After five years of poring over 6.3 million pages of documents obtained from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Senate Intelligence Committee has released the findings of its investigation into the CIA's interrogation methods.
The committee found that the agency used techniques that were "far more brutal" than what it had led then President George W. Bush, the Senate and the public to believe.
The 499-page report (pdf), which is actually only the entire findings' executive summary, details interrogation techniques that hold little or zero resemblance to torture methods. Following the Twin Tower attacks in Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA hired the services of two military psychologists James E. Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, contractors who had zero experience in interrogating Al-Qaeda members, to interrogate prisoner Abu Zubaydah.
Abu Zubaydah was flown to a CIA facility in Thailand codenamed Detention Site Green, where the contractors, identified as Grayson Swigert and Hammond Dunbar in the report, took charge of the interrogation. Abu reportedly was subjected to methods so troubling that some CIA officers reportedly were "to the point of tears and choking up" and many chose to be transferred to another facility if the interrogation methods continued.
The report cites cables sent from the Thai facility in August 2002, which contain the Department of Justice approval to subject Zubaydah to waterboarding, a form of water torture where the victim's face is covered with cloth and with water being poured over his breathing passages to create the sensation of drowning.
The sessions lasted for weeks, with the CIA subjecting Zubaydah to the "aggressive phase of interrogation" reportedly on a near-24-hour basis. According to the cables obtained by the committee, Zubaydah frequently "cried, begged, pleaded and whimpered," although denying that he had no information to provide on terrorist threats.
The interrogators maintained the sessions, telling headquarters that Zubaydah was "compliant." When the interrogator "raised his eyebrow without instructions," the prisoner "slowly walked on his own to the water table and sat down." When the interrogator "snapped his fingers twice," Zubaydah would lie on the torture board.
The report states that Zubaydah was frequently "hysterical" and too "distressed" to communicate effectively. The waterboarding caused "immediate fluid intake and involuntary leg, chest and arm spasms." In one of the sessions, Zubaydah became "completely unresponsive with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth" and required medical intervention, after which he began passing "copious amounts of liquid."
While some CIA officers witnessing Zubaydah's interrogation sessions sent letters to the CIA headquarters in Virginia stating that the methods were "approach(ing) the legal limit", then head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center Jose Rodriguez reportedly told them to stay quiet.
"Strongly urge that any speculative language as to the legality of given activities or, more precisely, judgment calls as to their legality vis-à-vis operational guidelines for this activity agreed upon and vetted at the most senior levels of the agency, be refrained from in written traffic (email or cable traffic)," Rodriguez wrote. "Such language is not helpful."
In the end, CIA records show Zubaydah never provided useful information to thwart plans for the next terrorist attack in the United States, the CIA told the National Security Council that the hostile interrogation methods "produced meaningful results." In fact, the two psychologists who designed the program be "used as a template for future interrogation of high value captives" not because the method allowed the agency to extract useful information from Zubaydah but because it confirmed that Zubaydah did not have the information the CIA first thought he had.
"Our goal was to reach the stage where we have broken any will or ability of subject to resist or deny providing us information (intelligence) to which he had access," the contractors said. "We additionally sought to bring subject to the point that we confidently assess that he does not possess undisclosed threat information or intelligence that could prevent a terrorist event."
Zubaydah was not the only prisoner subjected to such methods of interrogation. Records show the CIA detained at least 119 men, although the agency maintained to the White House and in public that it detained "fewer than one hundred." At least 26 of the men were wrongfully detained.
In 2003, a CIA officer who informed headquarters about the "unsettling discovery" that the agency had detainees about whom it knew "very little," CIA top officials including Director Michael Hayden was said to have instructed the officer to "keep the detainee number at 98."
Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, suspected to be an Al-Qaeda terrorist, was sent to Salt Pit, an Afghanistan detention site called Cobalt in the report, for questioning using the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques. Nashiri was subjected to the CIA's torture methods in four distinct periods. He was deemed "compliant" and "cooperative," but in the end, Nashiri did not provide the agency with actionable intelligence.
The report cites investigation made by the CIA Office of Inspector General showing Nashiri was slapped in the back of the head, had cigar smoke blown in his face, given a forced bath using a stiff brush, and was made to stand in stress positions that caused cuts and bruises. He was also threatened that his mother would be brought in and sexually abused.
At that time, the CIA chief of interrogations wrote an email to colleagues requesting that he "no longer be associated in any way with the interrogation program due to serious reservation(s) about the current state of affairs." He called the CIA's interrogation a "train wreck waiting to happen and I intend to get the hell off the train before it happens."
Notwithstanding the former interrogations chief's resignation, the CIA reinstituted an enhanced interrogation plan for Nashiri, beginning with shaving him, stripping him naked and placing him in a standing position with his hands "handcuffed and shackled" over his head to deprive him of sleep. Nashiri was diagnosed with "anxiety" and "major depressive disorder" and was found to be uncooperative.
At one point, he launched a hunger strike, to which the CIA responded by force-feeding him rectally while he was in a "forward-facing position (Trendlenberg) with head lower than torso." Nashiri wasn't the only detainee subjected to rectal rehydration. The report says Majid Khan's "lunch tray" consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was "pureed" and infused rectally.
In 2002, the first Salt Pit detainee Ridha al-Najjar was subjected to "total isolation in darkness", worse food, playing loud music that could cause damage such as hearing loss, and having him "shackled and hooded" with both arms left hanging overhead so he could not put them down for 22 hours every day in order to "break" his resistance.
The CIA's plan for him also involved exploiting his "fear for the well-being of his family to our benefit" and using "vague threats" to create a "mind virus." Officers also proposed "sound disorientation techniques," "sense of time deprivation" and exposure to temperatures. A month later, a CIA cable described al-Najjar "clearly a broken man."
Intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein, in a long speech on the Senate floor about the report, said her words "give me no pleasure" and called the CIA's actions a decade ago "a stain on our values and on our history."
After Feinstein's speech, Republican Sen. John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam in the 1960s, said the American people "have a right ... to know what was done in their name" in response to some Republicans criticizing the move to make the report public.
President Obama also defended the report, pointing out that there will never be a "perfect" time to release it. In an interview with Telemundo following the report's release, the president acknowledged Secretary of State John Kerry's pleas not to release the report for fear of global attacks against the U.S. However, Obama said it is important to publicly acknowledge one's mistakes.
"We did some things that violated who we are as a people," Obama said. "The lines of accountability that needed to be set up weren't always in place."
