Erin Kelly

USA Today

WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee's release Tuesday of a searing report condemning the CIA's use of torture against suspected terrorists reignited the decade-old debate about how best to protect Americans from attack.

The report concluded that the CIA's interrogation of detainees after the 9/11 attacks was far more brutal than the agency disclosed and that top officials misled Congress, the George W. Bush administration and the public about what they were doing.

A 500-page summary of the 6,700-page report detailed the CIA's use of waterboarding and sleep deprivation on prisoners and described how detainees were chained in painful positions in cold, dark dungeons in secret overseas prisons. It said those tactics did little to elicit valuable information or save American lives.

"It shows that the CIA's actions a decade ago are a stain on our values and on our history," said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. "The release of this....report cannot remove that stain, but it can and does say to our people, and the world, that America is big enough to admit when it's wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes."

But most Republican senators condemned the report, saying it would undermine the CIA's efforts to stop terrorists.

"(This) report is troubling for a variety of reasons, most of which are not found in its pages," said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Tex. "Enhanced interrogation techniques employed by members of our intelligence community saved American lives, and Senate Democrats should thank these brave men and women who worked to protect us – not vilify them."

Feinstein said it was important for the report to be released so that torture will not be used again. President Obama banned the use of torture in CIA interrogations shortly after taking office in January 2009.

"There are those who will seize upon the report and say 'see what Americans did,' and they will try to use it to justify evil actions or to incite more violence," Feinstein said. "We cannot prevent that. But history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say 'never again.' "

Federal officials braced Tuesday for possible violence by extremist groups at U.S. facilities around the world in response to the report. White House officials said U.S. officials overseas are in a "pre-determined period of heightened alert" that will continue to be assessed by the U.S. diplomatic, intelligence and military community now that the report has been released.

"We are concerned that this release could endanger the lives of Americans overseas, jeopardize U.S. relations with foreign partners, potentially incite violence, create political problems for our allies, and be used as a recruitment tool for our enemies," said Republican Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Jim Risch of Idaho in a joint statement. "Simply put, this release is reckless and irresponsible."

The report took the committee nearly six years to produce. Senate aides sorted through more than 6 million pages of CIA records as part of an investigation that began in the spring of 2009. The report examines the CIA's secret overseas detention of at least 119 people and the use of coercive interrogation techniques that Feinstein said sometimes amounted to torture.

The report's 20 findings and conclusions are grouped into four central themes:

• The CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" were not effective and did not produce any "ticking time bomb" information crucial to save lives.

• The CIA gave "extensive inaccurate information" about the operation of its detainee interrogation program to Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, the CIA inspector general, the media and the public. Even the former secretaries of State and Defense during the Bush administration were left out of the loop for about two years, the report said.

• The interrogation program was far more brutal than the CIA represented to policymakers and the American public. One detainee died from apparent hypothermia after being chained nearly naked on a cold cement floor. Another almost drowned from waterboarding.

• The CIA's management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed. The agency contracted with two outside psychologists with no experience as interrogators or knowledge of detainees' language or culture to develop, operate and assess the CIA's interrogation program.

CIA Director John Brennan acknowledged Tuesday that "the agency made mistakes," especially early on in the program as it struggled to carry out an unprecedented global program of detaining and interrogating suspected terrorists.

But Brennan disputed the report's key assertion that the interrogation techniques did not produce important results.

"Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs (enhanced interrogation techniques) were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives," Brennan said in a statement.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he is disturbed by the CIA's continuing defense of torture tactics.

"The current CIA leadership has been alarmingly resistant to acknowledging the full scope of the mistakes and misrepresentations that surrounded this program for so many years," Wyden said. "I hope this report is the catalyst CIA leaders need to acknowledge that torture did not work and close this disgraceful chapter in our country's history."

Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the senior Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said the report was partisan and misrepresented the facts.

"The fact that the CIA's Detention and Interrogation program developed significant intelligence that helped us identify and capture important al-Qa'ida terrorists, disrupt their ongoing plotting, and take down Bin Ladin is incontrovertible," the senators said in a joint statement. "Claims included in this report that assert the contrary are simply wrong."

But Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Americans have a right to know what the CIA did. He said he knows from personal experience that torture does not work in prying reliable information from prisoners. McCain, a Navy pilot whose plane was shot down in enemy territory during the Vietnam War, was tortured by the North Vietnamese as a prisoner of war.

"We need only remember in the worst of times, through the chaos and terror of war, when facing cruelty, suffering and loss, that we are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us," McCain said.

Former Bush administration officials said they were doing what Congress wanted in the wake of the most devastating attack in American history on September 11, 2001.

"I was in government for ten years after 9/11, and let me tell ya, a phrase I never heard from anybody in any position of authority: 'Whatever you guys do about this terrorism threat, please, please don't overreact,' " said former CIA Director Michael Hayden in an interview Tuesday on "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams."

Obama said the report reaffirmed his belief that torture techniques are wrong.

"Rather than another reason to refight old arguments, I hope that today's report can help us leave these techniques where they belong—in the past," he said.

Contributing: Gregory Korte, David Jackson