[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Page S6405]
CIA OVERSIGHT REPORT
Mr. REID. Mr. President, today for the first time the American people
are going to learn the full truth about torture that took place under
the CIA during the Bush administration. I have served for 22 years with
the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein. She is
dignified. She is very thorough in whatever she does. She is
intelligent and she cares a great deal. She has proven herself to be
the one of the most thoughtful and hard-working Members of this body.
The people of California are, as well they should be, very proud of
this good woman.
I am appreciative of the work the Senate Intelligence Committee has
done under her direction. We are here today because of her efforts. She
has persevered, overcome obstacles that have been significant, to make
this study available to the American people.
I am gratified for the work done by Democrats on the Intelligence
Committee. We are here today, again I repeat, because of their efforts.
We do not often mention, as certainly we should, the work of our
staffs. I want to throw a big bouquet to the intelligence staff. They
have worked so hard. Under the direction of Senator Feinstein, they
have worked for 7 years--7 years--working on this vitally important
matter. It is a report that was not easy, but they did it.
Here is what they did: Committee members and staff combed through
more than 6 million pages--6 million pages--of documents to formulate
the report. The full committee report is 6,700 pages long--7 years, I
repeat, in the making.
The unclassified executive summary, which is going to be released
today, is more than 500 pages. I want everyone to understand, the
Select Committee on Intelligence, along with the House Committee on
Intelligence, is the only group of people who provide oversight over
our intelligence community. They actually have the ability to
investigate what happened. No one else. Not the press, not Senators,
nor the public, or outside organizations have the ability to
investigate the CIA. But we did it. The implications of this report are
profound. Not only is torture wrong, but it does not work. For people
today, we hear them coming from different places saying, It was great.
It was terrific what we did. It has got us so much.
It has got us nothing, except a bad name. Without this report, the
American people would not know what actually took place under the CIA's
torture program. This critical report highlights the importance of
Senate oversight and the role Congress must play in overseeing the
executive branch of government. The only way our country can put this
episode in the past is to come to terms with what happened and commit
to ensuring it will never happen again. This is how we as Americans
make our Nation stronger. When we realize there is a problem, we seek
the evidence; we study it; we learn from it. Then we set about to enact
change. Americans must learn from our mistakes. We learned about the
Pentagon papers. They were helpful to us as a country. The Iran contra
affair. I was here when it went on. It was hard on us, but it was
important that we did this. More recently, what happened in that prison
in Iraq, Abu-Ghraib.
We have three separate branches of government, the judicial, the
executive, and the legislative branches of government. To me, this work
done by the Intelligence Committee, of which the Presiding Officer is a
member, cries out for our Constitution, three separate, equal branches
of government.
We are here today to talk about the work done by the legislative
branch of government. We can protect our national security as a country
without resorting to methods like torture. They are contrary to the
fundamental values of America. So I call upon the administration, the
Intelligence Committee, and my colleagues in Congress to join me in
that commitment, that what took place, the torture program, is not in
keeping with our country.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
____________________
[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6405-S6414]
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION
AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I want to thank the leader for his
words and for his support. They are extraordinarily welcome and
appreciated.
Today, a 500-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence
Committee's 5\1/2\ year review of the CIA's detention and interrogation
program, which was conducted between 2002 and 2009, is being released
publicly. The executive summary, which is going out today, is backed by
a 6,700-page classified and unredacted report with 38,000 footnotes
which can be released, if necessary, at a later time.
The report released today examines the CIA's secret overseas
detention of at least 119 individuals and the use of coercive
interrogation techniques, in some cases amounting to torture.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have gone through a great deal of
introspection about whether to delay the release of this report to a
later time. This clearly is a period of turmoil and instability in many
parts of the world. Unfortunately, that is going to continue for the
foreseeable future whether or not this report is released.
There are those who will seize upon the report and say ``See what the
Americans did,'' and they will try to use it to justify evil actions or
incite more violence. We can't 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.''
There may never be the right time to release this report. The
instability we see today will not be resolved in months or years. But
this report is too important to shelve indefinitely.
My determination to release it has also increased due to a campaign
of mistaken statements and press articles launched against the report
before anyone has had the chance to read it. As a matter of fact, the
report is just now, as I speak, being released. This is what it looks
like.
Senator Chambliss asked me if we could have the minority report bound
with the majority report. For this draft that is not possible. In the
filed draft it will be bound together. But this is what the summary of
the 6,000 pages looks like.
My words give me no pleasure. I am releasing this report because I
know there are thousands of employees at the CIA who do not condone
what I will speak about this morning and who work day and night, long
hours, within the law, for America's security in what is certainly a
difficult world. My colleagues on the Intelligence Committee and I are
proud of them, just as everyone in this Chamber is, and we will always
support them.
In reviewing the study in the past few days, with the decision
looming over the public release, I was struck by a quote found on page
126 of the executive summary. It cites a former CIA inspector general,
John Helgerson, who in 2005 wrote the following to the then-Director of
the CIA, which clearly states the situation with respect to this report
years later as well:
We have found that the Agency over the decades has
continued to get itself in messes related to interrogation
programs for one overriding reason: we do not document and
learn from our experience--each generation of officers is
left to improvise anew, with problematic results for our
officers as individuals and for our Agency.
[[Page S6406]]
I believe that to be true. I agree with Mr. Helgerson. His comments
are true today. But this must change.
On March 11, 2009, the committee voted 14 to 1 to begin a review of
the CIA's detention and interrogation program. Over the past 5 years a
small team of committee investigators pored over the more than 6.3
million pages of CIA records the leader spoke about to complete this
report or what we call the study. It shows that the CIA's actions a
decade ago are a stain on our values and on our history. The release of
this 500-page summary 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
is wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes. Releasing
this report is an important step to restore our values and show the
world that we are, in fact, a just and lawful society.
Over the next hour I wish to lay out for Senators and the American
public the report's key findings and conclusions. I ask that when I
complete this, Senator McCain be recognized. Before I get to the
substance of the report, I wish to make a few comments about why it is
so important that we make this study public.
All of us have vivid memories of that Tuesday morning when terrorists
struck New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. Make no mistake--on
September 11, 2001, war was declared on the United States. Terrorists
struck our financial center, they struck our military center, and they
tried to strike our political center and would have had brave and
courageous passengers not brought down the plane. We still vividly
remember the mix of outrage, deep despair, and sadness as we watched
from Washington--smoke rising from the Pentagon, the passenger plane
lying in a Pennsylvania field, and the sound of bodies striking
canopies at ground level as innocents jumped to the ground below from
the World Trade Center. Mass terror that we often see abroad had struck
us directly in our front yard, killing 3,000 innocent men, women, and
children.
What happened? We came together as a nation with one singular
mission: Bring those who committed these acts to justice. But it is at
this point where the values of America come into play, where the rule
of law and the fundamental principles of right and wrong become
important.
In 1990 the Senate ratified the Convention against Torture. The
convention makes clear that this ban against torture is absolute. It
states:
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever--
Including what I just read--
whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political
instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as
a justification of torture.
Nonetheless, it was argued that the need for information on possible
additional terrorist plots after 9/11 made extraordinary interrogation
techniques necessary.
Even if one were to set aside all of the moral arguments, our review
was a meticulous and detailed examination of records. It finds that
coercive interrogation techniques did not produce the vital, otherwise
unavailable intelligence the CIA has claimed.
I will go into further detail on this issue in a moment, but let me
make clear that these comments are not a condemnation of the CIA as a
whole. The CIA plays an incredibly important part in our Nation's
security and has thousands of dedicated and talented employees.
What we have found is that a surprisingly few people were responsible
for designing, carrying out, and managing this program. Two contractors
developed and led the interrogations. There was little effective
oversight. Analysts, on occasion, gave operational orders about
interrogations, and CIA management of the program was weak and
diffused.
Our final report was approved by a bipartisan vote of 9 to 6 in
December of 2012 and exposes brutality in stark contrast to our values
as a nation.
This effort was focused on the actions of the CIA from late 2001 to
January of 2009. The report does include considerable detail on the
CIA's interactions with the White House, the Departments of Justice,
State, and Defense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The review is based on contemporaneous records and documents during
the time the program was in place and active. These documents are
important because they aren't based on recollection, they aren't based
on revision, and they aren't a rationalization a decade later. It is
these documents, referenced repeatedly in thousands of footnotes, that
provide the factual basis for the study's conclusions. The committee's
majority staff reviewed more than 6.3 million pages of these documents
provided by the CIA, as well as records from other departments and
agencies. These records include finished intelligence assessments, CIA
operational and intelligence cables, memoranda, emails, real-time chat
sessions, inspector general reports, testimony before Congress,
pictures, and other internal records.
It is true that we didn't conduct our own interviews, and I wish to
state why that was the case. In 2009 there was an ongoing review by the
Department of Justice Special Prosecutor, John Durham. On August 24,
Attorney General Holder expanded that review. This occurred 6 months
after our study had begun. Durham's original investigation of the CIA's
destruction of interrogation videotapes was broadened to include
possible criminal actions of CIA employees in the course of CIA
detention and interrogation activities.
At the time, the committee's vice chairman, Kit Bond, withdrew the
minority's participation in the study, citing the Attorney General's
expanded investigation as the reason.
The Department of Justice refused to coordinate its investigation
with the Intelligence Committee's review. As a result, possible
interviewees could be subject to additional liability if they were
interviewed, and the CIA, citing the Attorney General's investigation,
would not instruct its employees to participate in interviews.
Notwithstanding, I am very confident of the factual accuracy and
comprehensive nature of this report for three reasons:
No. 1, it is 6.3 million pages of documents reviewed, and they reveal
records of actions as those actions took place, not through
recollections more than a decade later.
No. 2, the CIA and CIA senior officers have taken the opportunity to
explain their views on CIA detention and interrogation operations. They
have done this in on-the-record statements in classified committee
hearings, written testimony and answers to questions, and through the
formal response to the committee in June 2013 after reading this study.
No. 3, the committee had access to and utilized an extensive set of
reports of interviews conducted by the CIA inspector general and the
CIA's oral history program.
So while we could not conduct new interviews of individuals, we did
utilize transcripts or summaries of interviews of those directly
engaged in detention and interrogation operations. These interviews
occurred at the time the program was operational and covered the exact
topics we would have asked about had we conducted interviews ourselves.
These interview reports and transcripts included but were not limited
to the following: George Tenet, Director of the CIA when the Agency
took custody and interrogated the majority of detainees; Jose
Rodriguez, Director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, a key player
in the program; CIA General Counsel Scott Mueller; CIA Deputy Director
of Operations James Pavitt; CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo; CIA
Deputy Director John McLaughlin; and a variety of interrogators,
lawyers, medical personnel, senior counterterrorism analysts, and
managers of the detention and interrogation program.
The best place to start on how we got into this situation--and I am
delighted that the previous Chairman Senator Rockefeller is on the
floor--is a little more than 8 years ago, on September 6, 2006, when
the committee met to be briefed by then-Director Michael Hayden.
At that 2006 meeting the full committee learned for the first time--
the first time--of the use of so-called enhanced interrogation
techniques or EITs.
It was a short meeting, in part because President Bush was making a
public speech later that day disclosing officially for the first time
the existence of CIA black sites and announcing
[[Page S6407]]
the transfer of 14 detainees from CIA custody to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It was the first time the interrogation program was explained to the
full committee, as details had previously been limited to the chairman
and vice chairman.
Then, on December 7, 2007, The New York Times reported that CIA
personnel in 2005 had destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two
CIA detainees--the CIA's first detainee Abu Zubaydah, as well as Abd
al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The committee had not been informed of the
destruction of the tapes.
Days later, on December 11, 2007, the committee held a hearing on the
destruction of the videotapes. Director Hayden, the primary witness,
testified the CIA had concluded the destruction of videotapes was
acceptable, in part because Congress had not yet requested to see them.
My source is our committee's transcript of the hearing on December 11,
2007. Director Hayden stated that if the committee had asked for the
videotapes, they would have been provided. But of course the committee
had not known the videotapes existed.
We now know from CIA emails and records that the videotapes were
destroyed shortly after CIA attorneys raised concerns that Congress
might find out about the tapes.
In any case, at that same December 11 committee hearing, Director
Hayden told the committee that CIA cables related to the interrogation
sessions depicted in the videotapes were `` . . . a more than adequate
representation of the tapes and therefore, if you want them, we will
give you access to them.'' That is a quote from our transcript of the
December 11, 2007, hearing.
Senator Rockefeller, then-chairman of the committee, designated two
members of the committee staff to review the cables describing the
interrogation sessions of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. Senator Bond,
then-vice chairman, similarly directed two of his staffers to review
the cables. The designated staff members completed their review and
compiled a summary of the content of the CIA cables by early 2009, by
which time I had become chairman.
The description in the cables of CIA's interrogations and the
treatment of detainees presented a starkly different picture from
Director Hayden's testimony before the committee. They described
brutal, around-the-clock interrogations, especially of Abu Zubaydah, in
which multiple coercive techniques were used in combination and with
substantial repetition. It was an ugly, visceral description.
The summary also indicated that Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri did not,
as a result of the use of these so-called EITs, provide the kind of
intelligence that led the CIA to stop terrorist plots or arrest
additional suspects. As a result, I think it is fair to say the entire
committee was concerned and it approved the scope of an investigation
by a vote of 14 to 1, and the work began.
In my March 11, 2014, floor speech about the study, I described how
in 2009 the committee came to an agreement with the new CIA Director,
Leon Panetta, for access to documents and other records about the CIA's
detention and interrogation program. I will not repeat that here. From
2009 to 2012, our staff conducted a massive and unprecedented review of
CIA records. Draft sections of the report were produced by late 2011
and shared with the full committee. The final report was completed in
December 2012 and approved by the committee by a bipartisan vote of 9
to 6.
After that vote, I sent the full report to the President and asked
the administration to provide comments on it before it was released.
Six months later, in June of 2013, the CIA responded. I directed then
that if the CIA pointed out any error in our report, we would fix it,
and we did fix one bullet point that did not impact our findings and
conclusions. If the CIA came to a different conclusion than the report
did, we would note that in the report and explain our reasons for
disagreeing, if we disagreed. You will see some of that documented in
the footnotes of that executive summary as well as in the 6,000 pages.
In April 2014, the committee prepared an updated version of the full
study and voted 12 to 3 to declassify and release the executive
summary, findings and conclusions and minority and additional views.
On August 1, we received a declassified version from the executive
branch. It was immediately apparent the redactions to our report
prevented a clear and understandable reading of the study and prevented
us from substantiating the findings and conclusions, so we obviously
objected.
For the past 4 months, the committee and the CIA, the Director of
National Intelligence, and the White House have engaged in a lengthy
negotiation over the redactions to the report. We have been able to
include some more information in the report today without sacrificing
sources and methods or our national security.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my
remarks a letter from the White House, dated yesterday, transmitting
the unclassified parts of report, and it also points out that the
executive summary is 93 percent complete and that the redactions amount
to 7 percent.
Mr. President, this has been a long process. The work began 7 years
ago when Senator Rockefeller directed committee staff to review the CIA
cables describing the interrogation sessions of Abu Zubaydah and al-
Nashiri. It has been very difficult, but I believe documentation and
the findings and conclusions will make clear how this program was
morally, legally, and administratively misguided and that this Nation
should never again engage in these tactics.
Let me now turn to the contents of the study. As I noted, we have 20
findings and conclusions which fall into four general categories:
First, the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were not an
effective way to gather intelligence information; second, the CIA
provided extensive amounts of inaccurate information about the
operation of the program and its effectiveness to the White House, the
Department of Justice, Congress, the CIA inspector general, the media,
and the American public; third, the CIA's management of the program was
inadequate and deeply flawed; and fourth, the CIA program was far more
brutal than people were led to believe.
Let me describe each category in more detail. The first set of
findings and conclusions concern the effectiveness or lack thereof of
the CIA interrogation program. The committee found that the CIA's
coercive interrogation techniques were not an effective means of
acquiring accurate intelligence or gaining detainee cooperation.
The CIA and other defenders of the program have repeatedly claimed
the use of so-called interrogation techniques was necessary to get
detainees to provide critical information and to bring detainees to a
``state of compliance,'' in which they would cooperate and provide
information. The study concludes both claims are inaccurate.
