A pattern of failure

The Senate’s report shows the CIA and its contractors repeatedly misled the public, the White House and other policymakers. First, the CIA oversold the effectiveness of the program, marginalizing internal voices that questioned its wisdom on tactical or moral grounds. Second, the agency failed to disclose critical information about the scope and depravity of its operations, often stonewalling inquiries from the Senate Intelligence Committee, the representative body tasked with overseeing the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Without this external auditing — given that the internal systems for oversight have proved woefully insufficient — for all intents and purposes, the agency was acting without meaningful checks or accountability. Third, the CIA justified its “enhanced interrogation” techniques by citing examples of these methods’ supposedly producing critical intelligence. The Senate report reveals that in all 20 cases cited by the agency, torture failed to produce actionable intelligence that was unavailable by other means. In the few instances in which the CIA got good intelligence via enhanced interrogation, it generally corroborated existing information rather than made new and important contributions.

Unless Washington backs up its mea culpa with substantive policy reforms, the Senate’s investigation will amount to little more than an exercise in futility.