US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf

by uptown • 12 years ago

879 490 12 years ago

intelligence.senate.gov

sbierwagen• 12 years ago

I didn't know this was actually going to get declassified! Apparently it's a legit release, not a leak: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2014/12/08/...

lotharbot9• 12 years ago

the first paragraph makes it clear:

"On April 3, 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted to send the Findings and Conclusions and the Executive Summary of its final Study on the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program to the President for declassification and subsequent public release"...

EDIT: also the fact that it's stamped "Unclassified" everywhere. If it was stamped as still classified and had been leaked, anyone with a clearance would risk losing it by reading the file.

phkahler• 12 years ago

Wait what? >>EDIT: also the fact that it's stamped "Unclassified" everywhere. If it was stamped as still classified and had been leaked, anyone with a clearance would risk losing it by reading the file.

So a person with clearance can't read a leaked classified document? I'm confused, more explanation please ;-) This IS sounding vaguely familiar in some way, but I don't get it.

EDIT: Thanks for all the replies. Also, I find it interesting how many people here on HN are up to snuff on security clearance issues and ready to answer this question. 5 informative answers in 30 minutes!

kyleblarson• 12 years ago

I'm pleasantly surprised too. Next on my wish list is for the Nobel Committee to rescind their Obama peace prize. Fingers crossed...

nraynaud4• 12 years ago

he stopped it.

ProAm2• 12 years ago

This is horrific. Just reading the findings and conclusions section is astounding. Embarrassing and shameful day for the USA.

addicted2• 12 years ago

I am pretty sure today isn't the shameful day.

ProAm2• 12 years ago

I'm pretty ashamed today as a US citizen, but I get what you are saying. Sad thing is I bet we are still doing this.

andyjohnson02• 12 years ago

(Page 56) Specifically, the interrogation techniques that went unreported in CIA cables included standing sleep deprivation in which a detainee's arms were shackled above his head, nudity, dietary manipulation, exposure to cold temperatures, cold showers, "rough takedowns," and, in at least two instances, the use of mock executions

Mock executions...

ep1032• 12 years ago

I don't see any section called findings and conclusions

lotharbot9• 12 years ago

page 9 of the pdf.

nraynaud4• 12 years ago

I am not an American, but I have one specific positive point to say about that: generally the only way to get a country to acknowledge the horror it did is to invade it and trial the leaders (Germany WWII: trial, Iraq against kurds: trial, France Vichy: nothing substantial, France colonial wars: amnesty, USSR: nothing, Yugoslavia: trial, without real invasion). In this instance, nobody is in court (if we ignore Poland), but at least there is some admission.

pmr_• 12 years ago

It is easy to forget that this is just a report and up to this point it hasn't had any real consequences yet. If this will ever lead to anything (be it criminal charges, convictions or change in policy) is still open.

theandrewbailey• 12 years ago

If anyone has senators on the Intelligence Committee (like Feinstein D-CA), write or call your senator and tell them that they made the right choice.

Members: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/memberscurrent.html

mikeyouse• 12 years ago

Not all members of the committee deserve your appreciation..

The 6,000-page report was researched and written by Democratic staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee between 2009 and 2013 after committee Republicans chose not to participate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/us/politics/q-and-a-about-...

ad_hominem2• 12 years ago

Feinstein has chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee since 2009. Her job over the past 5 years in this role was supposed to be oversight of these intelligence agencies.

Fact is until this release she has been a staunch defender of the existing intelligence programs and the status quo among NSA, White House, and CIA. She's exactly the type of person you do not want chairing this committee. Unfortunately when Edward Snowden stepped up and did her job for her (without the privilege of legislative immunity), she called it "an act of treason."[1]

In my opinion if the CIA hadn't been caught spying on her committee's computers she wouldn't have released this report at all. It's an act of retribution in my cynical opinion.

That said, props to her for releasing the executive summary[2] of the report.

[1] http://thehill.com/policy/defense/304573-sen-feinstein-snowd... [2]: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/02/x-things-keep-...

DominikD• 12 years ago

AFAIK Susan Collins did participate. See here:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/09/live-coverage-...

"Given the authors – Committee Democrats along with (...) Susan Collins (R)"

Loughla3• 12 years ago

Why do they insist on saying 'enhanced interrogation technique' instead of torture? Even when it obviously means torture: "Another senior CIA officer stated that COBALT was itself an enhanced interrogation technique."

When talking about a physical place. That is so blatant word replacement that I find it hard to take it seriously.

mladenkovacevic• 12 years ago

I think one of the conditions for the release of this report was to erase any mention of the word "torture".

lotharbot9• 12 years ago

The word "torture" is in the document. I happened to just read it in the middle of page 12 (conclusion #5).

fit2rule2• 12 years ago

Why do they insist on saying 'enhanced interrogation technique' instead of torture?

Because there is an 'unenhanced interrogation technique' that is almost but not quite torture.

Never forget that beneath the violation of human rights is a desire to destroy. Calling something 'enhanced' is just another way of saying 'we forked you'.

colinbartlett• 12 years ago

I think you already know the answer to this.

They do this for the same reason that when cops shoot civilians they don't say "Then Officer Smith shot the assailant". They say "Then there was an officer-involved shooting.": To use language as a tool to manipulate the viewpoint of the public.

rqebmm5• 12 years ago

except, "Officer Smith shot the assailant" is more manipulative of the listener's viewpoint than the actor-neutral phrasing "there was a shooting and Officer Smith was involved"

r0h1n• 12 years ago

"...Language can be used politically to deceive and manipulate people, leading to a society in which the people unquestioningly obey their government and mindlessly accept all propaganda as reality. Language becomes a mind-control tool, with the ultimate goal being the destruction of will and imagination." - On George Orwell's 1984.

[1] http://www.berkes.ca/archive/berkes_1984_language.html

addicted2• 12 years ago

This is probably why:

"While the Office of Legal Counsel found otherwise between 2002 and 2007, it is my personal conclusion that, under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured."

downandout• 12 years ago

In her introductory letter, Feinstein said it: "...it is my personal conclusion that, under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured." (page 4)

DevX101• 12 years ago

"You can't be afraid of words that speak the truth. I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't like words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms or euphemistic language. And American english is loaded with euphemisms. Because Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent a kind of a soft language to protect themselves from it. And it gets worse with every generation. For some reason it just keeps getting worse." - George Carlin

Here's an amusing and insightful video of Carlin dissecting the language behind Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuEQixrBKCc

The U.S. military seems particularly prone to this habit of using euphemisms to mask reality.

ericksonjon• 12 years ago

George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language" covers this subject well.

"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them."

Full Essay: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

anigbrowl8• 12 years ago

As a European I think this has deepcultural roots, probably in religion. I'm struck by the way many elecators don't go to the 13th floor, or the 13th in a series of numbered streets is often called something else (eg in SF you have 12th Avenue, Funston Avenue, 14th Avenue...). People prefer to say someone 'passed' (presumably to the afterlife) rather than that they 'died'. And of course there's no swearing on TV - although this only applies to American swear words, it's OK to use words that are considered quite rude in English or Australia.

I have a theory that this is part of the American fondness for TV shows featuring English detectives (Elementary, Forever, Constantine and just about every mystery show on PBS): by speaking the same language but coming from a quite different cultural context, they're able to engage in narrative truth-seeking because of their obliviousness to or disregard for implicit American cultural mores.

maxerickson• 12 years ago

One reason to do it is to just set aside the language debate and get on with talking about the actions taken.

