Here Are Some Of The Conclusions From The CIA Torture Report

The following excerpts are selected from the conclusions of the executive summary of the Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program. The summary of the 6,700-page torture report, nearly six years after work on it began and two years since the report was completed, was released Tuesday morning despite what Sen. Jay Rockefeller assessed Tuesday as foot-dragging and stone-walling by the CIA and the Obama administration. Here is my pre-release commentary.

#1: The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees. [...] While being subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and afterwards, multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence. Detainees provided fabricated information on critical intelligence issues, including the terrorist threats which the CIA identified as its highest priorities.[...]
#2: The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness. [...]
The Committee reviewed 20 of the most frequent and prominent examples of purported
counterterrorism successes that the CIA has attributed to the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques, and found them to be wrong in fundamental respects. In some cases, there was no relationship between the cited counterterrorism success and any information provided by detainees during or after the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques. In the remaining cases, the CIA inaccurately claimed that specific, otherwise unavailable information was acquired from a CIA detainee "as a result" of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, when in fact the information was either: (1) corroborative of information already available to the CIA or other elements of the U.S. Intelligence Community from sources other than the CIA detainee, and was therefore not "otherwise unavailable"; or (2) acquired from the CIA detainee prior to the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques. The examples provided by the CIA included numerous factual inaccuracies. [...]
#3: The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA
represented to policymakers and others. [...]
At least five CIA detainees were subjectedto "rectal rehydration" or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity. The CIA placed detainees in ice water "baths." The CIA led several detainees to believe they would never be allowed to leave CIA custody alive, suggesting to one detainee that he would only leave in a coffin-shaped box.^ One interrogator told another detainee that he would never go to court, because "we can never let the world know what I have done to you." CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families—to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to "cut [a detainee's] mother's throat."