Senate Report Details Interrogation Tactics Used By CIA

Rebecca Bellecci Tuesday, December 09, 2014

The White House in Washington, D.C. | (Photo: Reuters/Yuri Gripas)

A recent Senate Intelligence Committee report detailing post-9/11 CIA interrogation tactics reveals practices of sleep deprivation, forced feeding and waterboarding.

The report, released Tuesday, suggests the CIA mislead White House officials and the public regarding the level at which they were practicing enhanced interrogation techniques on detainees suspected of being affiliated with the al Qaeda terrorist organization.

The report, which took six years to compose by the Senate Intelligence Committee, explains that CIA black sites were set up all over the world in countries like Thailand, Poland, Romania and Afghanistan where interrogators would practice different techniques, approved by psychologists, to get detainees to reveal information.

Some of the techniques included sleep deprivation for 180-hours, forced rectal feeding, waterboarding and physical methods, such as "insult slaps."

Dianne Feinstein, the Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, said in a foreword of the report that the enhanced interrogation acts performed by the CIA are a "stain on our values, and on our history."

Others, including President Obama, have also sought to decry the practices used by the CIA after the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City.

The president said in a statement that the release of the report reasserts his "longstanding view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interest."

Former CIA directors and deputy directors refuted the contents of the report in an Op-Ed published in the Wall Street Journal, writing: "On that important issue it is important to know that the dilemma CIA officers struggled with in the aftermath of 9/11 was one that would cause discomfort for those enamored of today's easy simplicities: Faced with post-9/11 circumstances, CIA officers knew that many would later question their decisions—as we now see—but they also believed that they would be morally culpable for the deaths of fellow citizens if they failed to gain information that could stop the next attacks."