So "These things you did are wrong, I don't care what you want to call them or who said they were legal." The legal debate has important implications for lots of people, but the fine details of it aren't very interesting to the moral debate.

pseudometa• 12 years ago

The trouble is that legality is all about language and definitions.

spacefight5• 12 years ago

It's because they stick to their narrative. PR speak.

uxp• 12 years ago

Torture is a loaded word that directly implies guilt, where as "enhanced interrogation" is a fairly neutral term. Despite the reports narrative of pointing out all the failures of the CIA in allowing these techniques to be performed, it can't just say "The CIA is a bunch of jackasses who tortured some folks". It needs to be objective to be taken seriously.

dragonwriter18• 12 years ago

Why do they insist on saying 'enhanced interrogation technique' instead of torture?

"Enhanced interrogation technique" is an uncontroversial, accurate factual description. "Torture" is a conclusion of law applied to the facts that, while there is overwhelming reason to accept that the conclusion is valid for the program as a whole, and many of the specific instances in particular, does not necessarily apply to all of everything that is under the label "enhanced interrogation techniques", and is, in any case, not a legal conclusion that the Committee reached (though the Chair of the Committee, Senator Feinstein, in her introduction to the release, emphatically and directly states as her personal conclusion both that the program involved "torture", and that it involved "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment (both terms being significant in regard to grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 (including Common Article 3 of the Conventions, which applies to conflict that is not between states-parties to the convention) [0] and the manner in which grave breaches of the Conventions are incorporation into US criminal law as war crimes under 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2441 [1].)

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions#Grave_breach...

[1] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2441

ilyagr• 12 years ago

"Enhanced interrogation technique" is an uncontroversial, accurate factual description.

Such language exists only to obscure the meaning. How exactly do you distinguish an "enhanced" interrogation technique from merely an interrogation technique? Is there any better criterion than saying that an interrogation technique is "enchanced" if it involves torture?

Orwell has a nice essay about this: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

UPDATED: I can't reference Orwell and start sentences with "In my opinion..." :)

sesutton• 12 years ago

"Torture" isn't just a crime it's also a word that's been around for centuries that is used to describe the kind of things described in the report. People who want to avoid it do so because its a powerful and emotive word. Describing it as "enhanced interrogation techniques" is just a euphemism to make it seem more palatable because everyone agrees "torture" is wrong but who even knows what an "enhanced interrogation technique" is?

robin_reala• 12 years ago

‘Enhanced’ is factual here? How about ‘Damaging interrogation technique’? That’s certainly more factual than ‘enhanced’.

Cushman3• 12 years ago

Are we noticing the irony of using the term "uncontroversial" to answer controversy?

anigbrowl8• 12 years ago

"Enhanced interrogation technique" is an uncontroversial, accurate factual description.

I disagree. 'Enhanced' certainly refers to intensification or increase, but also has strongly positive associations. If you experienced two injuries in a row you wouldn't normally say that the second one had 'enhanced your pain experience' - if you did people would assume you were a masochist of some sort. The measure of interrogation is surely in the quality of results it yields; if some technique actually results in a decrease in the quality of intelligence then I'd say it's a degraded interrogation technique.

To the extent that you want a neutral description of an action whose efficacy is unknown, you could say 'aggressive interrogation technique' or 'intensified interrogation technique' or any number of other words. Just because 'enhanced' can be read to mean intensified or increased without necessarily being better does mean it is commonly understood to mean that; when you're choosing terms to describe something to the public - and especially when you're choosing words for their referential rather than explanatory power - that lowest common denominator of meaning is the one that matters.

I appreciate the fine legal distinction that you're drawing here in the context of war crimes and so forth, but I suggest to you that phrases like 'enhanced interrogation technique' are actually part of the problem - deliberate euphemisms chosen primarily for their anodyne qualities.

jeangenie2• 12 years ago

uncontroversial, accurate factual description.

Are you so obsessed with minutiae of definitions that you are unable to see that both terms describe reprehensible acts performed by people against other people?

ryanmarsh2• 12 years ago

The media is saying the methods were "far more brutal" than previously thought, which is a gross understatement.

nolok• 12 years ago

Because torture dungeon doesn't exactly sound nice

jstalin• 12 years ago

Just like murdering jews was called a "resettlement operation." To sanitize the language.

binarymax• 12 years ago

"enhanced interrogation techniques"

I hate this bullshit language. Just use the real word: Torture.

icpmacdo2• 12 years ago

From the section "The Committee makes the following findings and conclusions:" on page 9 number 10 is interesting "#10: The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques." I have assumed that's the case with many of their operations, are there more public accounts of them doing this?

secfirstmd2• 12 years ago

Glad that it's released but years too late.

The idea that policy-makers did not know what was going on is ridiculous. The reality is many did not want to know and where more concerned about the post 9/11 political environment instead of standing up for what was right.

fnordfnordfnord3• 12 years ago

Local and national news TV programs have been going on for days about how all of our embassies are on "High Alert" in anticipation of violence directed at them/us on the basis of what's in the report. I take that by itself as an admission that the government's conduct has been what should be considered unacceptable, and is probably only "lawful" in the most meaningless sense of the word (if at all).

exelius3• 12 years ago

Rightfully so. People should be upset. We let a sense of urgency take over our moral compass. Which was the completely wrong way to look at this conflict anyway: we had no need to be that urgent given that our resources were (and still are) effectively inexhaustible. We got bad intelligence, we made a lot of enemies, and we lost the moral high ground that the US had worked hard to rebuild after Vietnam. The failure happened at the top: Bush (presumably guided by Cheney and the neo-con "long war" doctrine) chose to ignore decades of intelligence research showing that torture leads to bad intel. Because the failure happened at the top, nobody will pay for it.

Had we done things the right (slow) way, we would have a lot more friends in the region. Because the long, slow way of intelligence gathering involves building trust and developing friendship with people. But the American public doesn't have the patience for long peacekeeping missions like that, and the international community doesn't either.

There are so many layers of secret courts and classified legal opinions that it's hard to say the US has much rule of law anymore. People have lost faith in the legal system much the same as they have lost faith in our legislative system. All that's left is the executive branch, which leaves us dangerously at risk of a dictator taking over if we elect the wrong person, because the other two branches of government are too weak to stop him. I hate to get all tinfoil-hat, but it doesn't seem too far-fetched anymore.

cyorir3• 12 years ago

"we would have more friends in the region"

This seems to be thrown around a lot. You hear things like, "if we didn't go into Iraq/Afghanistan, we would have more friends in the region," "if we didn't prop up Mubarak or the Saudis or someone else, we would have more friends in the region," "if we gave more support to the Palestinians, we would have more friends in the region."

I think this is the wrong way to think about our policy. We currently have a set of "friends" in the region; Israel, Saudi, etc. The things we do will always upset a portion of the population, but you will also have some who support those actions (foreign policy has not all been a shambles, which is why we retain regional allies in spite of the things that have happened over the past two decades).

Changing your actions will never guarantee that you will make more friends, because in making some friends we would lose others. By catering to the progressive populations in the Middle East, you isolate the conservative populations, and vice versa. Rapprochement with Iran, as an example, may seem like a fine idea, but the mere prospect has Israel and the Saudis concerned. So changing policy cannot achieve "more friends." What we can do is choose who we want to be friends with carefully, and let that guide our policy.

revelation• 12 years ago

Best part is page 403:

"most of them [CIA personnel] do not know that when the wpost/ny times quotes 'senior intel official,' it's us... authorized and directed by opa [Office of Public Affairs]."