The report is very specific in how it evaluates the CIA's claims on
the effectiveness and necessity of its enhanced interrogation
techniques. Specifically, we used the CIA's own definition of
effectiveness as ratified and approved by the Department of Justice's
Office of Legal Counsel. The CIA claimed that the EITs were necessary
to obtain ``otherwise unavailable'' information that could not be
obtained from any other source to stop terrorist attacks and save
American lives, that is a claim we conclude is inaccurate.
We took 20 examples that the CIA itself claimed to show the success
of these interrogations. These include cases of terrorist plots stopped
or terrorists captured. The CIA used these examples in presentations to
the White House, in testimony to Congress, in submissions to the
Department of Justice, and ultimately to the American people.
Some of the claims are well known: the capture of Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed, the prevention of attacks against the Library Tower in Los
Angeles, and the takedown of Osama bin Laden. Other claims were made
only in classified settings to the White House, Congress, and
Department of Justice.
In each case, the CIA claimed that critical and unique information
came from one or more detainees in its custody after they were
subjected to the CIA's coercive techniques, and that information led to
a specific counterterrorism success. Our staff reviewed every one of
the 20 cases and not a single case holds up.
In every single one of these cases, at least one of the following was
true: One, the intelligence community had
[[Page S6408]]
information separate from the use of EITs that led to the terrorist
disruption or capture; two, information from a detainee subjected to
EITs played no role in the claimed disruption or capture; and three,
the purported terrorist plot either did not exist or posed no real
threat to Americans or U.S. interests.
Some critics have suggested the study concludes that no intelligence
was ever provided from any detainee the CIA held. That is false and the
study makes no such claim. What is true is that actionable intelligence
that was ``otherwise unavailable'' was not obtained using these
coercive interrogation techniques.
The report also chronicles where the use of interrogation techniques
that do not involve physical force were effective. Specifically, the
report provides examples where interrogators had sufficient information
to confront detainees with facts, know when they were lying and when
they applied rapport-building techniques that were developed and honed
by the U.S. military, the FBI, and more recently the interagency High-
Value Detainee Interrogation Group, called the HIG, that these
techniques produced good intelligence.
Let me make a couple of additional comments on the claimed
effectiveness of CIA interrogations. At no time did the CIA's coercive
interrogation techniques lead to the collection of intelligence on an
imminent threat that many believe was the justification for the use of
these techniques. The committee never found an example of this
hypothetical ticking timebomb scenario.
The use of coercive technique methods regularly resulted in
fabricated information. Sometimes the CIA actually knew detainees were
lying. Other times the CIA acted on false information, diverting
resources and leading officers or contractors to falsely believe they
were acquiring unique or actionable intelligence and that its
interrogations were working when they were not.
Internally, CIA officers often called into question the effectiveness
of the CIA's interrogation techniques, noting how the techniques failed
to elicit detainee cooperation or produce accurate information.
The report includes numerous examples of CIA officers questioning the
agency's claims, but these contradictions were marginalized and not
presented externally.
The second set of findings and conclusions is that the CIA provided
extensive inaccurate information about the program and its
effectiveness to the White House, the Department of Justice, Congress,
the CIA inspector general, the media, and the American public.
This conclusion is somewhat personal for me. I remember clearly when
Director Hayden briefed the Intelligence Committee for the first time
on the so-called EITs at that September 2006 committee meeting. He
referred specifically to a ``tummy slap,'' among other techniques, and
presented the entire set of techniques as minimally harmful and applied
in a highly clinical and professional manner. They were not.
The committee's report demonstrates that these techniques were
physically very harmful, and that the constraints that existed on paper
in Washington did not match the way techniques were used at CIA sites
around the world.
Of particular note was the treatment of Abu Zubaydah over a span of
17 days in August 2002. This involved nonstop interrogation and abuse,
24/7, from August 4 to August 21, and included multiple forms of
deprivation and physical assault. The description of this period, first
written up by our staff in early 2009 while Senator Rockefeller was
chairman, was what prompted this full review.
But the inaccurate and incomplete descriptions go far beyond that.
The CIA provided inaccurate memoranda and explanations to the
Department of Justice while its Office of Legal Counsel was considering
the legality of the coercive techniques.
In those communications to the Department of Justice, the CIA claimed
the following: The coercive techniques would not be used with excessive
repetition; detainees would always have an opportunity to provide
information prior to the use of the techniques; the techniques were to
be used in progression, starting with the least aggressive and
proceeding only if needed; medical personnel would make sure that
interrogations wouldn't cause serious harm, and they could intervene at
any time to stop interrogations; interrogators were carefully vetted
and highly trained, and each technique was to be used in a specific way
without deviation, and only with specific approval for the interrogator
and detainee involved.
None of these assurances, which the Department of Justice relied on
to form its legal opinions, were consistently or even routinely carried
out.
In many cases, important information was withheld from policymakers.
For example, foreign intelligence committee chairman Bob Graham asked a
number of questions after he was first briefed in September of 2002,
but the CIA refused to answer him, effectively stonewalling him until
he left the committee at the end of the year.
In another example, the CIA, in coordination with White House
officials and staff, initially withheld information of the CIA's
interrogation techniques from Secretary of State Colin Powell and
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. There are CIA records stating
that Colin Powell wasn't told about the program at first because there
were concerns that ``Powell would blow his stack if he were briefed.''
Source: Email from John Rizzo dated July 31, 2003.
CIA records clearly indicate, and definitively, that after he was
briefed on the CIA's first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, the CIA didn't tell
President Bush about the full nature of the EITs until April 2006. That
is what the records indicate.
The CIA similarly withheld information or provided false information
to the CIA inspector general during his conduct of a special review by
the IG in 2004.
Incomplete and inaccurate information from the CIA was used in
documents provided to the Department of Justice and as a basis for
President Bush's speech on September 6, 2006, in which he publicly
acknowledged the CIA program for the first time.
In all of these cases, other CIA officers acknowledged internally
that information the CIA had provided was wrong.
The CIA also misled other CIA and White House officials. When Vice
President Cheney's counsel David Addington asked CIA General Counsel
Scott Muller in 2003 about the CIA's videotaping the waterboarding of
detainees, Muller deliberately told him that videotapes ``were not
being made,'' but did not disclose that videotapes of previous
waterboarding sessions had been made and still existed. Source: E-mail
from Scott Muller dated June 7, 2003.
There are many more examples in the committee's report. All are
documented.
The third set of findings and conclusions notes the various ways in
which CIA management of the Detention and Interrogation Program--from
its inception to its formal termination in January of 2009--was
inadequate and deeply flawed.
There is no doubt that the Detention and Interrogation Program was,
by any measure, a major CIA undertaking. It raised significant legal
and policy issues and involved significant resources and funding. It
was not, however, managed as a significant CIA program. Instead, it had
limited oversight and lacked formal direction and management.
For example, in the 6 months between being granted detention
authority and taking custody of its first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, the
CIA had not identified and prepared a suitable detention site. It had
not researched effective interrogation techniques or developed a legal
basis for the use of interrogation techniques outside of the rapport-
building techniques that were official CIA policy until that time.
In fact, there is no indication the CIA reviewed its own history--
that is just what Helgerson was saying in 2005--with coercive
interrogation tactics. As the executive summary notes, the CIA had
engaged in rough interrogations in the past.
In fact, the CIA had previously sent a letter to the Intelligence
Committee in 1989--and here is the quote--that ``inhumane physical or
psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not
produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers.''
[[Page S6409]]
That was a letter from John Helgerson, CIA Director of Congressional
Affairs, dated January 8, 1989.
However, in late 2001 and early 2002, rather than research
interrogation practices and coordinate with other parts of the
government with extensive expertise in detention and interrogation of
terrorist suspects, the CIA engaged two contract psychologists who had
never conducted interrogations themselves or ever operated detention
facilities.
As the CIA captured or received custody of detainees through 2002, it
maintained separate lines of management at headquarters for different
detention facilities.
No individual or office was in charge of the Detention and
Interrogation Program until January of 2003, by which point more than
one-third of CIA detainees identified in our review had been detained
and interrogated.
One clear example of flawed CIA management was the poorly managed
detention facility referred to in our report by the code name COBALT to
hide the actual name of the facility. It began operations in September
of 2002. The facility kept few formal records of the detainees housed
there, and untrained CIA officers conducted frequent unauthorized and
unsupervised interrogations using techniques that were not, and never
became, part of the CIA's formal enhanced interrogation program.
The CIA placed a junior officer with no relevant experience in charge
of the site. In November 2002, an otherwise healthy detainee--who was
being held mostly nude and chained to a concrete floor--died at the
facility from what is believed to have been hypothermia.
In interviews conducted in 2003 by the CIA Office of the Inspector
General, CIA's leadership acknowledged that they had little or no
awareness of operations at this specific CIA detention site, and some
CIA senior officials believed, erroneously, that enhanced interrogation
techniques were not used there.
The CIA, in its June 2013 response to the committee's report, agreed
that there were management failures in the program, but asserted that
they were corrected by early 2003. While the study found that
management failures improved somewhat, we found they persisted until
the end of the program.
Among the numerous management shortcomings identified in the report
are the following: The CIA used poorly trained and nonvetted personnel.
Individuals were deployed--in particular, interrogators--without
relevant training or experience. Due to the CIA's redactions to the
report, there are limits to what I can say in this regard, but it is a
clear fact that the CIA deployed officers who had histories of
personnel, ethical, and professional problems of a serious nature.
These included histories of violence and abusive treatment of others
that should have called into question their employment with the U.S.
Government, let alone their suitability to participate in a sensitive
CIA covert action program.
The two contractors that CIA allowed to develop, operate, and assess
its interrogation operations conducted numerous ``inherently
governmental functions'' that never should have been outsourced to
contractors. These contractors, referred to in the report in special
pseudonyms, SWIGERT and DUNBAR, developed the list of so-called
enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA employed.
They developed a list of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques
that the CIA employed. They personally conducted interrogations of some
of the CIA's most significant detainees, using the techniques including
the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and al-
Nashiri.
The contractors provided the official evaluations of whether
detainees' psychological states allowed for the continued use of the
enhanced techniques, even for some detainees they themselves were
interrogating or had interrogated. Evaluating the psychological state
of the very detainees they were interrogating is a clear conflict of
interest and a violation of professional guidelines.
The CIA relied on these two contractors to evaluate the interrogation
program they had devised and in which they had obvious financial
interests. Again, it is a clear conflict of interest and an avoidance
of responsibility by the CIA.
In 2005, the two contractors formed a company specifically for the
purpose of expanding their work with the CIA. From 2005 to 2008, the
CIA outsourced almost all aspects of its detention and interrogation
program to this company as part of a contract valued at more than $180
million. Ultimately, not all contract options were exercised. However,
the CIA has paid these two contractors and their company more than $80
million.
Of the 119 individuals found to have been detained by the CIA during
the life of the program, the committee found that at least 26 were
wrongfully held. These are cases where the CIA itself determined that
it had not met the standard for detention set out in the 2001
Memorandum of Notification which governed the covert action. Detainees
often remained in custody for months after the CIA determined they
should have been released. CIA records provide insufficient information
to justify the detention of many other detainees.
Due to poor recordkeeping, a full accounting of how many specific
detainees were held and how they were specifically treated while in
custody may never be known. Similarly, in specific instances we found
that enhanced interrogation techniques were used without authorization
in a manner far different and more brutal than had been authorized by
the Office of Legal Counsel and conducted by personnel not approved to
use them on detainees.
Decisions about how and when to apply interrogation techniques were
ad hoc and not proposed, evaluated, and approved in a manner described
by the CIA in written descriptions and testimony about the program.
Detainees were often subjected to harsh and brutal interrogation and
treatment because CIA analysts believed, often in error, that they knew
more information than what they had provided.
Sometimes CIA managers and interrogators in the field were
uncomfortable with what they were being asked to do and recommended
ending the abuse of a detainee. Repeatedly in such cases they were
overruled by people at CIA headquarters who thought they knew better,
such as by analysts with no line authority. This shows again how a
relatively small number of CIA personnel--perhaps 40 to 50--were making
decisions on detention and interrogation despite the better judgments
of other CIA officers.
The fourth and final set of findings and conclusions concerns how the
interrogations of CIA detainees were absolutely brutal, far worse than
the CIA represented them to policymakers and others.
Beginning with the first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, and continuing with
others, the CIA applied its so-called enhanced interrogation techniques
in combination and in near nonstop fashion for days and even weeks at a
time on one detainee. In contrast to the CIA representations, the
detainees were subjected to the most aggressive techniques
immediately--stripped naked, diapered, physically struck, and put in
various painful stress positions for long periods of time. They were
deprived of sleep for days--in one case up to 180 hours; that is 7\1/2\
days, over a week, with no sleep--usually in standing or in stress
positions, at times with their hands tied together over their heads,
chained to the ceiling.
In the COBALT facility I previously mentioned, interrogators and
guards used what they called rough takedowns in which a detainee was
grabbed from his cell, clothes cut off, hooded, and dragged up and down
a dirt hallway while being slapped and punched.
The CIA led several detainees to believe they would never be allowed
to leave CIA custody alive, suggesting to Abu Zubaydah that he would
only leave in a coffin-shaped box. That is from a CIA cable on August
12, 2002.
According to another CIA cable, CIA officers also planned to cremate
Zubaydah should he not survive his interrogation. Source: CIA cable,
July 15, 2002.
After the news and photographs emerged from the U.S. military
detention of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, the Intelligence Committee held a
hearing on the matter on May 12, 2004. Without disclosing any details
of its own interrogation program, CIA Director John
[[Page S6410]]
McLaughlin testified that CIA interrogations were nothing like what was
depicted at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. prison in Iraq where detainees were
abused by American personnel. This, of course, was false.
CIA detainees at one facility, described as a dungeon, were kept in
complete darkness, constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud
noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons personnel went to that location in
November 2002 and, according to a contemporaneous internal CIA email,
told CIA officers they had never ``been in a facility where individuals
are so sensory deprived.'' Source: CIA email, sender and recipient
redacted, December 5, 2002.
Throughout the program, multiple CIA detainees subjected to
interrogations exhibited psychological and behavioral issues including
hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-
mutilation. Multiple CIA psychologists identified the lack of human
contact experienced by the detainees as a cause of psychiatric
problems.
The executive summary includes far more detail than I am going to
provide here about things that were in these interrogation sessions,
and the summary itself includes only a subset of the treatment of the
119 known CIA detainees. There is far more detail--all documented--in
the full 6,700-page study. This briefly summarizes the committee's
findings and conclusions.
Before I wrap up, I wish to thank the people who made this
undertaking possible. First, I thank Senator Jay Rockefeller. He
started this project by directing his staff to review the operational
cables that described the first recorded interrogations after we
learned that the videotapes of those sessions had been destroyed. That
report was what led to this multiyear investigation, and without it we
wouldn't have had any sense of what happened.
I thank other Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of
whom is on the floor today, from the great State of New Mexico. Others
have been on the floor who voted to conduct this investigation and to
approve its result and make the report public.
Most importantly, I want to thank the Intelligence Committee staff
who performed this work. They are dedicated and committed public
officials who sacrificed a significant portion of their lives to see
this report through to its publication. They have worked days, nights,
and weekends for years in some of the most difficult circumstances. It
is no secret to anyone that the CIA does not want this report coming
out, and I believe the Nation owes them a debt of gratitude. They are
Dan Jones, who has led this review since 2007, and more than anyone
else, today's report is a result of his effort. Evan Gottesman and Chad
Tanner, the two other members of the study staff, each wrote thousands
of pages of the full report and have dedicated themselves and much of
their lives to this project. Alissa Starzak, who began this review as
co-lead, contributed extensively until her departure from the committee
in 2011.
Other key contributors to the drafting, editing, and review of the
report were Jennifer Barrett, Nick Basciano, Mike Buchwald, Jim
Catella, Eric Chapman, John Dickas, Lorenzo Goco, Andrew Grotto, Tressa
Guenov, Clete Johnson, Michael Noblet, Michael Pevzner, Tommy Ross,
Caroline Tess, and James Wolfe; and finally, David Grannis, who has
been a never-faltering staff director throughout this review.
