover its tracks and exaggerate the value of any intelligence it extracted under duress.

At a press conference earlier this year Mrs Feinstein promised that the report would reveal “the horrible details of the CIA program that never, never, never should have existed.” That conclusion will be formally contested in a dissenting minority report that will be published alongside Mrs Feinstein’s review and will argue that the report is politically motivated and does not even include interviews of those responsible for the programme.

Already the Bush administration, beginning with Bush himself, have launched a media counter-offensive against the findings of the report which now threatens to deeply discredit both the CIA and the former administration.

“We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf. These are patriots. And whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contribution to our country it is way off base,” said Bush in an interview over the weekend. “I knew the directors, the deputy directors, a lot of the operators. These are good people, really good people and we’re lucky as a nation to have them.”

Jose Rodriguez, a 31-year veteran of the CIA who ran the programme, said in an editorial page article in the Washington Post that it was an “egregious falsehood” to say the interrogations did not yield intelligence.

“It’s a dishonest attempt to rewrite history,” he said.

Declassified

The release of the torture report will represent the third major airing of faulty CIA intelligence in 15 years, following official commissions into the 9/11 plot and Saddam Hussein’s defunct illicit weapons programs.

Despite months of negotiation over how much of the 6,000-page report will be declassified, most of its findings will never see the light of the day.

But even a partial release of the report will yield a furious response from the CIA and its allies.