Of course everyone with half a brain knows this, it's funny 1) CIA personnel don't and 2) the WPost and NYT continue this practice of citing anonymous sources that are in reality public speakers, giving a carefully designed statement.

fit2rule2• 12 years ago

This is long overdue, and pardon my jade, but there is nothing in here that is at all a surprise. The only news in this release is that the government itself is finally recognizing what civil society has known for years: as soon as you put government and psychologists together, you have trouble.

ZanyProgrammer3• 12 years ago

Well, medical personnel in general-when you add them to the apparatus of interrogation, bad things happen.

rdtsc2• 12 years ago

Interrogation techniques such as slaps and "wallings" (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity. Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an "an open, non-threatening approach," or that interrogations began with the "least coercive technique possible" and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary.
The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting. Abu Zubaydah, for example, became "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth." Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad as evolving into a "series of near drownings.
Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads. At least five detainees experienced disturbing hallucinations during prolonged sleep deprivation and, in at least two of those cases, the CIA nonetheless continued the sleep deprivation.
Contrary to CIA representations to the Department of Justice, the CIA instructed personnel that the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah would take "precedence" over his medical care, resulting in the deterioration of a bullet wound Abu Zubaydah incurred during his capture.
CIA officers also threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families— to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to "cut [a detainee's] mother's throat."

The list goes on.

I have no words. This stuff would make Gestapo, KGB and Stasi proud. I can only hope more people read this report. Worse imaginable crimes are committed in the heat of passion or because of madness. Those are scary. What is more scary to me is cold institutionalized, calculated, torture, which is what this is.

Not sure who said, maybe it was Slavoj Zizek, about how if we are even debating "is torture right or what advantages it might have" we have already lost. Torture should be like rape. Anyone suggesting debating if rape is acceptable should be slapped on the head and considered an idiot. Torture should be the same in any civilized country. We are not only debating it, we have also done it, we have institutionalized it, and make no mistake, Fox and the like will also be debating its "benefits and how it saved Americans' lives".

sliverstorm3• 12 years ago

Some of these things are clearly off the deep end. But some of them, especially threats, seem like pretty basic/standard interrogation...

There are many techniques, but it seems like we have forgotten it is fundamentally manipulative and abusive. I mean, we are surprised to find that threats are used? What?

rqebmm5• 12 years ago

It's been shown that torture is among the least effective way of extracting information from unwilling informants.

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/an_fbi_interrogator_on_the_...

codezero3• 12 years ago

It depends on what you define as a prisoner, too.

dragonwriter18• 12 years ago

I mean, we are surprised to find that threats are used?

We are, if not surprised, rightfully offended that our government does not obey its own laws, which define and punish torture -- acts "intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control", where "severe physical or mental pain or suffering" is defined as:

---[quote]---

(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;

(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;

(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality; and

---[end quote]--- (18 USC Sec. 2340)

(And its worth noting that this interpretation enshrined into law has often been criticized itself as an attempt to minimize the scope of US limitations on torture and for the government to shirk obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by limiting the understanding of torture to something much narrower than the international understanding underlying the convention, so that can enhanced the degree to which it is disturbing that having narrowed the definition of torture, the government still isn't serious about combatting it, or even just not actively engaging in it, under the narrowed definition.)

leroy_masochist3• 12 years ago

I wouldn't say that any of these techniques are "basic/standard", and I used to work in the field.

You can get plenty of information out of someone without laying a finger on them.

In my opinion the question is the extent to which it's OK to play with people's psychology through isolation and misinformation, while still giving them 3 hots and a cot. The important thing to note here is that you can still damage people this way if you take it too far; solitary makes people go crazy especially when they're being fed false info about what's going on outside the walls.

Then again, these guys did not get rolled up for signing too loud in church. They have valuable intel in their heads. We're not going to beat it out of them, but how far are we willing to go? Should they get the same rights and protections as suspects in the US judicial system? This is the conversation we should be having in my opinion.

grecy2• 12 years ago

I wonder when the UN will stand up and impose trade bans on the US for such deeds.

tormeh9• 12 years ago

The UN does not impose trade bans. You know why the Secretary General, the UN's leader, is called that? Because he is a secretary for the people who actually have power, the leaders of nation-states.

GFK_of_xmaspast• 12 years ago

The US has veto power in the UN.

zghst7• 12 years ago

You think the US is alone in torture? This is child's play compared to what happens in China or Russia. You are mistaken if the US is the only one.

willscott• 12 years ago

The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. For me, that's hope that we're still in a position to learn from our wrongs, and that the checks-and-balances are still somewhat in-tact.

Spearchucker2• 12 years ago

There is no "saving grace".

Saying sorry afterwards doesn't do anything for those wronged. Admission doesn't take away pain, humiliation and fear.

tdees40• 12 years ago

Who has said sorry? Cheney? Bush? Rice? The people who put this system into place continue to defend it and have suffered no consequences.

bradleyjg• 12 years ago

We haven't apologized, we haven't made restitution, and we sure as heck haven't prosecuted the guilty (as required by the convention against torture). I'm struggling to see any saving grace.

dragonwriter18• 12 years ago

The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this.

"The country" doesn't admit that "the country" did this. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence "admits" that the Central Intelligence Agency did this, while at the same time insulating everyone else -- even in the Executive Branch -- from involvement, based on "the CIA was lying to everyone, including the White House, who totally didn't mean for this to happen."

For me, that's hope that we're still in a position to learn from our wrongs, and that the checks-and-balances are still somewhat in-tact.

Checks and balances aren't admitting after the fact that actions which meet the definition of torture and war crimes in both US domestic law and international law which the US has treaty-based obligations to uphold occurred (while, except for the "personal opinion" of the chair in the introduction, not actually admitting the legal conclusions demanded by those facts), checks-and-balances is actually imposing some accountability on the perpetrators of those crimes.

AFAICT, there are no "checks-and-balances" in evidence yet.

Someone12344• 12 years ago

Until the next 9/11 or Pearl Habour and then everyone just looks the other way for the next ten years.

Japanese internment is still rarely talked about and in some states rarely taught in schools(!).

DanBC9• 12 years ago

It took a long time for the torture to be officially recognised -- we've had a lot of denial until now.

And even now there will be people who say that this was too much, but a little bit of torture is necessary.

Just look at what people were saying a out water boarding - "it's not really torture".

How many detainees are still held without trial?

Nelson69• 12 years ago

It's a step... It's worth something but it's not like there wasn't a ton of resistance to it.

The question on my mind, were their CIA operatives that refused to comply with orders? Take the various police brutality cases, what's lost in the echochamber about it all is that these guys volunteer to be police, nobody is forced to, some of them want to carry guns, that really changes the situation a bit when an unarmed person ends up dead. The CIA has the same problem here, I know there are people in the CIA that "want to kick some terrorist ass." I'd feel better if there were some outspoken CIA operatives who were coming out saying that they refused to take part. If not, it's not just an ugly stain but the whole organization is broken, they have no respect for law..

coldtea3• 12 years ago

The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this.

It's mostly able to admit it because nothing will change, that is: such exposes are inconsequential.

If those kind of reports could change things, they wouldn't happen at all.

This would end with a few questions, some pats in the back, and business as usual.

im2w1l• 12 years ago

That's like a perfect example of selection bias. The programs you haven't heard about... well you haven't even heard about them.

tripzilch2• 12 years ago

The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this.

Pft. You're not getting off that easy.