This study is bigger than the actions of the CIA. It is really about
American values and morals. It is about the Constitution, the Bill of
Rights, our rule of law. These values exist regardless of the
circumstances in which we find ourselves. They exist in peacetime and
in wartime, and if we cast aside these values when convenient, we have
failed to live by the very precepts that make our Nation a great one.
There is a reason why we carry the banner of a great and just nation.
So we submit this study on behalf of the committee to the public in the
belief that it will stand the test of time, and with it the report will
carry the message: ``Never again.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
The White House,
Washington, December 8, 2014.
Hon. Dianne Feinstein,
Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Feinstein: I write in response to your
letters to the President transmitting versions of the
executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence's report regarding the
Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) former detention and
interrogation program.
The President believes that the Agency's former detention
and interrogation program was inconsistent with our values as
a Nation. To reflect our values, one of his first acts in
office was to sign an Executive Order that brought an end to
the program.
Since the Committee first delivered a version of its
executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the report
(report) in April, the Administration has worked in good
faith with the Committee on the declassification effort. On
August 1, the Administration provided a version of the
report, as well as minority and additional views that would
declassify 85 percent of the text. Since then, at the request
of the Committee, the Administration has continually sought
to reduce further the redactions in the report in a manner
that also protects U.S. national security. We have
appreciated the constructive dialogue with the Committee over
the last few months, which allowed us to work through more
than 400 of the Committee's requests for declassification.
Today, we are delivering to the Committee a version of the
Committee report, as well as minority and additional views,
that are over 93 percent declassified. The minimal redactions
are the result of a considerable effort by the Director of
National Intelligence, working with the CIA, Department of
Defense, Department of State, and other agencies, to review
and declassify hundreds of pages of information related to
the historical CIA program.
As we have shared with you in prior letters and
conversations, the President supports making public the
declassified version of the Committee's important report as
he believes that public scrutiny and debate will help to
inform the public's understanding of the program and to
ensure that such a program will never be repeated. As we have
also shared with you, in advance of release of the Committee
report, the Administration has planned to take a series of
security steps to prepare our personnel and facilities
overseas. We have already initiated those security
precautions and will continue to implement them consistent
with prior conversations about the timing of the Committee's
expected release of its report.
The Committee report reflects a significant five year
effort, and we commend the Committee and its staff on its
completion. The report also reflects extraordinary
cooperation by the Executive Branch to ensure access to the
information necessary to review the CIA's former program,
including more than six million pages of records. We must
now, however, begin to look forward to the future. The men
and women in the Intelligence Community are fundamental to
America's national security. They perform an important
service to our country in very trying circumstances. They
make extraordinary sacrifices to keep the American people
safe, often without any expectation of credit or
acknowledgment. As they carry on the nation's critical work,
they have the President's support and appreciation, as I know
they have yours.
Sincerely,
W. Neil Eggleston,
Counsel to the President.
I very much appreciate your attention, and I yield to Senator McCain.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I wish to begin by expressing my
appreciation and admiration to the personnel who serve in our
intelligence agencies, including the CIA, who are out there every day
defending our Nation.
I have read the executive summary and I also have been briefed on the
entirety of this report. I rise in support of the release--the long-
delayed release--of the Senate Intelligence Committee's summarized
unclassified review of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques
that were employed by the previous administration to extract
information from captured terrorists. It is a thorough and thoughtful
study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose to
secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the United
States and our allies, but actually damaged our security interests as
well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.
I believe the American people have a right--indeed a responsibility--
to know what was done in their name, how these practices did or did not
serve our interests, and how they comported with our most important
values.
I commend Chairwoman Feinstein and her staff for their diligence in
seeking a truthful accounting of policies I hope we will never resort
to
[[Page S6411]]
again. I thank them for persevering against persistent opposition from
many members of the intelligence community, from officials in two
administrations, and from some of our colleagues.
The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us
difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in
attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it
nonetheless. They must know when the values that define our Nation are
intentionally disregarded by our security policies, even those policies
that are conducted in secret. They must be able to make informed
judgments about whether those policies and the personnel who supported
them were justified in compromising our values, whether they served a
greater good, or whether, as I believe, they stained our national
honor, did much harm, and little practical good.
What were the policies? What was their purpose? Did they achieve it?
Did they make us safer, less safe, or did they make no difference? What
did they gain us? What did they cost us? What did they gain us? What
did they cost us? The American people need the answers to these
questions. Yes, some things must be kept from public disclosure to
protect clandestine operations, sources, and methods, but not the
answers to these questions. By providing them, the committee has
empowered the American people to come to their own decisions about
whether we should have employed such practices in the past and whether
we should consider permitting them in the future.
This report strengthens self-government and ultimately, I believe,
American security and stature in the world. I thank the committee for
that valuable public service.
I have long believed some of these practices amounted to torture as a
reasonable person would define it, especially but not only the practice
of waterboarding, which is a mock execution and an exquisite form of
torture. Its use was shameful and unnecessary, and, contrary to
assertions made by some of its defenders and as the committee's report
makes clear, it produced little useful intelligence to help us track
down the perpetrators of 9/11 or prevent new attacks and atrocities.
I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will
produce more bad than good intelligence. I know victims of torture will
offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors
will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their
torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their
suffering. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that
which most distinguishes us from our enemies--our belief that all
people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights which are
protected by international conventions the United States not only
joined but for the most part authored.
I know too that bad things happen in war. I know that in war good
people can feel obliged for good reasons to do things they would
normally object to and recoil from. I understand the reasons that
governed the decision to resort to these interrogation methods, and I
know that those who approved them and those who used them were
dedicated to securing justice for victims of terrorist attacks and to
protecting Americans from further harm. I know their responsibilities
were grave and urgent and the strain of their duty was onerous. I
respect their dedication, and I appreciate their dilemma. But I dispute
wholeheartedly that it was right for them to use these methods which
this report makes clear were neither in the best interests of justice,
nor our security, nor the ideals we have sacrificed so much blood and
treasure to defend.
The knowledge of torture's dubious efficacy and my moral objection to
the abuse of prisoners motivated my sponsorship of the Detainee
Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibits ``cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment'' of captured combatants, whether they wear a nation's
uniform or not, and which passed the Senate by a vote of 90 to 9.
Subsequently, I successfully offered amendments to the Military
Commissions Act of 2006, which, among other things, prevented the
attempt to weaken Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and
broadened definitions in the War Crimes Act to make the future use of
waterboarding and other ``enhanced interrogation techniques''
punishable as war crimes.
There was considerable misinformation disseminated then about what
was and wasn't achieved using these methods in an effort to discourage
support for the legislation. There was a good amount of misinformation
used in 2011 to credit the use of these methods with the death of Osama
bin Laden. And there is, I fear, misinformation being used today to
prevent the release of this report, disputing its findings and warning
about the security consequences of their public disclosure.
Will the report's release cause outrage that leads to violence in
some parts of the Muslim world? Yes, I suppose that is possible and
perhaps likely. Sadly, violence needs little incentive in some quarters
of the world today. But that doesn't mean we will be telling the world
something it will be shocked to learn. The entire world already knows
we waterboarded prisoners. It knows we subjected prisoners to various
other types of degrading treatment. It knows we used black sites,
secret prisons. Those practices haven't been a secret for a decade.
Terrorists might use the report's reidentification of the practices as
an excuse to attack Americans, but they hardly need an excuse for that.
That has been their life's calling for a while now.
What might come as a surprise not just to our enemies but to many
Americans is how little these practices did aid our efforts to bring 9/
11 culprits to justice and to find and prevent terrorist attacks today
and tomorrow. That could be a real surprise since it contradicts the
many assurances provided by intelligence officials on the record and in
private that enhanced interrogation techniques were indispensable in
the war against terrorism. And I suspect the objection of those same
officials to the release of this report is really focused on that
disclosure--torture's ineffectiveness--because we gave up much in the
expectation that torture would make us safer--too much.
Obviously, we need intelligence to defeat our enemies, but we need
reliable intelligence. Torture produces more misleading information
than actionable intelligence. And what the advocates of harsh and cruel
interrogation methods have never established is that we couldn't have
gathered as good or more reliable intelligence from using humane
methods.
The most important lead we got in the search for bin Laden came from
using conventional interrogation methods. I think it is an insult to
the many intelligence officers who have acquired good intelligence
without hurting or degrading prisoners to assert that we can't win
these wars without such methods. Yes, we can, and we will.
But in the end torture's failure to serve its intended purpose isn't
the main reason to oppose its use. I have often said and I will always
maintain that this question isn't about our enemies; it is about us. It
is about who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to be. It is about
how we represent ourselves to the world.
We have made our way in this often dangerous and cruel world not by
just strictly pursuing our geopolitical interests but by exemplifying
our political values and influencing other nations to embrace them.
When we fight to defend our security, we fight also for an idea--not
for a tribe or a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion or for a
King but for an idea that all men are endowed by the Creator with
inalienable rights. How much safer the world would be if all nations
believed the same. How much more dangerous it can become when we forget
it ourselves, even momentarily.
Our enemies act without conscience. We must not. This executive
summary of the committee's report makes clear that acting without
conscience isn't necessary. It isn't even helpful in winning this
strange and long war we are fighting. We should be grateful to have
that truth affirmed.
Now, let us reassert the contrary proposition: that is it essential
to our success in this war that we ask those who fight it for us to
remember at all times that they are defending a sacred ideal of how
nations should be governed and conduct their relations with others--
even our enemies.
Those of us who give them this duty are obliged by history, by our
Nation's highest ideals and the many terrible sacrifices made to
protect them, by our respect for human dignity, to make
[[Page S6412]]
clear we need not risk our national honor to prevail in this or any
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.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in
a seated position.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I come to the floor to wholly
support the comments of my colleagues, the Senator from California and
the Senator from Arizona, to speak about a matter of great importance
to me personally but more importantly to the country.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's entire study of the CIA's
detention and interrogation program--I will just call it the program--
is the most in-depth, the most substantive oversight initiative the
committee has ever taken. I doubt any committee has done more than
this. It presents extremely valuable insights into crucial oversight
questions and problems that need to be addressed by the CIA.
Moreover, this study exemplifies why this committee was created in
the first place following the findings of the Church Committee nearly
40 years ago, and I commend my friend and the committee's leader, the
Senator from California, for shepherding this landmark initiative to
this point. For years, often behind closed doors, without any
recognition, she has been a strong and tireless advocate, and she
deserves our thanks and recognition.
It is my hope and expectation that beyond the initial release of the
executive summary and findings and conclusions, that the entire 6,800
pages, with 37,500 footnotes, will eventually be made public--and I am
sure it will--with the appropriate redactions. Those public findings
will be critical to fully learning the necessary lessons from this dark
episode in our Nation's history and to ensure that it never happens
again. It has been a very long, very hard fight to get to this point.
Especially in the early years of the CIA's detention program, it was a
struggle for the committee to get the most basic information or any
information at all about the program.
The committee's study of the detention and interrogation program is
not just the story of the brutal and ill-conceived program itself; this
study is also the story of the breakdown in our system of governance
that allowed the country to deviate in such a significant and horrific
way from our core principles. One of the profound ways that breakdown
happened was through the active subversion of meaningful congressional
oversight--a theme mirrored in the Bush administration's warrantless
wiretapping program during that same period.
I first learned about some aspects of the CIA's detention and
interrogation program in 2003 when I became vice chair of the
committee. At that point and for years after, the CIA refused to
provide me or anybody else with any additional information about the
program. They further refused to notify the full committee about the
program's existence. My colleagues will remember there was always the
Gang of 4, the Gang of 6, or the Gang of 8. They would take the
chairman and vice chairman, take them to the White House, give them a
flip chart, 45 minutes for the Vice President, and off he would go.
Senator Roberts and I went down by car and were instructed we couldn't
talk to each other on the way back from one of those meetings. It was
absurd. They refused to do anything to be of assistance.
The briefings I received provided little or no insight into the CIA's
program. Questions or followup requests were rejected, and at times I
was not allowed to consult with my counsel. I am not a lawyer. There
are legal matters involved here. They said we couldn't talk to any of
our staff, legal counsel or not, or other members of the committee who
knew nothing about this because they had not been informed at all.
It was clear these briefings were not meant to answer any questions
but were intended only to provide cover for the administration and the
CIA. It was infuriating to me to realize I was part of a box checking
exercise that the administration planned to use, and later did use, so
they could disingenuously claim they had--in a phrase I will never be
able to forget--``fully briefed Congress.''
In the years that followed I fought and lost many battles to obtain
credible information about the detention and interrogation program. As
vice chair I tried to launch, as has been mentioned, a comprehensive
investigation into the program, but that effort was blocked.
Later in 2005, when I fought for access to over 100 specific
documents cited in the inspector general report, the CIA refused to
cooperate.
The first time the full Senate Intelligence Committee was given any
information about this detention program was September 2006. This was
years after the program's inception and the same day the President
informed the Nation.
The following year when I became chairman, the vice chairman, Kit
Bond, and I agreed to push for significant additional access to the
program. For heaven's sake, at least allow both the Senate Intelligence
Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, on a full basis, to be
informed about this and also to include our staff's counsel on these
matters. We finally actually prevailed and got this access. I think I
withheld something from them until they agreed to do that which enabled
us to have much-needed hearings on the program, which we proceeded to
do.
As chairman, I made sure we scrutinized it from every angle. However,
the challenge of getting accurate information from the CIA persisted.
It was during this period that the House and Senate considered the 2008
Intelligence Authorization Act and a potential provision that set the
Army Field Manual--which is the only way to go--as the standard for the
entire American Government, including the CIA. This would have
effectively ended the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, a term
eerily sanitized in bureaucratic jargon for what, in a number of cases,
amounted to torture.
As chairman, I knew the inclusion of the Army Field Manual provision
would jeopardize the entire bill. I thought it might bring it down.
People would think it was too soft or too radical or whatever, but I
was committed to seeing the bill signed into law. In the end, it was an
easy decision.
I supported including the provision to end the CIA's program because
it was the right thing to do. I did it because Congress needed to send
a clear signal that it did not stand by the Bush administration's
policy.
The House and Senate went on to pass the bill with bipartisan votes.
Although the Bush administration vetoed the bill to preserve its
ability to continue these practices, it was an important symbolic
moment.
In the same period, I also sent two committee staffers, as our
chairwoman has indicated, to begin reviewing cables at the CIA
regarding the agency's interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. I
firmly believed we had to review those cables, which are now the only
source of important historical information on this subject, because the
CIA destroyed its tapes of some of their interrogation sessions. The
CIA destroyed those tapes against the explicit direction from the White
House and the Director of National Intelligence.
The investigation that began in 2007 grew under Chairman Feinstein's
dedication and tremendous leadership into a full study of the CIA's
detention and interrogation program. The more the committee dug, the
more the committee found, and the results we uncovered are both
shocking and deeply troubling.
First, the detention and interrogation program was conceived by
people who were ignorant of the topic and made it up on the fly based
on the untested theories of contractors who had never met a terrorist
or conducted a real-world interrogation of any kind.
Second, it was executed by personnel with insufficient linguistic and
interrogation training and little, if any, real-world experience.
Moreover, the CIA was aware that some of these personnel had a
staggering array of personal and professional failings--enumerated by
the committee's chairman--including potentially criminal activity, that
should
[[Page S6413]]
have disqualified them immediately not only from being interrogators
but from being employed by the CIA or anybody in government.
Nevertheless, it was consistently represented that these
interrogators were professionalized and carefully vetted--their term--
and that became a part of the hollow legal justification of the entire
program.
Third, the program was managed incompetently by senior officials who
paid little or no attention to critical details. It was rife with
troubling personal and financial conflicts of interest among the small
group of the CIA officials and contractors who promoted and defended
it. Obviously it was in their interest to do so.
Fourth, as the chairman indicated, the program was physically very
severe, far more so than any of us outside the CIA ever knew. Although
waterboarding has received the most attention, there were other
techniques I personally believe--one in particular--that may have been
much worse.
Finally, its results were unclear at best, but it was presented to
the White House, the Department of Justice, the Congress, and the media
as a silver bullet that was indispensable to saving lives. That was
their mantra. In fact, it did not provide the intelligence it was
supposed to provide or the CIA argued that it did provide.
