The report examines U.S. practices at the Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere. Report: U.S. tortured detainees

A nonpartisan panel declared Tuesday it was “indisputable” that the United States tortured detainees in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and said the nation’s “highest officials bear some responsibility for allowing and contributing the spread of torture.”

The 11-member panel, convened by the Constitution Project after the federal government decided not to establish a truth commission-style examination of torture allegations, was led by former GOP congressman Asa Hutchinson and former Democratic Rep. James Jones.


“In the course of the nation’s many previous conflicts, there is little doubt that some U.S. personnel committed brutal acts against captives, as have armies and governments throughout history,” the authors write near the beginning of the 577-page report. “But there is no evidence there had ever before been the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after September 11, directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”

The report examines U.S. practices on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba and at CIA black sites around the world. It also looks at the role Justice Department officials and medical professionals played in the interrogation program. While it is known the CIA waterboarded some prisoners, kept others in stress positions and forced others to stay awake for days on end, the report aims to put to end the debate over whether or not these practices constitute “torture.”

“As long as the debate continues, so too does the possibility that the United States could again engage in torture,” the authors write.

Perhaps most damning to continued defenders of the torture practices, including veterans of the George W. Bush administration like former Vice President Dick Cheney, the report finds that torture produced very little usable intelligence.

“The Task Force has found no clear evidence in the public record that torture produced more useful intelligence than conventional methods of interrogation, or that it saved lives,” the report says.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has completed a similar review of torture practices, but that document remains classified.