The "saving grace" for Germany was going to international trial for the crimes committed, something the US actively refuses to do, AND hanging their heads in collective national shame for the atrocities they allowed happen in their name, scared shitless what a country is capable of when not kept in check by its people, fearing and strongly dismissing anything remotely reeking like nazism, even up to the point of partially giving up their own freedom of speech, ever since. I don't see the US doing anything similar any time soon. "It's our FREEDOMS! We must have our FREEDOMS!"

Sorry I'm just really angry and sad.

mabbo• 12 years ago

I recently read 'When Hell Was in Session', the self-written account of a pilot imprisoned during the Vietnam war.

Based on these descriptions of techniques, I suspect that the CIA officers responsible for this have also read the same book.

cryoshon5• 12 years ago

The torture techniques they're using/have used/pretended to have stopped using but definitely did not have been known and used for decades; read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_and_CIA_interrogation... .

A quote of a quote: "The Baltimore Sun reported that, former Battalion 3-16 member Jose Barrera said he was taught interrogation methods by U.S. instructors in 1983, used this technique: "The first thing we would say is that we know your mother, your younger brother. And better you cooperate, because if you don't, we're going to bring them in and rape them and torture them and kill them."

In summary, not only does the CIA torture, it exports the vast knowledge of torture that it has so that other people (usually horrid regimes) can torture just as effectively.

The USA has a long, disgusting, and utterly unforgiveable history of practicing and teaching torture. The latest "war on terror" was yet another excuse for the endless parade of terrorism which the CIA inflicts on people.

You say that this stuff would make the Gestapo, KGB, and Stasi proud. Of course it would; the CIA is one of their classmates, and always has been.

aragot• 12 years ago

Do we have figures about how many people have been tortured? Even if 1 is too much for me, many people think in terms of "It's ok because it's a remote risk".

quizotic• 12 years ago

I'm in total agreement with your sentiment and those (so far) in this thread. But I want to question the pretext of the interrogations: the assumption that Americans will support any action that keeps America safe, the "safety first" assumption.

While the importance of safety is reflected in bulk of our public discretionary expenditures, Americans have other values. Americans value liberty. Americans value humanity. Many value these above safety (e.g. N.H. state motto). Sadly most people I know choose safety first and close their eyes to the corollaries, which leads us to where we are now.

mercurial3• 12 years ago

Even the "safety first" argument, from the summary I read of the report, doesn't hold, since the value of intelligence gained by torture is clearly debatable. So it's both cruel and inefficient.

user243• 12 years ago

The list goes on.

It sure does.

At DETENTION SITE COBALT, detainees were often held down, naked, on a tarp on the floor, with the tarp pulled up around them to form a makeshift tub, while cold or refrigerated water was poured on them. Others were hosed down repeatedly while they were shackled naked, in the standing sleep deprivation position. These same detainees were subsequently placed in rooms with temperatures ranging from 59 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
two detainees that each had a broken foot were also subjected to walling, stress positions, and cramped confinement, despite the note in their interrogation plans that these specific enhanced interrogation techniques were not requested because of the medical condition of the detainees.
CIA records indicate that Majid Khan cooperated with the feedings and was permitted to infuse the fluids and nutrients himself. After approximately three weeks, the CIA developed a more aggressive treatment regimen "without unnecessary conversation." Majid Khan was then subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration, which included two bottles of Ensure. Later that same day, Majid Khan's "lunch tray," consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins, was "pureed" and rectally infused. Additional sessions of rectal feeding and hydration followed.

edit: And I mean those are just the emotive gut-wrenching things. Skimming the rest of it, it's filled to the brim with the CIA lying about the extent, efficacy and importance of the program. To me, that is the more worrying part. Anyone who's studied basic psychology gets taught Zimbardo and knows what happens when you run an unregulated prison. While disgusting it's not surprising.

But what is really surprising is the extent to which the CIA was willing to lie and obscure the truth even to their superiors.

Someone12344• 12 years ago

That last one is special. Add "anal rape" to the list of the CIA's torture accolades. Certainly didn't hear about THAT on the news.

icpmacdo2• 12 years ago

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST the third point, there is a second half to it that shows what he tried to do to him self after being put through that

Additional sessions of rectal feeding and hydration followed. In addition to his hunger strikes, Majid Klian engaged in acts of self-harm that included attempting to cut his wrist on two occasions, an attempt to chew into his arm at the inner elbow, an attempt to cut a vein in the top of his foot, and an attempt to cut into his skin at the elbow joint using a filed toothbrush.

Page 115

cryoshon5• 12 years ago

This is our government, and these acts are done in the name of our safety.

If you are not interested in someone torturing on your behalf, you need to speak out, and loudly.

EthanHeilman• 12 years ago

In one case, CIA abducted a mentally handicapped man who they knew to be innocent[0], for the sole purpose of recording and sending video tapes of him crying and in distress to his family members to use "as leverage"[1][2].

[0] https://twitter.com/Ethan_Heilman/status/542386688329125888/...

[1] https://twitter.com/Ethan_Heilman/status/542385586313502720/...

[2] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1376...

tosser-0015• 12 years ago

* I would never support the use of these techniques against soldiers of a legitimate state or other criminal actors.

* The perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks to me represent a completely different sort of threat than has ever been encountered - which legitimized the use of torture (though to be honest, the sorts of techniques outlined in the report don't really sound like what I would classify as "torture"; i.e., the infliction of unbearable pain with no expectation of actionable information being extracted.)

* If the techniques were in fact of no value (which the CIA disputes) then I would of course not support their continued use. I don't support the infliction of 'needless' pain or suffering. If they were providing useful information then I have no ethical or moral problem with them.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

What is different about the 9/11 attacks that legitimizes the use of torture, when you would not support it against soldiers or other criminals?

Do keep in mind that 9/11 doesn't even register on the atrocity scale when compared to what's been done by "soldiers of a legitimate state." If you would endorse torture to prevent another 9/11, why wouldn't you also endorse torture to prevent, say, another Hiroshima?

tracker1• 12 years ago

We went on to foreign soil, and abducted the prisoners in question. It's not like we found them sneaking across our borders with bombs... We have a legal declaration of war on "terror" ... all enemy combatants in such a declaration are POW, regardless of their status in a standing army.

I have a fairly flexible moral code as far as even torture is concerned... this goes beyond what I would consider appropriate in any sense of the word.

clamprecht• 12 years ago

Someone should make a demonstration video out of this, showing the various techniques used. I think that would illustrate just how insane it is.

tormeh9• 12 years ago

Zero Dark Thirty already has.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zllzOrTvXLc

anigbrowl8• 12 years ago

Not sure who said, maybe it was Slavoj Zizek, about how if we are even debating "is torture right or what advantages it might have" we have already lost.

It was, and I think his point is borne out in the fact that numerous films and TV shows have depicted torture that would formerly have been the preserve of pure villains to tools available to heroic protagonists in sufficiently urgent circumstances. Never do you see the efficacy of it questioned, or the deleterious effects on the administrator explored, or the scenario where it is erroneously applied to an innocent or where an intelligence asset is lost as a result. Deliberately or not, the fictional depiction of torture over the last decade or so has been almust uniformly ideological.

Fox and the like will also be debating its "benefits and how it saved Americans' lives"

the top headline on Fox news this morning was quoting some blowhard politician calling the release of the report 'unconscionable.' strange moral calculus in which the publication of a document is considered a more egregious offense than torturing people.

mark_l_watson• 12 years ago

I have a family member who was hooked on the TV show "24" which featured torture.

I think that it is quite possible that there is some purposeful desensitization going on.

Confusion2• 12 years ago

A relevant recent article, arguing basically that, from 3AM magazine: Saying no to Jack Bauer mainstreaming torture [1].

