The CIA misled the government and the public
about parts of its interrogation program for years, the Washington Post said
Tuesday, quoting a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Specifically, the US agency hid details about
the severity of its methods, overstated the significance of plots and prisoners
and took credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact
provided before they were subjected to harsh techniques, the Post said, quoting
officials who have seen the 6,300-page report.
It was constructed with detailed chronologies
of dozens of CIA detainees.
The paper said the report describes a
long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims the CIA sought permission to
use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that
yielded little to no significant intelligence, according to US officials who
have reviewed the document.
"The CIA described (its program)
repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as
getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt
terrorist plots and save thousands of lives," said one US official briefed
on the report.
"Was that actually true? The answer is
no."
U.S. President George W. Bush (C) after a briefing
at CIA headquarters as CIA Deputy Director Steve …
Current and former US officials describing
the report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of
the issue and because the document remains classified.
The report includes what officials described
as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention
facilities, or "black sites", that was dismantled by President Barack
Obama in 2009.
The report describes previously undisclosed
cases of abuse including the alleged repeated dunking of a terror suspect in
tanks of iced water in Afghanistan.
This method bore similarities to
waterboarding but never showed up on any list of techniques approved by the Justice
Department, the Post said.
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