To be perfectly clear, these harsh techniques were not approved by
anyone ever for the low-bar standard of learning useful information
from detainees. These techniques were approved because the Bush
officials were told, and therefore believed, that these coercive
interrogations were absolutely necessary to elicit intelligence that
was unavailable by any other collection method and would save American
lives. That was simply not the case.
For me, personally, the arc of this story comprises more than a
decade of my 30 years of work in the Senate and one of the hardest
fights--I think the hardest fight--I have ever been through. Many of
the worst years were during the Bush administration.
However, I did not fully anticipate how hard these last few years
would be in this administration to get this summary declassified and to
tell the full story of what happened. Indeed, to my great frustration,
even after months of endless negotiations, significant aspects of the
story remain obscured by black ink.
I have great admiration for the President, and I am appreciative of
the leadership role he has taken to depart from the practices of the
Bush administration on these issues. His Executive order formally ended
the CIA's detention program practices, and that is a good example. It
is a great example.
It was, therefore, with deep disappointment that over the course of a
number of private meetings and conversations I came to feel that the
White House's strong deference to the CIA throughout this process has
at times worked at cross-purposes with the White House's stated
interest in transparency and has muddied what should be a clear and
unequivocal legacy on this issue.
While aspiring to be the most transparent administration in history,
this White House continues to quietly withhold from the committee more
than 9,000 documents related to the CIA's programs. I don't know why.
They won't say, and they won't produce.
In addition to strongly supporting the CIA's insistence on the
unprecedented redaction of fake names in the report, which obscures the
public's ability to understand the important connections which are so
important for weaving together the tapestry, the administration also
pushed for the redaction of information in the committee's study that
should not be classified, contradicting the administration's own
Executive order on classification.
Let me be clear.
That order clearly states that in no case shall information fail to
be declassified in order to conceal violations of law and efficiency or
administrative error or prevent embarrassment to a person,
organization, or agency.
In some instances, the White House asked not only that information be
redacted but that the redaction itself be removed so it would be
impossible for the reader to tell that something was already hidden.
Strange.
Given this, looking back, I am deeply disappointed, rather than
surprised, that even when the CIA inexplicably conducted an
unauthorized search of the committee's computer files and emails at an
offsite facility, which was potentially criminal, and even when it
became clear that the intent of the search was to suppress the
committee's awareness of an internal CIA review that corroborated parts
of the intelligence committee's study and contradicted public CIA
statements, the White House continued to support the CIA leadership,
and that support was unflinching.
Despite these frustrations, I have also seen how hard Chairman
Feinstein has fought against great odds, stubborn odds, protective
odds, mysterious odds, which are not really clear to me. I have tried
to support her thoughtful and determined efforts at every opportunity
to make sure as much as of the story can be told as possible, and I am
deeply proud of the product the committee ended up with.
Now it is time to move forward. For all of the misinformation,
incompetence, and brutality of the CIA's program, the committee's study
is not and must not be simply a backward-looking condemnation of the
past. The study presents a tremendous opportunity to develop forward-
looking lessons that must be central to all future activities.
The point has been made--I thoroughly agree--that the vast majority
of people who work at the CIA--and there are tens and tens of thousands
of them--do very good work and are working very hard and have
absolutely nothing to do with any of this. But if this report had not
been released, the country would have felt that everybody at the CIA--
and the world would have felt it--was involved in this program. It is
important to say that that was not the case. It was just 30 or 40
people at the top. Many of the people you see on television blasting
this report were intimately involved in carrying it out and setting it
up.
The CIA developed the detention program in a time of great fear,
anxiety, and unprecedented crisis. It is at these times of crisis when
we need sound judgment, excellence, and professionalism from the CIA
the most.
When mistakes are made, they call for self-reflection and scrutiny.
For that process to begin, we first have to make sure there is an
absolutely accurate public record of what happened. We are doing that.
The public release of the executive summary and findings and
conclusions is a tremendous and consequential step toward that end.
For some, I expect there will be the temptation to reject and cast
doubt, to trivialize, to attack or rationalize parts of the study that
are disturbing or are embarrassing. Indeed, the CIA program's dramatic
divergence from the standards that we hold ourselves to is hard to
reconcile. However, we must fight that shortsighted temptation to wish
away the gravity of what this study found.
How we deal with this opportunity to learn and improve will reflect
on the maturity of our democracy. As a country, we are strong enough to
bear the weight of the mistakes we have made. As an institution, so is
the Central Intelligence Agency. We must confront this dark period in
our recent history with honesty and critical introspection. We must
draw lessons, and we must apply those lessons as we move forward.
Although it may be uncomfortable at times, ultimately we will grow
stronger, and we will ensure that this never happens again.
I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I know the time for recess for
caucus is approaching and I know there are other Members on the
Democratic side who want to speak. It is now time for a Member from the
Republican side to speak.
I ask unanimous consent that the recess be delayed for 5 minutes so
the distinguished Senator from South Carolina might speak.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is ordered.
The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you very much. I have been a military lawyer for
over 30 years. That has been one of the highlights of my life--to serve
in the Air Force. During the debate about these
[[Page S6414]]
techniques, I was very proud of the fact that every military lawyer
came out on the side that the techniques in question were not who we
are and what we want to be.
We are one of the leading voices of the Geneva Convention. We have
stood by the Geneva Convention since its inception. I am convinced that
the techniques in question violate the Geneva Convention. I am also
convinced that they were motivated by fear, fear of another attack. Put
yourself in the shoes of the people responsible for defending the
country right after 9/11. We had been hit. We had been hit hard.
Everybody thought something else was coming.
As we rounded these guys up, there was a sense of urgency and a
commitment to never let it happen again that generated this program.
Who knew what, when? I do not know. All I can tell you is the people
involved believed they were trying to defend the country and what they
were doing was necessary. Did they get some good information? Probably
so. Has it been a net loser for us as a country? Absolutely so. All I
can say is the techniques in question were motivated by fear of another
attack, and people at the time thought this was the best way to defend
the Nation. I accept that on their part.
But as a nation, I hope we have learned the following: In this
ideological struggle, good versus evil, we need to choose good. There
is no shortage of people who will cut your head off. The techniques in
question are nowhere near what the enemies of this Nation and radical
Islam would do to people under their control. There is no comparison.
The comparison is between who we are and what we want to be. In that
regard, we made a mistake. No one is going to jail because they should
not, because the laws in question--the laws that existed at the time of
this program--were, to be generous, vague.
I spent about a year of my life with Senator McCain working with the
Bush administration and colleagues on the Democratic side to come up
with the Detainee Treatment Act which clearly puts people on notice of
what you can and cannot do. Going forward we fixed this problem. How do
I know it is a problem? I travel. I go to the Mideast a lot. I go all
over the world. It was a problem for us. Whether we like it or not, we
are seen as the good guys. I like it.
Sometimes good people make mistakes. We have corrected the problem.
We have interrogation techniques now that I think can protect the
Nation and are within our values. The one thing I want to stress to my
colleagues is that this is a war of an ideological nature. There will
be no capital to conquer. We are not going to take Tokyo. We are not
going to take Berlin. There is no air force to shoot down; there is no
navy to sink. You are fighting a radical extreme ideology that is
motivated by hate. In their world, if you do not agree with their
religion, you are no longer a human being.
The only way we can possibly defeat this ideology is to offer
something better. The good news for us is that we stand for something
better. We stand for due process. We stand for humane treatment. We
stand for the ability to have a say when you are accused of something.
Our enemies stand for none of that. That is their greatest weakness.
Our greatest strength is to offer a better way.
When you go to Anbar Province and you go to other places in the
Mideast that have experienced life under ISIS--ISIL--and Al Qaeda, the
reaction has almost been universal: We do not like this. When America
comes over the hill, and they see that flag, they know help is on the
way.
To the CIA officers who serve in the shadows, who intermingle with
the most notorious in the world, who are always away from home never
knowing if you are going back: Thank you. There is a debate about
whether this report is accurate line by line. I do not know. Is this
the definitive answer to the program's problems? I do not know, but I
do know the program hurt our country.
Those days are behind us. The good guys air their dirty laundry. I
wished we had waited because the world is in such a volatile shape
right now. I do fear this report will be used by our enemies. But I
guess there is no good time to do things like this.
So to those who helped prepare the report, I understand where you are
coming from. To those on my side who believe that we have gone too far,
I understand that too. But this has always been easy for me. I have
been too associated with the subject matter for too long. Every time
our Nation cuts a corner, and every time we act out of fear and abandon
who we are, we always regret it. That has happened forever. This is a
step toward righting a wrong. To our enemies: Take no comfort from the
fact that we have changed our program. We are committed to your demise.
We are committed to your incarceration and killing you on the
battlefield, if necessary.
To our friends, because we choose a different path, do not mistake
that for weakness. What we are doing today is not a sign of weakness.
It is a sign of the ultimate strength--that you can self correct, that
you can reevaluate and you can do some soul searching, and you can come
out with a better product. The tools available to our intelligence
community today over time will yield better results, more reliable
results. The example we are setting will, over time, change the world.
To defeat radical Islam you have to show separation. Today is a
commitment to show separation. The techniques they employ to impose
their will have been used for thousands of years. They are always, over
time, rejected. The values we stand for--tolerance, humane treatment of
everyone; whether you agree with them or not--have also stood the test
of time. Over time, we will win, and they will lose. Today is about
making that time period shorter. The sooner America can reattach itself
to who she is, the worse off the enemy will be.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
____________________
[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6417-S6419]
SSCI STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM
Mr. CHAMBLISS. Madam President, I rise today as the vice chairman of
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to respond to the public
release of the declassified version of the executive summary and
findings and conclusions from the committee's study of the CIA's
detention and interrogation program.
This is not a pleasant duty for me. During my 4 years as the vice
chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I have enjoyed an excellent
relationship with our chairman, Senator Dianne Feinstein. We have
worked closely to conduct strong bipartisan oversight of the U.S.
intelligence community, including the passage and enactment of
significant national security legislation. However, this particular
study has been one of the very, very few areas where we have never been
able to see eye-to-eye.
Putting this report out today is going to have significant
consequences. In addition to reopening a number of old wounds both
domestically and internationally, it could be used to incite unrest and
even attacks against our servicemembers, other personnel overseas, and
our international partners. This report could also stoke additional
mistreatment or death for American or other Western captives overseas.
It will endanger CIA personnel, sources, and future intelligence
operations. This report will damage our relationship with several
significant international counterterrorism partners at a time when we
can least afford it. Even worse, despite the fact that the
administration and many in the majority are aware of these
consequences, they have chosen to release the report today.
The United States today is faced with a wide array of security
challenges across the globe, including in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria,
Iraq, Yemen, north Africa, Somalia, Ukraine, and the list goes on.
Instead of focusing on the problems right in front of us, the majority
side of the Intelligence Committee has spent the last 5 years and over
$40 million focused on a program that effectively ended over 8 years
ago, while the world around us burns.
In March 2009, when the committee first undertook the study, I was
the only member of the Intelligence Committee who voted against moving
forward with it. I believed then, as I still do today, that vital
committee and intelligence community resources would be squandered over
a debate that Congress, the executive branch, and the Supreme Court had
already settled. This issue has been investigated or reviewed
extensively by the executive branch, including criminal investigations
by the Department of Justice, the Senate Armed Services Committee, the
International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as other entities.
Congress has passed two separate acts directly related to detention
and interrogation issues--specifically, the Detainee Treatment Act of
2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. The executive branch
terminated the CIA program and directed that future interrogations be
conducted in accordance with the U.S. Army Field Manual on
Interrogation. Also, the Supreme Court decided Rasul v. Bush in 2004,
Hamdi v. Rumsfeld in 2004, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in 2006, as well as
Boumediene v. Bush in 2008, all of which established that detainees
were entitled to habeas corpus review and identified certain
deficiencies in both the Detainee Treatment Act and the Military
Commissions Act.
By the time I became the vice chairman, the minority had already
withdrawn from active participation in the study as a result of
Attorney General Holder's decision to reopen the criminal inquiry
related to the interrogation of certain detainees in the CIA's
detention program. This unfortunate decision deprived the committee of
the ability to interview key witnesses who participated in the CIA
program and essentially limited the committee's study to the review of
a cold documentary record. Now, how can any credible investigation take
place without interviewing witnesses? This is a 6,000-page report, and
not one single witness was ever interviewed in this study being done.
This is a poor excuse for the type of oversight the Congress should be
conducting.
There is no doubt that the CIA's detention and interrogation
program--which was hastily executed in the aftermath of the worst
terrorist attack in our Nation's history--had flaws. The CIA has
admitted as much in its June 27, 2013, response to the study. There is
also no doubt that there were instances in which CIA interrogators
exceeded their authorities and certain detainees may have suffered as a
result. However, the executive summary and findings and conclusions
released today contain a disturbing number of factual and analytical
errors. These factual and analytical shortfalls ultimately led to an
unacceptable number of incorrect claims and invalid conclusions that I
cannot endorse.
The study essentially refuses to admit that CIA detainees--especially
CIA detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques--provided
intelligence information which helped the U.S. Government and its
allies to neutralize numerous terrorist threats. On its face, this
refusal does not make sense given the vast amount of information gained
from these interrogations, the thousands of intelligence reports that
were generated as a result of them, the capture of additional
terrorists, and the disruption of the plots those captured terrorists
were planning.
Instead of acknowledging these realities, the study adopts an
analytical approach designed to obscure the value of the intelligence
obtained from the program. For example, the study falsely claims that
the use of enhanced interrogation techniques played ``no role'' in the
identification of Jose Padilla because Abu Zubaydah, a senior member of
Al Qaeda with direct ties to Osama bin Laden, provided the information
about Padilla during an interrogation by FBI agents who were
``exclusively'' using what is called ``rapport-building'' techniques
against him more than 3 months prior to the CIA's ``use of DOJ-approved
enhanced interrogation techniques.'' What the study ignores, however,
is the fact that Abu Zubaydah's earlier interrogation in April of 2002
actually did involve the use of interrogation techniques that were
later included in the list of enhanced interrogation techniques.
Specifically, the facts demonstrate that Abu Zubaydah was subjected to
``around the clock'' interrogation that included more than 4 days of
dietary manipulation, nudity, and more than 126 hours--which is about 5
days--of sleep deprivation during a 136-hour period by the time the FBI
finished up the 8.5-hour interrogation shift in which Abu Zubaydah
finally yielded the identification of Jose Padilla. So during a 5-day
time period, Abu Zubaydah got less than 10 hours of sleep, yet the
majority does not acknowledge that this was an enhanced interrogation.
In light of these facts,
[[Page S6418]]
the study's claims that the FBI was exclusively using ``rapport-
building'' techniques is nothing short of being dishonest.
More important, the actionable intelligence gleaned from the enhanced
interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that started in April of 2002 served as
the foundation for the capture of additional terrorists and the
disruption of the plots those captured terrorists were planning. His
information was also used to gather additional actionable intelligence
from these newly captured terrorists, which in turn led to a series of
successful capture operations and plot disruptions. By the study's own
count, the numerous interrogations of Abu Zubaydah resulted in 766
sole-source disseminated intelligence reports. That is an awful lot of
actionable intelligence collected under the CIA program that this study
tries to quietly sweep under the carpet in an effort to support its
false headline that the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques
was not effective.
The study also overlooks several crucial intelligence successes that
prevented terror attacks against the United States and our allies
around the world. Al Qaeda-affiliated extremists subjected to the
program's enhanced interrogation techniques made admissions that led to
the identification of the man responsible for plotting the September 11
attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, or KSM.
The program also helped stop terrorist attacks in the U.S. homeland
and against our military forces overseas. Al Qaeda affiliate Abu
Zubaydah's statements to interrogators led to the identification of
Jose Padilla--an Al Qaeda operative tasked with conducting a terrorist
attack inside the United States. The interrogation of KSM and Guleed
Hassan Ahmed disrupted Al Qaeda's plotting against Camp Lemonier in
Djibouti, a critical base of operations in the war on terror in Africa
and at that time home to some 1,600 U.S. military personnel. There is
no telling how many lives this program saved in those particular
interrogations alone.