Google cache as 3AM magazine seems to have some troubles at the moment[2]

[1] http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/saying-no-to-jack-bauer-mains...

[2] https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:www.3a...

pkinsky• 12 years ago

Anyone suggesting debating if rape is acceptable should be slapped on the head and considered an idiot

Meanwhile, jokes about prison rape are socially acceptable & the US government refuses to do much of anything to stop it.

mikeash16• 12 years ago

Criminals are apparently considered unworthy of civil rights. Just witness how many people justify the recent high-profile police killings by pointing out that one victim had previously robbed a convenience store and another one was selling cigarettes on the black market. In many people's minds, "selling illegal cigarettes" equates to "OK to kill in the street." Given that, it's no wonder that prison conditions aren't scrutinized.

bashinator• 12 years ago

The second half of your statement is untrue. Google "prison rape reduction act" - this has resulted in a significant improvement as reported both through scientific surveys and anecdotal accounts.

gadders• 12 years ago

I have no words. This stuff would make Gestapo, KGB and Stasi proud.

Godwin's Law? As far as I know there were no mass machine-gunnings, people hanged with piano wire or actually any people tortured to death. A lot of the techniques listed are pretty much what the US (and UK) army use on their own troops as part of escape and evasion training.

dash2• 12 years ago

You are mistaken. From the report:

On November --, 2002, adetainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor died from suspected hypothermia at the facility. [camp COBALT]

jdimov3• 12 years ago

And Obama has the nerve to call beheadings "barbaric"?

random_rr2• 12 years ago

http://rectalrehydration.com/

RealGeek2• 12 years ago

Let's not forget, not all the detainees were terrorists.

US promoted a reward program in middle east asking locals to turn in anyone with ties to terrorists. All they had to do was tell a name to US military, and collect reward for every name.

Many locals turned in thousands of innocent people just to collect a reward. These people were immediately arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without any investigation. US did not even require any probably cause, evidence or investigation to detain and torture these people.

If CIA tortured George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in this way, I am sure they would confess to being an accomplice along with Osama Bin Laden in 9/11 attack.

Unfortunately, this US "war on terror" has created tens of thousands of more terrorists all over the world. It haven't made the US or World any safer, it has created a even bigger monster.

jdimov3• 12 years ago

As any war on anything is bound to do. You can't push against something and get less of it - you get more pushing right back at ya.

In this sense, US Gov is the primary cause of and is directly responsible for nearly ALL terrorist acts in the past decades, globally.

scrapcode• 12 years ago

What is your source? Both because I have always heard about the "rewards program" and am interested in reading more, and because wherever you got the information that thousands of people were ever sent to Guantanamo Bay is simply wrong [1]. I see a trend of people rehashing things about Guantanamo Bay that they've heard somewhere else and just putting it out there. It doesn't help the progressive agenda of understanding GTMO and closing it, because the information is just plain wrong.

[1] http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/gtmo-by-...

NN88• 12 years ago

No.

But A LOT of them were.

taivare• 12 years ago

A program similar to this was employed in Vietnam war , however after thousands were assassinated and killed by said,South Vietnam and the program having had diminishing returns the program was halted, they believe many innocents were turned in due to localized revenge minded regional authorities.

arh682• 12 years ago

You got that right. :|

    at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard
    ...
    included an "intellectually challenged" man whose CIA detention was 
    used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information

a3n2• 12 years ago

Torture should be like rape. Anyone suggesting debating if rape is acceptable should be slapped on the head and considered an idiot.

How do you know we haven't used rape as torture? We've already walked up to that line, with medically unnecssary anal rehydration acknowledged as a form of control.

So, we are debating the appropriateness of rape. And yes, that sickens me.

ck2• 12 years ago

BTW the two guys who researched and advised most of these techniques walked away with $80 MILLION

https://www.google.com/search?q=cia+$80+million

jcromartie• 12 years ago

We didn't do this to high-value Nazi POWs.

maroonblazer• 12 years ago

Not sure who said, maybe it was Slavoj Zizek, about how if we are even debating "is torture right or what advantages it might have" we have already lost.<

Like most of what Zizek says, this doesn't survive even the slightest scrutiny. Not that I want to be seen as "pro-torture", but to dismiss it categorically, as Zizek does, is to fail to grapple with the more general ethical conundrum of collateral damage.

Harris discusses this quite effectively[0]. Basically boiling it down to (paraphrasing) "If you're against torture then you should be against any action that results in collateral damage."

[0]http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/why-id-rather-not-speak-a...

webXL• 12 years ago

As much as I loathe the immorality and idiocy of these programs, there is no reason to lose all historical perspective.

This stuff would make Gestapo, KGB and Stasi proud.

A big difference is that those groups tortured and killed many of their own subjects for their political dissidence. In this case, the CIA tortured (albeit counterproductively) to protect its citizens, and there was a free press to uncover and help stop these programs for the most part.

pwnna• 12 years ago

In the foreword:

Reading them, it is easy to forget the context in which the program began - not that the context should serve as an excuse, but rather as a warning for the future.

Well said.

tormeh9• 12 years ago

Ooh, that's good. Here, have a comment so your citation stands out more.

ZanyProgrammer3• 12 years ago

Too bad this only covers the CIA and not the military. I was a 97E (interrogator) in the Army during both Bush administrations, who was lucky to never be deployed. I bet the military also has lots and lots of sins that need to be uncovered.

Someone12344• 12 years ago

If I may ask, were you trained in the stuff discussed in this report?

ZanyProgrammer3• 12 years ago

Nope. But then again, what goes on downrange can be very different than what goes on in the schoolhouse.

andy_ppp2• 12 years ago

An incredibly thoughtful and non provoking introduction to the document from Dianne Feinstein. This is a good thing and anything that can help America step back from her actions in future and take pause rather than extreme and counter productive measures is a good thing.

I hope some day that just like the well tested evidence that torture doesn't work it'll be shown that mass surveillance also gives next to nothing that targeted data gathering wouldn't.

Fuzzwah3• 12 years ago

Just to clarify are you using the word "her" in this section:

"America step back from her actions in future"

To mean:

"America step back from the actions of the US government in future"

andy_ppp2• 12 years ago

Just to play devils advocate, so please don't take this personally...

There are varying levels of culpability that we all share right. It's difficult to see that we are all part of the problem if we aren't engaged in trying to change it. Your statement suggests that the American government operate in a vacuum and certainly every day people aren't engaged it does seem more and more that they can do as they wish.

I'm going to go donate something to http://www.rootstrikers.org/ now.

DanBC9• 12 years ago

Yes, sometimes people use "her" to talk about a country. It is an unusual use though.

SideburnsOfDoom• 12 years ago

Some other coverage of the same report:

http://www.amnestyusa.org/news/press-releases/release-of-tor...

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/09/live-coverage-...

JumpCrisscross• 12 years ago

Moreover, CIA officers told U.S. ambassadors not to discuss the CIA program with State Department officials, preventing the ambassadors from seeking guidance on the policy implications of establishing CIA detention facilities in the countries in which they served. (#8)

I was not aware the CIA could order an ambassador from seeking the guidance of its superiors...

ceejayoz5• 12 years ago

The documents were likely classified in such a manner that the ambassador would have need-to-know clearance to read it but not the folks they wished to consult with.

themgt• 12 years ago

When the torturers give you an order, you're probably inclined to follow it.

koops• 12 years ago

Falsehood right in the forward: "the largest attack against the American homeland in our history". War of 1812?

ceejayoz5• 12 years ago

According to Wikipedia, the entire War of 1812 caused 2,200 American deaths total, let alone in a single attack.

api• 12 years ago

Per capita relative to population size it was much larger.

kiiski2• 12 years ago

I was under the impression that in the War of 1812, USA was the agressor. Wikipedia seems to also support this view. Is that not correct, or do americans just have their own differing viewpoint?

ceejayoz5• 12 years ago

It's rarely that simple, and I'm not sure what Wikipedia article you're reading. Impressment - kidnapping of American sailors into British naval service - was a pretty big issue. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origins_of_the_War_of_1812

jstrate2• 12 years ago

Read almost half of it today and nothing really surprising. Still waiting for the Taliban, Al Qaida, and IS interrogation program reports though.

