CIA Responds to Newly Released Torture Report
The CIA says a report released Tuesday on its interrogation techniques tells just “part of the story.” And the agency says in a statement that “there are too many flaws for it to stand as the official record of the program.”
The report finds that the CIA inflicted worse treatment on prisoners than it told Congress or the public — including weeks of sleep deprivation, confinement to small boxes, and the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. Senator Dianne Feinstein, whose intelligence panel released the findings, says that by any common definition, detainees “were tortured.”
Former CIA chief George Tenet defends the interrogation program, saying it saved “thousands of American lives” by taking al-Qaida leaders “off the battlefield.” But the report says those claims aren’t backed up.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Senator Dianne Feinstein says the torture report does not conclude that enhanced interrogation obtained no intelligence, as some have suggested, but it does draw a much more important conclusion.
