Senate report: CIA interrogations were more brutal, less effective than claimed

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

A long-awaited report by the Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA has been purposely misleading the government and public about its post-9/11 interrogation program for several years, The Washington Post reports, citing U.S. officials who have reviewed the document. The 6,300-page report goes into detail on everything from secret detention facilities to specific cases of alleged abuse, including the repeated immersion of a terrorism suspect into a tank of ice-cold water.

According to The Post, the agency also took credit for eliciting information that detainees gave up before agents used severe interrogation methods, overstated the significance of uncovered plots, and glossed over the harshness of its techniques. "The CIA described [its program] repeatedly to both the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands thousands of lives," an unidentified U.S. official tells The Post. "Was that actually true? The answer is no."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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