Senate report: CIA interrogations crossed the line

The Senate Intelligence Committee has released a grisly report on the CIA’s torture practices in the post 9/11 years. The report claims to debunk the assertion that techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, close confinement, beatings, and threats resulted in intelligence that saved American lives.

Already the report has become political fodder, with former CIA officials and Senate Republicans saying the Democrat-led investigation only found what it wanted to find. The CIA has said it crossed the line with so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but it also gleaned information that helped thwart terror plots.

“The program led to the capture of al-Qaeda leaders and took them off the battlefield,” said George Tenet, who was the CIA director when the 9/11 attacks occurred. He said the agency’s interrogation techniques saved “thousands of American lives.”

After reviewing 6 million agency documents, investigators said they could find no evidence to support Tenet’s conclusion. But they did find all sorts of gruesome details, including the use of “rectal rehydration,” a form of feeding through the rectum, on five prisoners. Others received “ice baths” and death threats. At least three in captivity were told their families would suffer, with CIA officers threatening to harm their children, sexually abuse the mother of one man, and cut the throat of another man’s mother. Two detainees died. The Justice Department investigated the deaths and did not issue any criminal charges.

The report was issued amid concerns of an anti-American backlash overseas. American embassies and military sites worldwide were taking extra precautions.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.