Intelligence gathered under the detention and interrogation program
also prevented terrorist attacks on our allies in the United
Kingdom. Terrorist plots against London's Heathrow Airport and Canary
Wharf--a major London financial center--were disrupted because key
conspirators were apprehended and questioned on the basis of
intelligence gathered using several interrogation techniques, including
enhanced interrogation techniques.
Finally, information from detainees held in the program was critical
to ascertaining the true significance of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the Al
Qaeda facilitator who served as Osama bin Laden's personal courier and
the man who ultimately lead CIA intelligence analysts and the Navy
Seals to bin Laden himself.
For anyone interested in a nice, chronological survey of the
significant intelligence gained from the program and how it was used to
capture additional terrorists and disrupt terrorist plots, I would
invite my colleagues to read two pages of our minority views. Pages 96
and 97 delineate exactly a chronology of significant intelligence that
allowed for the takedown of individuals.
It seems as though the study takes every opportunity to unfairly
portray the CIA in the worst light possible, presupposing improper
motivations and the most detestable behavior at every turn. The very
enemies whom the program helped keep at bay for all of those years, as
well as adversarial nations, will be able to exploit what is
essentially a dangerously insightful and instructive treasure trove of
information about our intelligence operations. I am all for pointing
out and correcting problems with the intelligence community and I have
been very outspoken on some of them, but I prefer our oversight be
conducted quietly and in a manner that does not jeopardize the national
security of the United States.
Ultimately, our minority views examined eight of the study's most
problematic conclusions, many of which attack the CIA's integrity and
credibility in developing and implementing the program. These
problematic claims and conclusions created the false impression that
the CIA was actively misleading policymakers and impeding the
counterterrorism efforts of other Federal Government agencies during
the program's operation. We found these claims and conclusions were
largely not supported by the documentary record and were based upon
flawed reasoning.
Specifically, we found that:
No. 1, the CIA's detention and interrogation program was effective
and produced valuable and actionable intelligence.
No. 2, most of the CIA's claims of effectiveness with respect to the
use of EITs were accurate.
No. 3, the CIA attempted to keep the Congress informed of its
activities and did so on a regular basis. As a member of the committee,
I can attest to that.
No. 4, the CIA did not impede White House oversight. The White House
was very involved in doing oversight of the program.
No. 5, the CIA was not responsible nor did it have control over
sharing or dissemination of information to other executive branch
agencies or to members of the Principals Committee.
No. 6, many of the study's claims about the CIA providing inaccurate
information to the Department of Justice were themselves totally
inaccurate.
No. 7, the CIA did not significantly impede oversight by the CIA
Office of the Inspector General.
No. 8, the White House determined that the CIA would have the lead on
dealing with the media regarding detainees.
These findings are not meant as a defense of the CIA. The CIA is
fully capable of defending its own actions, and I know it will do so.
Rather, these findings are a critique of certain aspects of this
particular study. As a general rule, I want our committee findings,
conclusions, and recommendations to be unassailable in every
investigation we conduct. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, and I am
very concerned about the unintended consequences that will result from
the study's erroneous and inflammatory conclusions.
I imagine some members of the media may choose to repeat the study's
false headlines contained in the report without checking the underlying
facts. By doing so they will only be damaging their own credibility. I
invite anyone who reads the study's executive summary and findings and
conclusions to pay particular attention to how often the text uses
absolutes, such as ``played no role,'' ``no connection'' or ``no
indication.'' Please then read our minority views to find the clear
counter examples that disprove most of these absolute claims. I suspect
the readers who make this effort will be disappointed, as I was, that
this study makes so many inaccurate claims and conclusions.
Our minority views also explain how this study was crippled by
numerous procedural irregularities that hampered the committee's
ability to conduct a fair and objective review of the CIA's detention
and interrogation program. These procedural defects resulted in a
premature committee vote in December of 2012 to approve the study
before the text was adequately reviewed by the committee membership or
subjected to a routine fact check by the intelligence community.
Typically, once a Senate committee report has been approved, staff
are only authorized to make technical and conforming changes. The
executive summary and findings and conclusions released this week have
undergone such extensive and unprecedented revisions since the study
was approved back in December of 2012 that the traditional concept of
technical and conforming changes has now been rendered meaningless.
Amazingly, the majority made significant changes in the substance of
the study for months after it was voted on by the committee. In
addition, after we submitted our minority views, the majority staff
then went back and made a few changes to specifically correct some of
the more blatant errors that we identified in the views and that the
CIA identified in their review. While I am pleased our views led to
some minor improvements in the study, those untimely changes required
us to add text explaining the validity of our initial conclusions and
criticisms. Simply put, the documents released today are very different
from the documents that were approved almost exactly 2 years ago by the
committee at the end of the last Congress on a partisan basis.
Another significant weakness of this study is its disregard of the
context
[[Page S6419]]
under which the CIA's detention and interrogation program was
developed. It is critical to remember that the intelligence community
was inundated by a surge of terrorist threat reporting after the
September 11 attacks. The fear of a follow-on attack was pervasive, and
it was genuine. The Nation was traumatized by the horrific murders of
nearly 3,000 Americans and at the CIA there was no greater imperative
than stopping another attack from happening. This context is entirely
absent from the study.
In addition, everyone must remember that the CIA was directed to
conduct this program by the President. I have spoken with a number of
CIA officers over the years who remember the contentious debates about
the program at the time it was being considered, but at the end of the
day the Agency did what the President directed them to do under the
color of law and based upon opinions issued and updated by the
Department of Justice.
Many of my colleagues continue to discuss the brutality of many of
the enhanced interrogation techniques. I agree that waterboarding,
which only occurred against three detainees, is particularly severe.
Many of the other techniques were not. By comparison, KSM, who was one
of the detainees who was subjected to waterboarding, personally
beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and a number of
other U.S. citizens have been tortured and beheaded by Al Qaeda-
inspired groups since.
In my opinion, the current threat level posed by ISIL and other Al
Qaeda-affiliated terrorist groups may be greater today than what we
faced prior to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They are better funded,
better equipped, and have recruited hundreds of terrorists who have
American as well as European passports. ISIL terrorists are using
social media to encourage new recruits to conduct ``lone wolf'' attacks
in their home countries such as the United States. They are murdering
and beheading captured hostages and planning terrorist attacks against
U.S. citizens.
In light of these significant threats, the President is still
attempting to make good on a misguided campaign promise to close down
Guantanamo Bay. It doesn't seem to matter to him that we are now down
to the worst of the worst or that his own review groups have strongly
recommended against the release of these remaining terrorists. Instead,
he has returned to the pre-9/11 practice of treating terrorists like
ordinary criminals. We are reading terrorists their Miranda rights
instead of conducting extended intelligence interrogations to develop
actionable intelligence that might lead to additional captures or plot
disruptions.
I think we would be better off if we were to return to a mindset
where we attempt to capture the enemy and use authorized interrogation
techniques to obtain the actionable intelligence information needed to
neutralize these dangerous terrorist organizations. While there is no
doubt there were indeed moments during the CIA detention and
interrogation program where interrogators exceeded their authorized
limits, such instances were relatively few and far between.
In this, my last week of service on the floor of the U.S. Senate and
as the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, I wish to thank the
men and women of the CIA and the rest of the intelligence community and
the members of our Armed Forces who have served us so well since the 9/
11 terrorist attacks. Their efforts and their sacrifices have not gone
unnoticed. I will be forever grateful for their patriotic service to
our beloved country. May God bless them all and may God bless the
United States of America.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
____________________
[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6424-S6425]
SSCI STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I have served on the Senate Intelligence
Committee for 14 years and came to the Senate floor in the spring of
2005 to join with Senator Rockefeller in calling for the committee to
investigate the CIA's interrogation activities and the possible use of
torture. In 2009 I joined my Intelligence Committee colleagues in
voting to approve Chair Feinstein's motion to launch an investigation
into these activities.
I said at the time, I continue to believe it today, that what this
debate over torture requires is an infusion of facts. Americans can
hear me and other policymakers argue that the CIA's so-called enhanced
interrogation techniques constituted torture and did not work, and
Americans can also hear various former officials argue that these
techniques are not torture and that they produced uniquely valuable
information. What is important is that today all Americans finally have
access to the facts so they can make up their own minds. Personally, I
hope this report closes the door on the possibility of our country ever
resorting to torture again.
Americans have known since the days of the Salem witch trials that
torture is an unreliable means of obtaining truthful information in
addition to being morally reprehensible. But following the terrorist
attacks of September 11, 2001, a small number of CIA officials chose to
follow the advice of private, outside contractors who told them the way
to quickly get important information from captured terrorist suspects
was by using coercive interrogation techniques that had been developed
and used by Communist dictatorships during the Cold War.
I would note that the CIA officials later paid these same contractors
to evaluate the effectiveness of their own work.
CIA officials repeatedly represented to the public, to the Congress,
to the White House, and to the Justice Department that the techniques
were safe, that they were only used against high-level terrorist
captives, and that their use provided unique otherwise unavailable
intelligence that saved lives. After 5 long years of investigation, our
committee found that none of these claims held up. The CIA's so-called
enhanced interrogation techniques included a number of techniques that
our country has long considered torture. Furthermore, the CIA's own
interrogation records make it clear that the use of these techniques in
the CIA's secret prisons was far harsher than was described in
representations by the CIA.
CIA Director Michael Hayden testified that any deviation from
approved procedures were reported and corrected, but CIA interrogation
logs described a wide variety of harsh techniques that the Justice
Department's infamous torture memos did not even consider. Practices
such as placing detainees in ice water or threatening a detainee with a
power drill were often not appropriately recorded or corrected when
they happened. Director Hayden also testified that detainees at a
minimum have always had a bucket to dispose of their human waste, but
in fact CIA detainees were routinely placed in diapers for extended
periods of time, and CIA cables show multiple instances in which
interrogators withheld waste buckets from detainees.
CIA records indicate that some CIA prisoners may not have been
terrorists at all. Some of these individuals were in fact ruthless
terrorists with blood already on their hands, but one of the report's
most important findings is that this did not seem to be the case in
every instance. In one particularly troubling case, the CIA held an
intellectually challenged man prisoner and attempted to use tapes of
him crying as leverage against another member of the individual's
family.
At another point the CIA official noted in writing that the CIA was
holding a number of detainees about whom we know very little, and the
CIA on multiple occasions continued to hold people even after CIA
officers concluded there was not information to detain them. The review
even found email records that described Director Hayden instructing a
CIA officer to underreport the total number of CIA detainees. To this
day the CIA's official response to this report indicates that senior
CIA officials are alarmingly uninterested in determining exactly how
many detainees the CIA even held.
To be clear, the report doesn't attempt to determine the motivation
behind these misrepresentations. The report doesn't reach judgments
about whether individuals deliberately lied or unknowingly passed along
inaccurate information. It simply compares the representations the CIA
made to Congress, the Justice Department, the public, and others to the
information found in the CIA's own internal records, and it notes where
those comparisons reveal significant contradictions.
One of the biggest sets of contradictions revolve around the repeated
claim that the use of these techniques produced unique, otherwise
unavailable intelligence that saved lives. CIA officials made this
claim to the White House, the Justice Department, the Congress, and the
public. The claim was repeated over and over and over again. Over the
years CIA officials came up with a number of examples to try to support
the claim, such as the names of particular terrorists supposedly
captured as a result of coercive interrogations or plots that had been
supposedly thwarted based on this unique, otherwise unavailable
information.
The committee took the 20 most prominent or frequently cited examples
used by the CIA and our investigators spent years going through them.
Twenty examples are going to seem like a lot to anybody who reads the
report, but the committee members who were working on the report agreed
it was important to be comprehensive and avoid cherry-picking just one
or two cases. In every one of these cases the CIA statements about the
unique effectiveness of coercive interrogation techniques were
contradicted in one way or another by the Agency's own internal
records.
I am going to repeat that because I think it is a particularly
important finding. In every one of these 20 cases, CIA statements about
the unique effectiveness of coercive interrogation was contradicted in
one way or another by the Agency's own internal records. We are not
talking about minor inconsistencies. We are talking about fundamental
contradictions.
For example, in congressional testimony and documents prepared for
White House briefings, the CIA claimed that a detainee had identified
Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks after he
was detained by the CIA and subjected to the CIA's coercive
interrogation techniques, but in fact CIA records clearly show that Abu
Zubaydah provided this information during noncoercive interrogations by
the FBI prior to the beginning of his coercive CIA interrogations and
days before he was even moved to the CIA's secret detention site. I
personally expected that there would be at least one or two cases where
vague or incomplete records might appear to support the Agency's
claims, but in fact in every one of these 20 examples they and the
arguments for them crumble under close scrutiny.
The report that is being released today includes a number of
redactions aimed at protecting our national security. I will say in my
view some of these redactions are unnecessary and a few of them even
obscure some details that would help Americans understand parts of the
report. Overall I am satisfied that the redactions do not make the
report unreadable and it would be possible for Americans to read the
report to learn not only what happened but how it happened, and
learning that is essential to keep it from happening again.
One of the reasons this public release is necessary is that the
current CIA leadership has been resistant to acknowledging the full
scope of the mistakes and misrepresentations that have surrounded this
program. Some of this resistance is made clear in the Agency's official
response to the committee's report, and I suspect some of it will be
echoed by former officials who were involved in the program.
Finally, I want to wrap up by reminding people about the documents
that have come to be known as the Panetta review. When former CIA
Director Panetta came to the Agency in 2009, he made it clear from the
outset that he wanted to work to put the Agency's history of torture
behind it
[[Page S6425]]
and that he wanted to cooperate with the Intelligence Committee
inquiry. He also sensibly asked CIA personnel to review internal CIA
records and get a sense of what this investigation could be expected to
find.
The review got off to a solid start. It began to identify some of the
same mistakes and misrepresentations that are identified in our
committee's report. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this review
ever made it to the Director's desk. Instead, publicly available
documents made it clear this review was quietly terminated by CIA
attorneys who thought it was moving too fast.
Earlier this year the Agency conducted an unprecedented and secret
search of Senate files in an effort to find out whether the committee
had obtained copies of the Panetta review. After it was found that
committee investigators had in fact obtained the Panetta review, the
CIA actually attempted to file unsupported criminal allegations against
Senate staff members. After the search was publicly revealed by the
press, the CIA's own spokesperson acknowledged in USA Today that the
search had taken place and it had been done because the CIA was looking
to see if our investigators had found a document the CIA didn't want
the Congress to have. Incredibly, that same week CIA Director John
Brennan told reporter Andrea Mitchell of NBC that the CIA had not spied
on Senate files and that ``nothing could be further from the truth.''
I think this incident and the difference between what was said to
Andrea Mitchell and what the Agency's own people said to USA Today
reflects once again what I call an alarming culture of misinformation.
Instead of acknowledging the serious organizational problems that are
laid out in this report, the Agency's leadership seems inclined to try
to sweep them under the rug. This means organizational problems aren't
going to be fixed unless they are laid out publicly, and there is also
a danger that other countries or even future administrations might be
tempted to use torture if they don't have all the facts about the CIA's
experience. That is why the release today is so important.
In concluding, I thank all of the staff who have put in hours and
hours and nights and weekends and time away from their families to get
this investigation completed. I praise Chair Feinstein and our former
Chair Senator Rockefeller, who together were resolute in pushing for
this kind of congressional oversight.
____________________
[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6425-S6426]
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION
AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM
Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, today is a historic day, as
Senator Wyden made clear, Senator Feinstein, Senator Rockefeller, and
many other Senators to follow.
Before I talk about my involvement in the efforts that were put forth
to reach this day, I want to say to Senator Wyden, my good friend, you
honor me with those comments. I want to acknowledge that when you are
in a fight, it matters whom you are in the fight with. It has been my
privilege and honor to fight on the side of transparency, on the side
of protecting the Bill of Rights, and this has been a righteous cause.
We are going to continue to work to find the right balance between
privacy and security. As Ben Franklin famously implied, we can have
both, but we don't end up with both if we set aside the Bill of Rights
and those fundamental principles that are enshrined into the Bill of
Rights. It has been my privilege to fight alongside you, and I wish you
all the best. Yes, we westerners will stay in touch.
Turning back to the matter at hand, today, almost 6 years after the
Senate Intelligence Committee voted to conduct a study of the CIA's
detention and interrogation program and nearly 2 years after approving
the report, the American people will finally know the truth about a
very dark chapter in our Nation's history.