Omniusaspirer2• 12 years ago

If we can't hold ourselves to a higher standard than religious terrorist groups then something is very wrong with this country.

jstrate2• 12 years ago

Can you really not make a distinction between cold shower and televised beheading/castration. I agree there is something very wrong with this country if that is the case. I've spent enough Karma today.

debacle2• 12 years ago

Fellow parents, how do you teach or plan to teach your kids about this? I was discussing this with my son last night, but I really couldn't explain to him the prejudice and fear that people use to justify these types of acts, or the "otherness" that the perpetrators try to construct around the victims in the media. It's just not something he's experienced yet. There's no way to put it into context.

ep1032• 12 years ago

That's because there wasn't any prejudice or fear that warranted this, ever. IIRC, in Dick Cheney's autobiography, he states that he was a driving force behind pushing the intelligence community to torture their detainees. And he states that he did so "because if we started torturing people, no one would call the republican party weak on terrorism." He didn't have to go that extra mile.

That was it, that was the justification. Once reports and pictures started coming out, the Murdoch press ran stories that "enhanced investigation techniques" were responsible for foiling various terror threats, despite official proclamations and studies at the time saying otherwise. And then the press claimed it was a partisan issue, because that's what they always do, without any regard to what the issue actually was.

So I'm going to go out on a limb here, and say that in my personal opinion, the only story to be heard here is that in the real world, evil is defined as actions actions taken in self-interest that harm others (Dick Cheney's actions in this story, as well as the people who obeyed those directives). That while the press made it seem like 50% of people were pro-torture, the press never, never, accurately shows the actual viewpoints of the people, not to mention how morally bankrupt and unreliable this shows the national press to be. And one last point about how many people were convinced by news reports that since these things were only being used against bad people, it was okay, and how that should be a lesson to others and the future... and how many times this has happened this exact same way in the past.

tormeh9• 12 years ago

I can't think of any good person that have ever argued that they are "tough on [x]".

twoodfin2• 12 years ago

And he states that he did so "because if we started torturing people, no one would call the republican party weak on terrorism." He didn't have to go that extra mile.

Those quotation marks really demand a citation.

tormeh9• 12 years ago

I'm only joking, but wouldn't seeing a SAW movie with them and explaining that this kind of violence is perceived as justified against certain groups suffice?

debacle2• 12 years ago

That's not really a terribly awful idea. Would probably be incredibly useful for unknowing adults, as well.

Cushman3• 12 years ago

Are you familiar with Jane Elliott's "Blue eyes/brown eyes" experiment? It's a good kind of ultra-lite introduction to racism/discrimination if you've literally never come across the concept before. (Comes up a lot in Holocaust curriculum.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQAmdZvKf6M

Though I wonder if small children aren't closer to understanding this than most of us. They're such a jumble of implicit biases at the best of times... You know that thing you're so scared of, that only comes out when you turn off the lights? Some adults grow up and stop being scared, and some adults don't.

pdkl952• 12 years ago

Elliott's experiment is one of the most impressive teaching methods I've ever seen. This is such a good way of introducing kids to discrimination and hatred, how easily it spreads, and how it affects people.

The interviews with the people that had Elliott's lesson much later when they were adults is notable - the lesson stuck with people, in life-affecting ways.

3JPLW• 12 years ago

It's been a long time, but could Seuss' The Sneeches (those with stars and those without thars) serve the purpose?

thret3• 12 years ago

For a wonderful fictional piece on the same theme, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(novel)

disposition23• 12 years ago

I was just wondering about this in relation to those who were advocating for not releasing the report at all. I fail to see any difference between this stance and telling a child to not admit their guilt of wrong doing because they will have to actually suffer the consequences of their actions.

anigbrowl8• 12 years ago

Depends how old the kid is. If he's four then all you can say is that some grown-ups were really mean to each other when they shouldn't have been. If he's a bit older, maybe you can relate it to some other questionable behavior, like why do criminals commit crimes instead of being good, or conversely why do we bother going through a trial before throwing bad people in prison or shooting them. There's a psychological theory that violence often results from the psychological distress encountered when the real does not confirm with the imaginary, but the very length of this thread shows that these things are difficult to process for adults, never mind children.

pessimist• 12 years ago

Dianne Feinstein deserves enormous credit. Fox News and Republicans are bashing her and by extension her party as traitorous as we speak. The argument that this report should be kept in secret because it endangers Americans' lives is abominable. As an American living abroad, I'm happy to see this released.

Still, I wonder about some of the side-effects of this. Instead of arresting and interrogating terrorists we kill them with drones as its less messy.

tormeh9• 12 years ago

I would rather be killed than tortured, obviously depending on the type of torture.

scott_karana• 12 years ago

It's really disappointing that she does support the NSA's extrajudicial activities, though, to the point of calling Snowden a traitor.

C'est la vie :P

sigzero2• 12 years ago

This does nothing to help my view of her.

discardorama• 12 years ago

The report didn't endanger American lives; their actions did.

dragonwriter18• 12 years ago

Still, I wonder about some of the side-effects of this. Instead of arresting and interrogating terrorists we kill them with drones as its less messy.

We were killing plenty of people in the War on Terror while the detentions and torture were going on (heck, the torture was sold in part on the basis that it was helping us find and kill people that needed killing in that war.) And some of those tortured also died as a result.

Torture and killing aren't mutually exclusive alternatives.

spacefight5• 12 years ago

> Instead of arresting and interrogating terrorists we kill them with drones as its less messy.

Less messy, less dirty, less dirty hands etc etc. Yeah right. I wonder how the drone operators sleep at night after a "successful" hit at e.g. a wedding ceromony etc.

Drone kills are still plain evil. And illegal.

chiph• 12 years ago

Look into her history. Before she was against it, she was for it.

scribu• 12 years ago

She was in favor of what, exactly?

a3n2• 12 years ago

I think a drone strike is pretty fucking messy. What a drone strike does is move the mess to a place that's easy to conceal from American citizens.

cpitman• 12 years ago

It was her job in the first place to keep this from happening. The fact that this report even needed to happen is a result of her committee's inability to provide the oversight that they are tasked with.

user243• 12 years ago

Hmm, page 291 of pdf "Collected Communications". I bet that's something to do with prism.

Amorymeltzer• 12 years ago

The document has

TOP SECRET [blackbox] NOFORN

on it. That's crossed out and UNCLASSIFIED is inserted, but what's that black box covering up? Is it another level of secret access so secret we can't know the name?

andyjohnson02• 12 years ago

On the basis of googling "top secret noforn filetype:pdf", it seems that the convention is for the redacted text to be some kind of source classification (eg. "SI" for Signals Intelligence or "COMINT" for Communication Interception.

