Senate report accuses CIA of brutal ‘illegal’ interrogation methods

A Senate report concludes the Central Intelligence Agency’s programme for interrogating terror suspects was far more brutal than it admitted. The agency’s methods also failed to secure information that thwarted any terrorism threats, according to the report. It said the CIA misled the public and Congress about the harshness of the interrogations and exaggerated the intelligence it produced.

The implications of this report are profound. Not only is torture wrong, but it doesn’t work … It got us nothing except a bad name.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid

Much of the programme, according to the report, was developed and operated by two external contractors. The Senate Intelligence Committee published a 480-page executive summary of the huge report compiled by Democrats on the panel. The report followed a five-year investigation by the Senate Committee into the programme, meant to extract information from al Qaeda and other detainees held in detention facilities around the world. The CIA and many senior members of the U.S. administration have said the programme was effective and foiled a number of terrorist plots.