I had two goals at the beginning of this long process, and I still
hold those two goals today. First, I have been committed to correcting
the public record on the CIA's multiple misrepresentations to the
American people, to other agencies, the executive branch, the White
House, and to Congress.
Second, my goal has been to ensure that the truth comes out about the
terrible acts committed in the name of the American people. Why?
Because I want this to be our way of going forward, that neither the
CIA nor any future administration repeats the grievous mistakes this
important oversight work reveals.
This has been a careful and very deliberative process. We have
compiled, drafted, redacted, and now released this report. It has been
much harder than it needed to be. Senator Wyden and many others pointed
it out.
It brings no joy to discuss the CIA's brutal and appalling use of
torture or the unprecedented actions that some in the intelligence
community and the administration have taken in order to cover up the
truth. By releasing the Intelligence Committee's landmark report, we
affirm that we are a nation that does not hide from its past but learns
from it. An honest examination of our shortcomings is not a sign of
weakness but of the strength of our great Republic.
We have made significant progress since the CIA first delivered its
heavily--underline ``heavily''--redacted version of the executive
summary to the committee in August. The report we released today cuts
through the fog the CIA's redactions created and will give the American
people a candid, brutal, and coherent account of the CIA's torture
program.
As the chairman said earlier today, even when public tensions were
high, our committee continued to work behind the scenes to successfully
whittle down 400 instances of unnecessary redactions to just a few. We
didn't make all the progress we wanted, and the redaction process was
filled with unwarranted and completely unnecessary obstacles, but all
told, after reviewing the final version, I believe our landmark report
accomplishes the goals I laid out at the outset and tells the story
that needs to be told. It also represents a significant and essential
step toward restoring faith in the crucial role of Congress to conduct
oversight of the intelligence community. Congressional oversight is
important to all of government's activities, but it
[[Page S6426]]
is especially important to those parts of government that operate in
secret, as the Church committee discovered decades ago.
The challenges the Church committee confronted four decades ago
persists today--namely, how to ensure that those government actions
which are necessarily conducted in secret are nonetheless conducted
within the confines of the law.
The release of this executive summary is testament to the power of
effective oversight and the determination of Chairman Feinstein and
members of the committee to doggedly beat back obstacle after obstacle
in order to reveal the truth to the American people. I have much more
to say about these obstacles and about the critical importance of
reforming an agency that refuses to even acknowledge what it has done.
I will deliver those remarks soon. For now, I wish to congratulate the
chairman and her staff on this very important achievement.
The document we are finally releasing today is the definitive history
of what happened in the CIA's detention and interrogation program. We
have always been a forward-looking nation, but to be so, we must be
mindful of our own history. That is what this study is all about. That
is why I have no doubt that we will emerge from this dark episode with
our democracy strengthened and our future made even brighter.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. I see the distinguished senior Senator from Texas on the
floor seeking recognition. I have been told to come here at 3:30 p.m.,
but obviously I yield to my friend from Texas and ask unanimous consent
that when he completes his remarks I be recognized.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Texas.
Mr. CORNYN. I thank my friend from Vermont. All of this got pushed
back a little bit with the laudatory speeches for our retiring
colleague from Nebraska. We are backed up a little bit, but I won't be
long.
I have to say that I came to the floor when the Senators from Oregon
and Colorado were talking about Senator Feinstein's decision to release
this report. I get it that different people see the same subject matter
sometimes through a different lens, but I can't think of any more
reckless or irresponsible thing to do to our brave men and women who
fight in our military, who have fought our wars for the last 13 years,
and the intelligence community that has worked while risking their
lives to keep us safe.
We all remember what happened on 9/11/2001, but apparently with time
our memories have faded. What we do know for a fact is we would not
have avoided another attack on our own soil if it were not for the
dedication and the patriotism of men and women in our intelligence
community who were operating under color of law. In other words, this
isn't just something they decided to cook up; this was something that
was vetted at the highest levels of the Justice Department and the
Department of Defense.
We had hearing upon hearing on these various enhanced interrogation
techniques. There were disagreements, but we do know they were
effective in gleaning intelligence that helped keep Americans safer.
That is not just me saying that. Ask Leon Panetta, the immediate past
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Secretary of the
Department of Defense--a proud Democrat but also a patriot in his own
right. Ask John Brennan, President Obama's choice to be the current CIA
Director. He said virtually the same thing.
So much of this should have proven to be unnecessary after two
separate U.S. attorneys conducted criminal investigations. There was
one done earlier and then one done later when Attorney General Eric
Holder reopened the investigation. These men and women who risk their
lives to do what their government asks them to do to keep us safe were
subjected to at least two Justice Department investigations, and
obviously no decision to proceed with any kind of criminal charges was
decided upon.
I think you have to wonder about the timing of this in a lameduck
session where we have basically three items of business to do before we
break for the Christmas holidays and a new Congress. It is clear that
this report was pushed out in an attempt to make a political statement,
but I have to tell you that I think it is a reckless act, and it is a
disservice not only to the men and women who risked their lives but
also to the American people who should expect more of us.
This was not a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. Once
Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee figured out what was
happening, they simply disassociated themselves from it. This is purely
a partisan report. There are absolutely no recommendations made for any
reforms in this report. It was simply done to embarrass and to hold up
our brave men and women who serve our country and the intelligence
community to ridicule, and it is a shame.
____________________
[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6427-S6432]
SSCI STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I listened with interest to the tremendous
statement made by the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein, earlier
today. She has spoken of this issue on other occasions, and we
Americans should listen.
More than a decade ago the Central Intelligence Agency began
detaining and torturing human beings in the name of the war on
terrorism. Then employees and contractors of the U.S. Government, paid
for by our taxpayers' dollars, abused and degraded, dehumanized people.
They stripped them of their basic humanity. But more than stripping
them of their basic humanity, they stripped America of its standing in
the world as the leader of promoting and protecting human rights.
Instead of protecting us as Americans, by their actions they hurt all
Americans.
President Obama banned torture and cruel treatment when he took
office, but only now, because of the courage and conviction of Senator
Feinstein and the other members of the Intelligence Committee and their
staffs, do we have a full and public accounting of the CIA's actions--
an accounting the American people deserve.
The decision to release this historic report, as Senator Feinstein
has courageously said, has been difficult, but it was the right and
moral thing to do. If something is right and something is moral, no
matter how difficult it is, you should do it. Releasing the report
demonstrates that America--the America I love--is different. As
Americans, we cannot sweep our mistakes under the rug and pretend they
did not happen. We have to acknowledge our mistakes. We have to learn
from our mistakes. In this case, we as Americans must and will do
everything we can to ensure that our government never tortures again.
Five years ago, in 2009, I called for a commission of inquiry to
review the Bush administration's detention and interrogation program
and other sweeping claims of executive power by the Bush
administration. I believe that in order to restore America's moral
leadership, we have to acknowledge what happened in our name because
much of the leadership we can show around the world is not based on our
wealth or on the power of our military but on our moral leadership. Our
Nation needed back then a full accounting of the CIA's treatment of
detainees, and we need it today. With this report, at long last we have
it.
This is not the first report to record or condemn the detention and
interrogation policies and practices that were used during the last
administration, but it is the first to fully chronicle the actions of
the most secretive of our government agencies, the Central Intelligence
Agency. The final report lays bare the dark truth about their program.
That truth is far worse and it is far more brutal than most Americans
ever imagined.
We have all seen the shocking pictures from Abu Ghraib. We have read
the cold, clinical description of ``harsh'' or ``enhanced'' techniques
written by Department of Justice attorneys to justify such treatment.
We know that what was done at Abu Ghraib terribly diminished the image
of the United States throughout the world. It did not make us safer by
one iota. In fact, many would argue it made us less safe.
The report makes clear one fundamental truth: The CIA tortured
people. That is the bottom line. No euphemistic description or legal
obfuscation or pettifoggery can hide that fact any longer. The
Intelligence Committee report shows that techniques such as
waterboarding and sleep deprivation were used in ways far more frequent
and cruel and harmful than previously known. It shows that gross
mismanagement by those in charge at the CIA and a shocking indifference
to human dignity led to horrendous treatment and conditions of
confinement that went far beyond even what they had been approving. It
turns out that the senior CIA leadership did not even know that
``enhanced'' techniques were being used at one CIA detention facility.
In fact, in one instance, one of their prisoners died as a result, left
shackled on a concrete floor in a dungeon room, and likely died of
hypothermia.
This is America? This is what we stand for? This is the image we want
to give the rest of the world? This American does not think so. This
American does not think so. It is not what brought my grandparents and
great-grandparents to this country.
These so-called ``enhanced'' interrogation techniques were not just
used on the worst of the worst either. In some instances, the CIA did
not even know whom it was holding. CIA records show that at least 26
people detained by the CIA did not meet the CIA's own standard for
detention. Some of these individuals were subjected to--and this is a
wonderful slogan--``enhanced'' techniques. What an evil slogan. Some
detainees were determined not even to be members of Al Qaeda.
Moreover, the CIA relied on contractors--not even CIA personnel but
contractors--who had no experience as interrogators to develop this
program. They were happy to take American taxpayers' money. They did
not know what they were doing, but they said: Give us the money.
Eventually the CIA outsourced all aspects of the program to the company
these contractors set up. Did they make a few thousand dollars? No.
They made $80 million. This was a program out of control. It is yet
another reason why Congress has to exercise its oversight
responsibility.
The report also disproves CIA claims that torture programs were
necessary to protect our Nation, and that it thwarted attacks. How many
times have we heard it before--that we need this to protect us; we need
this to protect us from another 9/11? We had all of the evidence we
needed to stop 9/11, but the government had not even bothered to
translate some of the material that our intelligence people had already
obtained. After the fact, they decided: We should really translate some
of that material we have. Then we found it could have been stopped.
This program of torture did not make us safer. As laid out in
meticulous detail in the report, the use of these techniques did not
generate uniquely valuable intelligence. In fact, the report thoroughly
repudiates each of the most commonly cited examples of plots thwarted
and terrorists captured. That should not come as a surprise.
The Senate Judiciary Committee held numerous hearings on the Bush
administration's interrogation policies and practices. What we heard
time and again from witness after witness is that torture and other
cruel treatments do not work. But there are still some who continue to
argue, even in the face of overwhelming testimony and actually now hard
evidence to the contrary, that the program thwarted attacks and saved
lives. They defend the CIA's action. They argue that the report does
not tell the full story. But these are often the same people who
participated in the rampant misrepresentations detailed in this report.
The report shows that CIA officials consistently misled virtually
everyone outside the Agency about what was actually going on and about
the results of the CIA interrogations--very similar to what we heard
leading up to the war in Iraq after 9/11. I remember being in those
hearings. I remember listening to the then-Vice President. I remember
listening to others in those secret hearings and thinking: It does not
ring true. I stated to others that I thought some of the things they
were telling us did not ring true.
I remember walking early one morning with my wife near our home and
two joggers coming up, calling us by name. These were people we had
never seen before in the neighborhood.
One of them said, ``I hear you have some questions.'' He asked
whether I had asked to see a particular document.
I said, ``I haven't. I didn't know there was such a thing.''
He said, ``You might find it interesting to read.''
[[Page S6428]]
So I did. Then I raised even more questions about what I read there,
which totally contradicted what the Vice President and others were
saying. I mentioned that to some.
A few days later we are out walking again. Both joggers--my wife
remembers this so well--they said, ``I see you read the document.''
I said, ``I did.''
``But did they tell you about this other document?''
I said, ``I didn't know there was such a document.''
``You may find it interesting.''
And so I then reviewed it. It was obvious from what I read that they
were withholding evidence that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/
11, contrary to what the Vice President and others were saying; that
there were no weapons of mass destruction; and that in fact, they were
actually well penned in by the no-fly zone we had set up. But instead
we rushed into war because we sought to avenge 9/11, even though they
had nothing to do with
9/11. Now almost $3 trillion later, look at the mess we are in.
The report released today details how, like the run-up to the war in
Iraq, material that was held back from people who should have seen it.
This included Members of Congress, White House officials, even Justice
Department lawyers who were being asked to review the legality of CIA
techniques.
In the coming weeks, as we go into the new Congress, we are going to
hear a lot about the need for oversight. I would hope the new
leadership would look at the report Senator Feinstein and her committee
have come out with, because this is where oversight should be--at the
top of the list. So too should the unprecedented spying by the CIA on
the congressional staff investigating this program. Just think about
that. They investigated Members of Congress who were asking them about
things they had done wrong. Then there is also the troubling pattern of
intimidation, which includes the CIA referring its own congressional
overseers to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. My God,
we are going back to the Joseph McCarthy days with things like this.
This report and those actions show a CIA out of control. It is
incumbent upon all of us--Republicans and Democrats alike--in the
Congress to hold the Agency accountable.
The Judiciary Committee should take a hard look at the role of the
Department of Justice and its legal justifications for this program.
Much ink has been spilled criticizing the OLC opinion written during
the Bush administration by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Stephen Bradbury.
The OLC has always had a good reputation, but these opinions sullied
the reputation of that office, and they have been rightly repudiated.
But the report also demonstrates that even those opinions were the
result of key misrepresentations by the CIA about the seniority of the
people subjected to these techniques, the implementation of the
techniques, and the intelligence resulting from them.
As an institution, if we truly represent 325 million Americans, do we
not have a responsibility to examine the systemic failure that allowed
this to happen and then to ensure that it does not happen again?
Those who attack the credibility of this report are wrong. This
report is not based on conjecture or theory or insinuation. Anyone who
reads it can see that this careful, thorough report was meticulously
researched and written. It is based on more than 6 million pages of CIA
cables, emails, and other documents containing descriptions that CIA
employees and contractors themselves recorded.
I believe Senator Feinstein and the other members of the Intelligence
Committee who worked on this deserve our respect and our appreciation.
Intelligence Committee staffers, too, have dedicated years of their
lives to this report. They have demonstrated courage and dedication in
the face of enormous challenges, because they thought first and
foremost about the United States of America.
In the past year they were even threatened with criminal prosecution.
Why? For doing the job they are supposed to do for the United States of
America. But they would not allow themselves to be intimidated. They
have served their country well, and they have my deepest appreciation
for bringing us this truly historic study.
I thank their families, because they couldn't tell their families the
things they were reading. I imagine the families knew of some of these
attacks on them. Their families too deserve our thanks.
I am disappointed that those same honorable staffers had to spend so
many months arguing with this White House about redactions to this
report--a White House that is supposed to be dedicated to transparency.
This report should have been issued months ago, and it still contains
more redactions than it should. I can think of some who will wonder why
the redactions are there, but I am gratified that we can finally shed
light on this dark chapter.
Among the many lessons we can take from this report is that Americans
deserve more government transparency, and that is essential to a strong
democracy. Just yesterday the Senate unanimously passed a bipartisan
bill, the Leahy-Cornyn FOIA Improvement Act. It significantly improves
the Freedom of Information Act. Today's release of this report is
another important victory for greater government transparency.
I strongly disagree with those who argue that the reports should not
come out and who have tried to pressure and silence Senator Feinstein.
Don't place the blame on those who are telling the truth. Place the
blame squarely where it belongs: on those who authorized and carried
out a systematic program of torture and secret detention, which is in
violation of domestic law, and in violation of international law. But
more importantly it is in violation of the fundamental principles of
morality on which our great Nation was founded.
In trying times, such as those we faced after September 11 and those
we face now, we look to our intelligence, military, and law enforcement
professionals to keep us safe. We are fortunate to have so many
dedicated and talented people serving in the intelligence community,
military, and law enforcement. But one lesson for their sake, our sake,
and our country's sake, is that we should never become so blinded by
fear that we are willing to sacrifice our own principles, laws, and
humanity.
We are the greatest, most powerful Nation on Earth. We cannot turn
our backs on our laws, our history, and our Constitution because we are
afraid. This Senator is not afraid.
No matter what, our enemies are human beings. And no matter how
hardened and evil they are, no matter how repulsive their actions--and
many are--no matter how horribly they have treated their own victims,
we do not torture them--because we don't join them on that dark side of
history. We stand on the other side of history as Americans.