I have no idea what it would be in the case of this report, but my guess would be that it was redacted to avoid ambiguity given that "Unclassified" is stamped next to it, rather than because the classification is itself secret.

dragonwriter18• 12 years ago

The classification is not secret, but the intelligence sources themselves likely remain classified, including the identification of the kind of sources supporting the information in the now-declassified executive summary.

Even vague descriptions of intelligence sources are often treated as more sensitive than the information derived from those sources.

hayesbh• 12 years ago

It's likely this was classified top secret and SCI (sensitive compartmentalized information). SCI compartments are classified, which is probably what was blacked out. Otherwise, it may indicate a classified partner knowledge sharing program that is classified.

throwaway-gst• 12 years ago

Perhaps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greystone_%28CIA_operation%29

AlyssaRowan• 12 years ago

Sort of. Conventionally, it's the cover name of the information compartment. If we knew what that was, since we now know what it refers to because that's unclassified, it wouldn't provide an effective cover anymore.

Of course, that's still a bit silly. The CIA insisted they redact even the initials of the countries involved. Ridiculous. Well, country R is Romania, country P is Poland. There are two others, I think Country J may well be Jordan.

I think I would probably be completely OK with this report being leaked in its unredacted form, including names: I sadly doubt there's any other way justice will ever be done and these people will answer for their crimes against humanity.

ad_hominem2• 12 years ago

Keep in mind this is just an executive summary, not the full report, and the CIA and White House were able to heavily redact it: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/02/x-things-keep-...

jgrowl• 12 years ago

Well, when do the trials begin? Remember, 'Just following orders' is not a defense.

sharkweek• 12 years ago

I do not understand how torture can be an effective tool for extracting accurate information.

If I am being tortured, I would likely be so quick to tell my captors whatever they wanted to hear to make the pain stop.

mercurial3• 12 years ago

The French 10e division parachutiste arrested and interrogated around 24,000 suspects during the battle of Algiers, often using electrical torture, rape, etc., of which an estimated 3,000 were summarily executed.

This effectively put an end to the FLN presence in Algiers. Which, I suppose, gets to show that it can be effective in some circumstances, if you are willing to show the appropriate degree of ruthlessness.

rasz_pl3• 12 years ago

French are all around great guys

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior

malloreon• 12 years ago

It is incredibly depressing how many war criminals in/formerly in the US government will get away with what they've done.

ryanmarsh2• 12 years ago

There's a table at the end with Hayden's testimony adjacent its factual refutation.

This guy will never face charges for lying to Congress.

snarfy• 12 years ago

You'll get more accurate information through tricks and false friendships than torture. There is no justification for torture. None. It's not even a good tool regardless of the morality.

stefantalpalaru• 12 years ago

There is no justification for torture. None.

- revenge

- increasing the torturer's loyalty for the organization (how many torturers are whistleblowers?)

- showing your superiors how far you are willing to go in pursuit of information

- terrorizing the enemies you haven't captured yet

- strengthening the connections with subordinate countries (Romania hosted secret torture prisons and bribes where given to officials. Who there dares to challenge the imposed economical partners or foreign policies? Or the visa requirements still in place in a country that hosts US military bases on its territory for that matter.)

jimktrains2• 12 years ago

None of those are justifications.

lotharbot9• 12 years ago

It seems to me like there are four key findings here:

(1) the CIA did some truly horrific stuff to detainees -- wallings, waterboardings, sleep deprivation, threatening their families, etc. (Specific quotes are in rdtsc's comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8723834 ).

(2) the CIA systematically lied about and hid information about what they were doing from other parts of the government -- from the Senate Intelligence Committee, the FBI, the State Department, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, US ambassadors in countries that housed detention facilities, etc.

(3) the CIA didn't provide its operatives with training in interrogation until months after the program started, didn't have facilities in place until just shortly before they took custody of their first prisoner, had very little oversight even within the CIA itself (see finding #12, page 17 of the pdf), and otherwise seemed to be flying by the seat of their pants. So they weren't even making decisions in a coherent, systematic fashion.

(4) all of this horrific, lied-about stuff... didn't even work. They weren't saving lives, and they had plenty of reason to know (before, during, and after) that the techniques wouldn't/weren't/didn't accomplish anything of value. So even firm believers in "the ends justify the means" don't have a leg to stand on here.

gcb03• 12 years ago

and even when it is public, there is still not repercussion to the people that made the bad decision.

codezero3• 12 years ago

As an exercise visit as many news outlets as you can and count how many times they use the word torture in their articles.

jonlucc• 12 years ago

I just quickly went to a few and the results are below with the sources below that

CNN 3

BBC 2

Al Jazeera 5

FoxNews 2

NBC News 3

ABC News 1

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/09/politics/cia-torture-report/in... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30401100 http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/12/9/senate-tortu... http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/12/09/senate-panel-rele... http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/cia-torture-report/doj-stan... http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/torture-report-reveals-cias-b...

codezero3• 12 years ago

bonus points for headlines :)

secfirstmd2• 12 years ago

Are Jim Mitchell & Bruce Jessen and their company "Mitchell Jessen & Associates" those redacted but mentioned in the Torture Report?

http://ow.ly/FClBo

higherpurpose2• 12 years ago

Just remember folks - this is the agency Amazon chooses to provide its services to. Vote with your wallet.

cryoshon5• 12 years ago

A few things:

The Republicans have issued a rebuttal. I assume this means they support torture. I hope this dissuades some of their remaining voter base from continuing to support them.

Clapper has issued a rebuttal, claiming that the report isn't neutral. I assume he also supports torture. Not sure that he has any credibility left after being caught on the record lying to congress, but whatever.

The White House attempted to keep this report from coming out. Obama's admission that "we tortured some folks" was hollow, and his promises regarding torture transparency have been refuted as lies. I assume that the White House supports torture, via its resistance to exposing torture. I hope this dissuades some of their voter base from continuing to support them.

Feinstein, though extremely undesirable due to her support of the NSA, has showed some balls here. In the months leading up to the release of this report, she claimed that the CIA was threatening her, so we'll see what happens. I would like it if the next big stink she makes is about the CIA's surveillance of the Senate committee.

The CIA itself has just been pinned on the record as having intentionally misled Congress (its only real oversight) for a period of nearly a decade. Additionally, the CIA has been pinned on the record as having attempted to cover up evidence that it tortured people, and then also spied on the people investigating the torture within the US government. I hope that this agency is drastically reduced by some sort of chemotherapy now that some of its crimes have come to light.

Just remember that this isn't over. Keep paying attention to who defends the CIA, and which media outlets place torture as a choice on the same level as other options. Keep paying attention to the way that the government tries to deny, scapegoat, and minimize this, and make sure to point it out wherever you see it. Finally, don't let them re-focus on the inevitable violent reprisals that will soon come. Releasing the report isn't the ultimate cause of violence against the US or its proxies, torturing people is.

Edit: It appears as though in one of the footnotes of the report there is an admission that one of the people who was tortured to death was an innocent man who was wrongly abducted.

anigbrowl8• 12 years ago

The White House attempted to keep this report from coming out.

That's inaccurate. Kerry asked for a delay in its release; as Secretary of State, responsible for US embassies around the world, it's his job to draw attention to the risk factors. All reports I've read prior to the release said that both the President and Vice President were strongly in favor of publication. Ultimately the choice to classify or declassify rests with the President.

d23• 12 years ago

Anybody got any sources on either side of the points about the current administration?

lhc-4• 12 years ago

It's also been argued that the White House really wanted to prevent the release, and reasoned that if they could prevent it from coming out until the new (republican) senate takes office, that republican congress would likely kill it entirely and let the white house claim the high ground despite actually doing the opposite. Kerry's actions certainly support that theory.

cryoshon5• 12 years ago

When you say that the President and VP were in favor of publication, that is definitely not consistent with what we've seen from Obama.