Generations of men and women have given their lives and many have even
endured torture themselves in order to protect this Nation. They did so
not to protect our way of life, but to protect our principles, our
understanding of right and wrong, of humanity, of evil.
The shameful actions uncovered by this report dishonored those men
and women who have fought to protect what is the best of our Nation, as
well as the men and women even today who continue to put their lives at
risk for this country.
Americans know, throughout this country, that we are better than
this. As we heard after Abu Ghraib and we will hear now, we are better
than this and we should never let this happen again. Let's show the
rest of the world, too.
I have spoken much longer than I normally do, but this is important
to me.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
Mr. KING. Mr. President, I also want to address the report that was
released this morning by the Chair of the Intelligence Committee. I
come at this in a slightly different way than some of my colleagues,
because I came to this process late.
I joined the Intelligence Committee in January of 2013. By that time
the report had been authorized, had been written, and actually had been
finalized. So I came to it as a final product and the decision was
whether it should be released.
Before talking about the report, there are two very important points
that should be made.
[[Page S6429]]
No. 1, one of my problems with this discussion is that everybody
talks about the CIA. The CIA did this, the CIA did that. The fact is
the CIA as an institution doesn't do anything. People do things.
I have been around the world and met with CIA people in many
countries. I have met with them here. They are patriotic, they are
dedicated, they are smart, and they are brave. The problem with this
situation is their reputation has been sullied by a relatively small
group of people early in the prior decade.
So I want to make clear, at least as far as I am concerned, this is
not an attempt to discredit or otherwise undermine the CIA or the good
people who are there, but to point out that mistakes were made.
No. 2, I think we need to acknowledge that those were extraordinary
times, the year or so after September 11. We thought there was going to
be another attack. There was a lot of pressure to uncover that
information. It is easy, 10 years later, to look back and say: Well, we
shouldn't have done this or we shouldn't have done that. I understand
that. We have to acknowledge that. However, those circumstances cannot
justify a basic violation of who we are as Americans and what our
values are.
The process is the report was completed and accepted by the committee
on a bipartisan basis. My predecessor, Olympia Snowe, voted in favor of
the acceptance of the report in December of 2012.
It was then sent to the CIA. They responded, a rather full response.
It took about 6 months, and then they submitted their response to the
committee.
I knew the vote was going to be coming up last spring as to whether
to release the report. I went to the secure site in one of our
buildings and sat down every night for a week and read this executive
summary, every single word--all 500 pages, all of the footnotes--and
made my own judgment as one who was in no way invested in this report.
Here are the conclusions I reached. I must say, until I sat and read
it, I didn't fully comprehend what this issue was, why we needed this
large report, why we needed to do this study. After reading it, I was
shaken and convinced that the report was important and should be
released.
Basically, it has four conclusions. I am not going to go through them
in detail, but No. 1 was: We committed torture. I am not going to argue
that. I would say, as I said repeatedly, read the report. No person can
read the description of what was done in our name and not conclude that
it was way outside the values of our country and constituted torture by
any definition.
No. 2, it was terribly managed. That is not a very exciting point
about management, but nobody was in charge. Contractors were actually
designing the program and assessing whether it was successful--the
people who had designed it and were implementing it. There was no
central place at the CIA that managed it, so that was a problem.
No. 3--and this we are going to talk about for a few minutes--it was
not effective. The guts of this report are an analysis of the 20
principal cases the CIA presented as justification for the torture to
say that it worked, that it led to intelligence that was reliable and
current, and the report goes through in excruciating detail looking at
each one of those allegations.
It basically finds that the information was either already available,
it was available in our hands, it was available in other ways, and the
witnesses had given up the data prior to their being subjected to these
extraordinary measures. I am going to talk, as I mentioned, in a couple
of minutes about this issue of effectiveness.
I should have said this at the beginning. My poor words can't
contribute a great deal to this debate, but the speech Senator John
McCain made on this floor this morning should be required viewing for
every schoolchild in America, every Member of this body, every Member
of this Congress, and every American. He spoke eloquently about the
violation of our ideals of this program and the fact that it cannot,
will not, and could not work.
The final point we take from the report is this program was
continually misrepresented. It was misrepresented to the President, it
was misrepresented to the Justice Department, it was misrepresented to
the Congress, and it was misrepresented to the Intelligence Committee.
The problem is that continues today. In the past few days we have
seen an outburst of statements, speeches, and interviews on television
saying it was effective. It wasn't effective, and the report makes that
clear.
There is a semantic sleight of hand going on, and I have already seen
it in two or three interviews on television where people slide from the
report and they say: The program of detention of people whom we
captured after September 11 was effective in generating intelligence.
Absolutely true. There is no doubt of that. People were detained,
they were interrogated, they gave good intelligence, it taught us what
we know about Al Qaeda, and it was very helpful to the country in
preventing future plots.
The question for the House, though, is was the torture effective? If
you have somebody in custody, they give up good information, and then
later you torture them and they don't give you anymore information, the
torture didn't create that information or that intelligence. The
question is did the extraordinary methods create additional evidence.
People should cock their ears when they hear people say the program
created this good intelligence. It did. But the program is not what we
are talking about today. We are talking about so-called enhanced
interrogation techniques.
I would suggest when people come up with a euphemism such as enhanced
interrogation techniques, that should tip us off that something is
going on that we should be concerned about.
I wrestled with this decision. It was not easy. There is risk
involved. There has been a lot of commentary today. Our people are on
alert. Will someone attack us because of this report?
I can't deny that risk. I think it is impossible to say. But we have
already learned that these people will attack us for any or no reason.
They have been trying to attack us for 10 years. That is their reason
for existing.
ISIL has beheaded Americans, not because of this report, but because
that is their agenda. Now they may issue a press release or a YouTube
video and say we are doing this because of the report, but I would
submit they are going to do it anyway.
What they are going to cite--it is not the report, it is what we did
that has inflamed opposition around the world, and it has done so for
many years already.
Finally, on the question of the risk, when the terrible activities at
Abu Ghraib came to the attention of the Congress, we did a report. The
Armed Services Committee did a study and issued a report in grisly
detail of what was done, and at that point we had 100,000 troops in
Iraq. If ever there was a report that would have inflamed public
opinion in a foreign country and generated retribution against us, it
was that. We cannot be intimidated by people who tell us that we cannot
exercise and be true to our own ideals.
But if there is any risk, why should we do it? Because these actions
are so alien to our values, they are so alien to our principles that we
simply can't countenance them.
By the way, if this wasn't torture, if this wasn't a problem, why did
the CIA destroy the tapes of one of these interrogations? That is what
started all of this, when the Senate learned they had destroyed tapes.
If they thought this was not torture--which is what they were telling
us--then why are they destroying the tapes? That is what began this
process.
To me, one of the most telling quotes in the whole report was a back-
and-forth between the CIA and I think the White House--but I think it
was within the CIA where the statement was made: ``Whatever you do,
don't let Colin Powell find out about this, he'll blow his stack.'' Now
that tells me they knew they were doing something that wasn't
acceptable to our country and to the American people. But the second
reason to release this report is the key: so it will never happen
again. That is the whole deal here.
The campaign of the last few days of people saying it worked and it
wasn't torture and you shouldn't do it because
[[Page S6430]]
of the risk--that, to me, validates my concern because these people are
essentially saying: We would do it again if we had the chance. And the
only thing standing between them and doing it again is an Executive
order signed by this President in January of 2009, which could be wiped
out in the first week of a new Presidency or in the first month of a
new Presidency. We cannot have this happen again.
The oratory is that it works. I have a letter, which I will submit
for the Record, from 20 former terrorist interrogators--Army, Air
Force, CIA, FBI--saying these kinds of tactics don't work and, in fact,
they produce bad intelligence. There is an article in Politico today by
Mark Fallen, who is a 30-year interrogator, saying it doesn't work.
We have to have this discussion and lay that to rest because the
people who are saying it works are really saying: And we will do it
again if we have to. And that is not who we are as people.
Interestingly, in the CIA's response to the report--all during the
early part of this past decade the argument was--and we are hearing it
today--it works. We are certain it works. We got valuable intelligence.
We got Osama bin Laden.
The CIA is not saying that today. When they submitted their response
to the committee's report, what they said about effectiveness was that
it is unknowable whether it was effective. I believe the migration from
the certainty they gave to Members of Congress and the President and
the Department of Justice--the migration from ``certainty'' to
``unknowable'' speaks volumes because they couldn't refute the facts
that are in this report.
If this idea that this kind of interrogation works becomes
conventional wisdom, it will definitely happen again.
I go back in conclusion to John McCain's statement this morning. I
can't match his eloquence. It was one of the most powerful messages I
have ever heard in this body or anywhere else. He talked about who we
are as Americans, and he also talked from personal experience about
what torture will do and whether it will produce good information, and
I would submit that John McCain knows more about that particular
subject than all the rest of us in this body put together.
I got a critical note from a friend in Maine this morning that said
``You know, you are naive'' and all those kinds of things. I just wrote
him back and said, ``Don't take it from me; watch what John McCain had
to say.''
We are exceptional, but we are not exceptional because of natural
resources or because we are smarter and better looking than anybody
else; we are exceptional because of our values. We are one of the few
countries in the world that was founded on explicit values and ideals
and principles. And principles aren't something you discard when times
get tough. That is when they are important. That is like saying: I am
in favor of free press unless somebody says something offensive. These
are principles that make us distinct and different.
I believe this debate is about the soul of America. It is about who
we want to be as a people. It is a hard debate. It is difficult. It is
hard to talk about these things. This was a dark period. But I believe
that having this discussion, having this debate, getting this
information out--and by the way, all the information is going to be
out: the report; the CIA's response was made public today; the minority
had their own statement that is quite substantial. So the public is
going to be able to look at all this information and make their own
decisions. I looked at the information, and the decision I made was
that this is important information the people of America are entitled
to, they should understand, and we should move forward consistent with
our ideals and our principles as a nation and see that something like
this never happens again.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the letter I referred to earlier.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
February 4, 2014.
Hon. Angus King,
U.S. Senate, 359 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington,
DC.
Dear Senator King: We write to you as current and former
professional interrogators, interviewers, and intelligence
officials regarding the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence's (SSCI) 6000-plus page study of the CIA's post-
9/11 rendition, detention, and interrogation program. We
understand that the SSCI may soon take up the issue of
whether to pursue declassification and public release of the
study. In the interest of transparency and furthering an
understanding of effective interrogation policy, we urge you
to support declassification and release of as much of the
study as possible, with only such redactions as are necessary
to protect national security.
Since the CIA program was established over a decade ago,
there has been substantial public interest in, and discussion
of, the fundamental efficacy of the so-called ``enhanced
interrogation techniques'' (EITs). Despite the employment of
these methods, critical questions remain unanswered as to
whether EITs are an appropriate, lawful, or effective means
of consistently eliciting accurate, timely, and comprehensive
intelligence from individuals held in custody. Based on our
experience, torture and other forms of abusive or coercive
techniques are more likely to generate unreliable information
and have repeatedly proven to be counterproductive as a means
of securing the enduring cooperation of a detained
individual. They increase the likelihood of receiving false
or misleading information, undermine this nation's ability to
work with key international partners, and bolster the
recruiting narratives of terrorist groups.
We would like to emphasize that this view is further
supported by relevant studies in the behavioral sciences and
publicly available evidence, which show that coercive
interrogation methods can substantially disrupt a subject's
ability to accurately recall and convey information, cause a
subject to emotionally and psychologically ``shut down,''
produce the circumstances where resistance is increased, or
create incentives for a subject to provide false information
to lessen the experience of pain, suffering, or anxiety.
Despite this body of evidence, some former government
officials who authorized the CIA's so-called ``enhanced
interrogation'' program after 9/11 claim that it produced a
significant and sustained stream of accurate and reliable
intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots, save
American lives, and even locate Osama Bin Laden. While some
of the particular claimed successes of the program have been
disproven based on publicly available information, the
broader claim that the EIT program was necessary to disrupt
terrorist plots and save American lives is based on
classified information unavailable to the public.
The SSCI study--based on a review of more than 6 million
pages of official records--provides an important opportunity
to shed light on these important questions. We understand
that the SSCI minority and CIA have separate views regarding
the meaning and significance of the official documentary
record. Those views are important and should also be made
public so that the American people have an opportunity to
decide for themselves whether the CIA program was ultimately
worth it.
It is beyond time for this critical issue of national
importance to be driven by facts--not rhetoric or partisan
interest. We therefore urge you to vote in favor of
declassifying and releasing the SSCI study on the CIA's post-
9/11 interrogation program.
Sincerely,
Tony Camerino, Glenn Carle, James T. Clemente, Jack
Cloonan, Gerry Downes, Mark Fallon, Brigadier General
David R. Irvine, USA (Ret.), Steven Kleinman, Marcus
Lewis, Mike Marks, Robert McFadden, Charles Mink, Joe
Navarro, Torin Nelson, Erik Phillips, William Quinn,
Buck Revell, Mark Safarik, Haviland Smith, Lieutenant
General Harry E. Soyster (Ret.).
Mr. KING. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator
Levin be permitted to follow my remarks and speak for up to 10 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, torture is wrong, it is un-American, and
it doesn't work. Recognizing these important realities, the President
signed an Executive order in January of 2009 that limited
interrogations by any American personnel to the guidelines that are in
the Army Field Manual, and he reinforced U.S. commitment to the Geneva
Conventions. This closed the book on the Bush administration's
interrogation program. But make no mistake--these weren't enhanced
interrogations. This was torture. I would challenge anyone to read this
report and not be truly disturbed by some of these techniques.
Releasing the Intelligence Committee's study of the CIA's detention
and interrogation program to the American people today will finally
provide a thorough accounting of what happened and how it happened. In
addition, like my colleague and friend from Maine
[[Page S6431]]
who spoke before me, I hope this process helps to ensure that it never
ever happens again.
This was a grave chapter in our history, and the actions taken under
this program cost our Nation global credibility, and--let's be blunt--
they put American lives at risk. Some have suggested that releasing
this report could put American lives at risk. But let's be clear. It
has been the use of torture that has unnecessarily put Americans in
harm's way.
There is no question that there will never be a good time to release
this study. We all know that for months, terrorists in the extremist
group ISIS have been kidnapping and barbarically killing innocent
Americans because of what we as a nation stand for. The response to
their threats and terrorism should not be for us to change our American
values; it should be to stand firm in our values and work with our
allies to root out extremism and terrorism in all its forms.
The release of this study will finally let us face what was done in
the name of the American people and allow for future generations to use
these findings to learn from the mistakes made by the architects of
this program. This is an objective, fact-based study. It is a fair
study. And it is the only comprehensive study conducted of this program
and the CIA's treatment of its detainees in the aftermath of the
September 11 attacks. Today marks an enormous, albeit painful, step
into our future.
It is important to know that these torture methods were the
brainchild of a few CIA officials and their contractors. When I joined
the Intelligence Committee two years ago, I began to read
the classified report and was surprised to learn this. Frankly, it was
not consistent with all of my assumptions. It wasn't what my prejudices
told me to expect. But that is exactly why a fact-based study is so
important.
Furthermore, it is important to know that at every turn, CIA
leadership avoided congressional oversight of these activities and,
even worse, misled Congress. That leadership deliberately kept the vast
majority of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees in the dark on
the interrogation techniques until the day the President revealed the
detention and interrogation program to the rest of the world in 2006--4
years after it began.
Even then, misrepresentations to the committee about the
effectiveness of this program continued, in large part because the CIA
had never performed any comprehensive review of the effectiveness of
the interrogation techniques or the actions of its officers. Myths of
the effectiveness of torture have been repeated, perpetuating the fable
that this was a necessary program that somehow saved lives.
The committee examined the CIA's claims of plots thwarted and
detainees captured as a result of intelligence gained through torture.
In each and every case, the committee found that the intelligence was
already available from other sources or provided by the detainees
themselves before they were tortured.
However, we need to stop treating the issue of torture as one worthy
of debate over its practical merits. This is about torture being
immoral, being un-American. Reducing a human being to a state of
despair through systematic subjugation, pain, and humiliation is
unquestionably immoral. It should never happen again with the blessing
of the Government of the United States of America.
As my colleague who spoke before me--Senator King of Maine--said so
well in an interview this morning, ``This is not America. This is not
who we are.'' I think that sums up how I view the revelations in that
report.
The information in the study released today to the public will
finally pull back the curtain on the terrible judgment that went into
creating and implementing this interrogation program.
The decision to use these techniques and the defense of the program
were the work of a relatively small number of people at the CIA. This
study is in no way a condemnation of the thousands of patriotic men and
women at this great Agency who work tirelessly every day to protect and
defend our Nation from very real and imminent threats using lawful
measures; using effective measures. In fact, the insistence that so
many intelligence successes were the result of enhanced interrogations
negates and marginalizes the effective work done by thousands of other
CIA officers not involved in these activities.
What this study does is show that multiple levels of government were
misled about the effectiveness of these techniques. If secretive
government agencies want to operate in a democracy, there must be trust
and transparency with those who are tasked with the oversight of those
agencies.
As the committee carries out future oversight, we will benefit from
the lessons in this study. I hope we never again let the challenges of
difficult times be used as an excuse to frustrate and defer oversight
the way it was in the early years described in this report.
Although President Obama ended the program by signing that Executive
order in 2009, any future President could reverse it. It is worth
remembering that years before this detention and interrogation program
even began, the CIA had sworn off the harsh interrogations of its past.
But in the wake of the terrorist attacks against the United States, it
repeated those mistakes by once again engaging in brutal interrogations
that undermined our Nation's credibility on the issue of human rights,
produced information of dubious value, and wasted millions and millions
of taxpayer dollars.
The public interest in this issue too often has centered on the
personalities involved and the political battle waged in the release of
this study, but those stories are reductive, and I hope they will soon
be forgotten. Because the story of what happened in this detention and
interrogation program--and how it happened--is too important, and it
needs to be fully understood so that future generations will not make
the same mistakes that our country made out of fear.
When America engages in these acts, with authorization from the
highest levels of government, we invite others to treat our citizens
and our soldiers the same way. This study should serve as a warning to
those who would make similar choices in the future or argue about the
efficacy of these techniques. Let us learn from the mistakes of the
past, and let us never repeat these mistakes again.
Before I close, I wish to say how important it is to acknowledge that
the Intelligence Committee's study of the CIA's detention and
interrogation program represents many, many years of hard work by
Members and staff who faced incredible obstacles in completing their
work. The fact that this study is finished is a testament to their
dedication, and it is a testament to the dedication and focus of
Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Feinstein in deciding that oversight
is our job, regardless of how long it takes.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Michigan.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, the report released today by the
Intelligence Committee is an important addition to the public's
knowledge about the CIA's use of torture, euphemistically described by
some as ``enhanced interrogation techniques'' in the period following
the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The use of these techniques was a failure, both moral and practical.
These tactics violated the values this Nation has long stood for, while
adding little benefit to our security. As GEN David Petraeus and others
have pointed out, their use has placed U.S. personnel at greater risk
of being tortured. They have tarnished America's standing in the world
and undermined our moral authority to confront tyrants and torturers. I
am glad this report will fully inform a public debate with facts that
have remained classified for too long, and I hope it ensures that our
Nation never again resorts to such brutal and misguided methods.
The report lays out clearly that, contrary to claims by former CIA
and Bush administration officials, these techniques did not produce
uniquely valuable intelligence that saved lives. The report examines 20
such specific representations that were used frequently by the CIA to
make the case to policymakers for continued use of abusive techniques.
In all 20 cases, the CIA's claims about the value of intelligence
gathered through torture were inaccurate. At the same time the CIA
[[Page S6432]]
was making false claims about the effectiveness of these techniques, it
was failing to mention that some detainees subjected to these
techniques provided false, fabricated information--information that led
to time-consuming wild-goose chases.
This is not at all surprising when we consider the origin of these
abusive interrogation techniques. In 2008 the Senate Armed Services
Committee produced a detailed investigative report into the treatment
of detainees in military custody. That report traced the path of
techniques such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and forced nudity
from the military's survival, evasion, resistance, and escape training,
or SERE training, the path to interrogations of U.S. detainees. SERE
training was not designed to train U.S. personnel to torture detainees.
Rather, it was designed to prepare U.S. personnel to survive torture at
the hands of our enemies. SERE training simulated techniques that were
used by the Chinese interrogators during the Korean War--techniques
designed to elicit a confession--any confession--whether true or false.
Those who tortured U.S. troops were not after valuable actionable
intelligence. They were after confessions they could use for propaganda
purposes.
Defenders of the CIA's actions have claimed that abusive techniques
produced key intelligence on locating bin Laden that couldn't have been
acquired through other means. This is false, as the Intelligence
Committee's report demonstrates in detail. Not only was the key
information leading to bin Laden obtained through other means not
involving abusive interrogation techniques by the CIA, but, in fact,
the CIA detainee who provided the most significant information about
the courier provided the information prior to being subjected to
abusive interrogation.
There has been a great deal of conversation, and rightly so, about
the need for effective congressional oversight of our intelligence
community and the obstacles that exist to that oversight. This report
highlights many such obstacles. In one case, this report makes public
the likely connection between the Senate's efforts to oversee
intelligence and the destruction of CIA tapes documenting abusive
interrogation of detainees. In 2005 I sponsored a resolution, with the
support of ten colleagues, to establish an independent national
commission to examine treatment of detainees since 9/11. According to
emails quoted in the report released today, Acting CIA General Counsel
John Rizzo wrote on October 31, 2005, that the commission proposal
``seems to be gaining some traction,'' and argued for renewed efforts
``to get the right people downtown''--that is, at the White House--``on
board with the notion of our destroying the tapes.'' Does it sound a
little bit like Watergate? The videos were destroyed at the direction
of Jose Rodriguez, then the head of the CIA's National Clandestine
Service, just 1 day after the November 8, 2005, vote on our commission
proposal in the Senate. It is just one striking example of the CIA's
efforts to evade oversight.
Some have argued against releasing this report, suggesting that it
could spark violence against American interests. Fundamentally, the
idea that release of this report undermines our security is a massive
exercise in blame shifting. Telling the truth about how we engaged in
torture doesn't risk our security. It is the use of torture that
undermines our security. Release of this report is hopefully an
insurance policy against the danger that a future President, a future
intelligence community, and a future Congress might believe that we
should compromise our values in pursuit of unreliable information
through torture. If a future America believes that what America's CIA
did in 2001, 2002, and 2003 was acceptable and useful, we are at risk
of repeating the same horrific mistakes. That is a threat to our
security.
Torture is never the American way. Concealing the truth is never the
American way. Our Nation stands for something better. Our people
deserve something better--they deserve an intelligence community that
conducts itself according to the law, according to basic human values,
and with the safety of our troops always in mind. They deserve better
than intelligence tactics that are likely to produce useless lies from
people trying to end their torture being used against them, instead of
producing valuable intelligence.
I thank Chairman Feinstein for her leadership in completing and
releasing this report. I thank Senator Rockefeller for his longstanding
effort in this regard. I thank Senator McCain and others for speaking
out on the need to ensure that the United States never again repeats
these mistakes.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a
quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MORAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________
[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6433-S6434]
SSCI STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Madam President, I had a chance briefly earlier, when
Chairman Dianne Feinstein of the Senate Intelligence Committee and her
predecessor as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Commerce
Chairman Jay Rockefeller, were on the floor, to express my appreciation
to them for the leadership they showed in bringing the Senate
Intelligence Committee report through a very long ordeal and finally
before the American public today.
I am not going to revisit what the report says. I was on the
Intelligence Committee as it was prepared. I was closely involved in
its preparation. The points I would like to make here today are, first,
to once again thank Chairman Rockefeller and Chairman Feinstein for
persisting through this process, particularly Chairman Feinstein, who I
think saw very intense resistance both within the Senate and within the
CIA to this effort. They, I think, have done something that is in the
very best traditions of the Senate.
The second thing I will say is that in my opinion, in America, an
open democracy like ours lives and dies by the truth. If we have done
something wrong, if we have done something we should not have done,
then we should come clean about it. That is what this report does, in
excruciating, painstaking detail.
Let me credential the report for a minute. When the CIA was offered a
chance to challenge the facts of the report, they had it for 6 months.
My understanding is they came up with one factual correction which was
accepted. You hear a lot of blather in the talk show circuit now about
how the report is inaccurate. Well, the agency that least wanted to see
this report come out and most wanted to hammer at it had 6 months with
full access to all of the files and the underlying knowledge of what
was done. The best they could come up with was a single correction. So
I hope we can get past whether it was correct.
The other thing we should get past is this was a bunch of second-
armchair thinking by people who approved the program originally and
now, on reflection, want to look good. The Senate was not briefed on
this program until the public found out about it. The Senate
Intelligence Committee was not briefed on this program until the public
found out about it. The only people who were briefed on it were the
Chairs, the Chair and the Vice Chair on the House and the Senate side.
They were told strictly not to talk to anybody, not to talk to staff,
not to consult with lawyers, in some cases not even to talk with each
other. So the idea that the Senate is now having some kind of second
thoughts about this, having once approved it--part of the findings of
the report are that the Senate was misled. Not only was the Senate
misled, but it appears the executive branch was misled as well.
The point that I would like to conclude with is that when you have a
wrong, a considerable wrong that has taken place--and I think that for
an American agency to torture a human being is a very considerable
wrong--it tends to affect nearby areas. You cannot contain the wrong.
So congressional oversight was compromised in order to protect this
program. People simply were not told. When they were told, they were
given watered-down, misleading, or outright false versions.
The separation of powers has been compromised by this. A Federal
executive agency has actually used its technological skills to hack
into the files of a congressional investigative committee. That has to
be a first in this country's history. A subject of a congressional
investigation was allowed to file a criminal referral with the
Department of Justice against members of the investigative committee's
staff. That, I believe, is a first in the history of separation-of-
powers offenses in this country.
The integrity of reporting not only through congressional oversight,
but up into the executive branch, appears to have been compromised to
protect this program with information that the government already knew,
from legitimate, proper, professional interrogation, being ascribed to
the torture program. You can line up the timeline. You can see that the
information was disclosed first. You can see where higher-ups in the
executive branch were told that that information was due to the torture
which occurred after the
[[Page S6434]]
information was received. That simply does not meet the test of basic
logic.
The final thing is that it compromised the integrity of the way we
look at our law. The Department of Justice and the Office of Legal
Counsel wrote opinions designed to allow and protect this program that
were so bad that they have since been withdrawn by the Department of
Justice.
The Presiding Officer is a very able and experienced lawyer. Those of
us who have been in the Department of Justice know well that the Office
of Legal Counsel stands at the pinnacle of the Department of Justice in
terms of legal talent, ability, and acumen. Many of us believe the
Department of Justice stands at the pinnacle of the American legal
profession. So those are the people who ordinarily are the best of the
best. When they write legal opinions so shoddy that they have to be
withdrawn, when they overlook and fail to even address the U.S. Circuit
Court decisions that describe waterboarding as torture when they are
answering the question, is waterboarding torture, that is shoddy legal
work.
When I first got a look at this and came to the Senate floor to speak
about it, I described it as ``fire the associate'' quality legal work.
That is what we got from the very top of the Department of Justice. It
is not because there was a lack of talent there. It is because things
were bent and twisted to support this program. So it is very important
that the truth just came out.
I am very glad this has happened. It is a sad day in many respects
because these are hard truths. These are hard facts to have to face.
But we are better off as a country if we face hard truths and hard
facts.
I will close by saying this. I have traveled all over that theater
looking at the way our Central Intelligence Agency operates and the way
our other covert operations operate. I am extremely proud of what our
intelligence services do. I am incredibly impressed by the courage and
the talent of the young officers who go overseas into often very
difficult and dangerous situations and do a brilliant job. In many
respects, it is for them that I think this report needs to be out. It
needs to be known that this was not the whole department, that there
are many officers who had nothing to do with it and would want nothing
to do with it and knew better. There were many people who were
professionals in interrogation who knew how amateurish this was. It was
done by a bunch of contractors, basically.
So I think we should be well aware, as we reflect on this, of their
courage and of the sacrifice and of the ability and of the discipline
of the young men and women who put themselves in harm's way to make
sure that this country has the information and the intelligence it
needs to succeed in the world. I am proud of them.
I am also proud of the Intelligence Committee and our staffs who
worked so hard to perform this extraordinary service.
I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call
be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6443-S6444]
SSCI STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I would like to personally commend Senator
Feinstein for releasing this report today. We have all heard the
Justice Louis Brandeis quote that ``sunlight is the best disinfectant''
but occasionally we need a real world reminder. Today, Senator
Feinstein and the members and staff of the Intelligence Committee have
provided that. The findings of this report are truly remarkable, laying
bare that the CIA interrogation program was simultaneously far more
brutal and far less effective than previously claimed.
This 600-page report is long overdue and makes clear that the CIA's
so-called ``enhanced interrogation techniques'' failed to produce any
otherwise unavailable intelligence that saved lives. At no time were
these coercive interrogation techniques effective.
But more critically, this report makes clear to all Americans that
what took place was not in keeping with our ideals as a nation. We have
no greater duty than to protect the American people and our national
security. But the single best way to do that is--and always has been--
to do that in a manner consistent with our laws and our traditions.
Horrific and torturous practices are explicitly prohibited and are
never necessary. I thank Senator Feinstein, Senator Udall and other
members of the committee for the months and years they have committed
to making this release a reality.
Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I rise today to speak on the release of
the declassified Senate Select Intelligence Committee report on the
CIA's past rendition, detention and interrogation practices.
As a longtime member of the committee, I strongly support today's
release of the declassified Executive Summary, Findings, Conclusions
and Additional and Minority Views of the committee's report. With the
release of this report, the American people finally have the
information they need to understand the CIA's interrogation practices
that spanned 2001 through 2009, when President Obama put an end to the
Bush-era program.
The CIA's practices went against our values as Americans and damaged
America's global reputation. The committee's report shows not only that
torture did not extract the ``otherwise unavailable'' intelligence that
some CIA officials claimed, it did not work as a policy or in practice.
I have consistently opposed the repugnance, legality and efficacy of
torture. I supported FBI Director Robert Mueller's directive saying FBI
agents may not participate in torture. I have repeatedly and publicly
expressed my frustration about being lied to and manipulated by some
CIA officials over many years. As I said during the Intelligence
Committee's hearing confirming John Brennan as CIA Director, ``I'm
going to be blunt and this will be no surprise to you, sir--but I've
been on this Committee for more than 10 years, and with the exception
of Mr. Panetta, I feel I've been jerked around by every CIA Director.''
My views against torture have been consistent with those of Senator
John McCain, whose stance against torture is particularly compelling
given his own experiences as a prisoner of war. I have also supported
the use of interrogation techniques as laid out in the Army Field
Manual and have decried the use of contractors by the CIA in the
torture of detainees.
Some people have raised concerns about the timing of the release of
this report and that our enemies could use it as a pretext for
violence. Long before the release of this report, however, terrorist
groups made their violent intentions towards America clear. They hate
America and our freedoms. They use violence for the sake of violence.
No public action is without risks, whether by President or Congress,
but we also risk who we are as Americans by suppressing the facts in
this report.
I would like to reiterate that this report was reviewed and redacted
in conjunction with the CIA and White House, and the Director of
National Intelligence approved its declassification. It was a difficult
process that took over a year, but we finally got to a place where the
narrative of the report was adequately preserved while ensuring that
CIA personnel and operations were not compromised. The DNI weighed the
risks and ultimately certified the declassification of the report.
To be clear, my support for this report in no way diminishes my
respect for the men and women of the CIA, who are faithfully and
legally doing their duties. The CIA's intelligence professionals put
their lives at risk for our country. They deserve our support and
respect.
I would like to thank Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman
Dianne Feinstein for her leadership, as well as my committee colleagues
from both sides of the aisle who supported this investigation.
Throughout the frustrating and sometimes contentious process of
producing this report, we never gave up on pursuing the truth. Thanks
also to the committee staff who worked tirelessly on this report at
great sacrifice to themselves and their families.
This report sheds light on a complicated episode in America's
history, but it is also a testament to the value of never giving up on
the search for truth and accountability. I hope that future generations
will read it, study it, learn from it and make sure that torture is
never again used by the U.S. government.
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