Remember when Obama blocked the release of additional Gitmo evidence because he claimed it would result in Americans being hurt? I assume the exact same logic was used here to prevent this report from coming out.

I assume Kerry's plea for a delay was a result of the CIA pressuring him to protect their assets which are embedded with embassies worldwide. The collaboration between the State Department and the CIA runs deep, like a mold with many filaments.

sd8f9iu2• 12 years ago

"The Republicans have issued a rebuttal. I assume this means they support torture."
"Clapper has issued a rebuttal, claiming that the report isn't neutral. I assume he also supports torture."
"The White House attempted to keep this report from coming out...I assume that the White House supports torture..."

Politics is a dirty, complex game. If you treat every news event as black and white like this, you will form many extremist positions very quickly. Obama, for example, banned torture via executive order when he took office. Did you cry that he was "against torture" when that came out?

disposition23• 12 years ago

This is black and white, unless you have no morals. We tortured people and now some people are defending those actions.

cryoshon5• 12 years ago

Torture is a cut and dry moral issue; inflicting pain on a person willfully for an extended period of time is not acceptable behavior, nor is this fact a matter of politics. The people/groups I listed in my original comment have placed themselves on the wrong side of this moral issue, and history will judge them harshly as such.

Obama may have issued an executive order when he entered office, but attempting to block/redact/delay this report betrays his true loyalties.

It isn't an extremist position that torture is wrong, or that the people who support/cover up torture are in the wrong. If anything, it is an extremist position that torture is a valid tactic.

kuhhk• 12 years ago

The Republicans have issued a rebuttal. I assume this means they support torture.

Stop assuming Republicans support torture.

McCain comments on the report: http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/12/09/lv-mcc...

disposition23• 12 years ago

Not trying to make this a party issue but that is 1 GOP rep who has been subjected to torture. Considering the GOP released a rebuttal to the report, I think it is a fair statement to say in turn that they are effectively supporting the use of torture by the US [1].

Edit: 1. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/republicans-dismiss-senate-tortur...

lhc-4• 12 years ago

Marco Rubio has come out in support of the actions of the CIA; who is to say he doesn't represent the party line on this issue more than McCain?

(and really, McCain is one of few Republicans who doesn't support torture because of his own background as a POW)

mcv10• 12 years ago

Is McCain's opinion shared by the rest of the Republicans? If so, then getting justice done should not be a problem. My impression is that McCain is pretty alone, though.

wtbob• 12 years ago

The Republicans have issued a rebuttal. I assume this means they support torture.
Clapper has issued a rebuttal, claiming that the report isn't neutral. I assume he also supports torture.

If I write, 'cryoshon eats babies,' and Jimbo replies, 'no he doesn't; he eats eggs, and besides he was starving,' then that doesn't mean that Jimbo supports baby-eating: it means that he doesn't believe that eating eggs is eating babies.

There is a minority report which rebuts this one, and the CIA itself have issued their own rebuttal. Now, those could be non-rebuttals entirely of the form, 'doesn't matter, it worked' or they could be rebuttals of the form, 'the worst stuff you mention never happened; the rest of it is unpleasant but legal, and effective.'

They could also be true, or false—as could this report.

hawleyal3• 12 years ago

Strong persecution and us-versus-them phrasing going on here. This is our government, our representatives, the people we elected and allow to perform these actions. We as a whole may not be as directly culpable, but we certainly are not clean of conscience. It evokes thoughts of "this happened on our watch". Even for those not residing in the USA, there is responsibility.

pknerd2• 12 years ago

Hope the report will help Americans to find the answer of Why they hate us?

zghst7• 12 years ago

This response is asinine.

What do you say to the organizations that massacre entire villages and towns in their own county, make regular suicide and car bombs to blow up crowded and high traffic places (in M.E., Russia, China), dismember their young for stealing bread or disobeying, killing colleagues for not being Muslim enough?

They have plenty of reasons to hate us, we are not like them, but it looks like they do fine in spreading destruction and agony in their home as well.

Fuzzwah3• 12 years ago

Reposted foreword: http://pastebin.com/ZJSBptaj

Because gross pdf.

szierk2• 12 years ago

How can the average person combat this? Does anyone have recommendations for organizations to support? I'm honestly at a complete loss for where to start.

edit: removed a comment on this article getting flagged.

twoodfin2• 12 years ago

Wonder who we have to thank for that.

As we're not supposed to comment as to why we flagged a particular article, it's probably not productive to complain about flagging in the comments.

szierk2• 12 years ago

You're right. I've edited the comment to reflect that.

lotharbot9• 12 years ago

There are probably two factors at play here:

(1) somewhat counterintuitively, HN penalizes stories that have a large number of comments compared to votes. It's typical for a post with ~300 upvotes to have under 100 comments; you can see several examples on the front page right now. This thread has nearly 200 comments. Having significantly more than the expected number of comments, and especially deep comment threads, is often an indicator of a flamewar, so the algorithm penalizes stories that meet that pattern.

(2) flags. Not "omg I support torture" flags, but "this isn't hacker news, it's mainstream media" flags. This story is very much on the bubble for me -- it's obviously something being covered in mainstream news, but this is a link to the actual report and people are discussing the findings in detail. (I have not flagged it, but I understand why others would.)

[EDIT: this comment was posted in response to a since-removed question about this story's position on the front page. I have left it because I believe the information is helpful.]

MisterMashable• 12 years ago

In 2004 a whole layer of top CIA officials were forced out. Defense Secretary Colin Powell resigned. Dick Cheney purged the CIA of personnel who might have served as some counterbalancing force. Once the good and reasonable people were gone (fired, forced to resign etc.), the CIA ran amok. If we look honestly at what went wrong, it's pretty clear how to fix it. Fire all the people that lied to Congress and broke the law by employing prohibited techniques. Prosecute them to the fullest extent possible. Simultaneously, conduct an internal review of all the former CIA fired for political reasons and hire them back. These are the people America desperately needs to repair our broken system. The CIA is desperately in need of reform. The world is too dangerous and complicated a place to have the wrong people running our foreign policy. If they lied about torture, what else are they lying to Congress about? Clearly it isn't the solution to every problem but it would be the best possible, immediately actionable step. Bring back the good patriot Americans who were fired from their job with the intelligence agencies for political reasons. Get rid of and prosecute the bad apples.

dragonwriter18• 12 years ago

Colin Powell was never Defense Secretary, he was Secretary of State. In any case, as the report notes, the CIA was already running amok before 2004, so any purge then was not a necessary prerequisite for the CIA to run amok, though it might have removed a constraint that would have reigned things in sooner.

eslaught• 12 years ago

I think we should be a little more amazed that this report is available at all---an through internal channels at that. While we're all bashing the CIA for what they've done (and are right to do so), we should also appreciate that this is also at some level an instance of government working "properly": one branch of government audited another branch, found that there had been misconduct, and was able to publish a report showing what had been done wrong. This is not the end of the road---we still need to fix the problems and prevent them from happening again---but publicly acknowledging the problems is a massive first step.

Before we all jump on the bandwagon to paint the USA as the next major authoritarian regime, ask yourselves the question: would this report ever get published in North Korea, China, or the former USSR? Frankly, I can't imagine it. This report proves that the USA might not be better than any of those countries with regard to these events... but at least it appears that the USA has the guts to acknowledge publicly its mistakes.

lhc-4• 12 years ago

Well, that's assuming that the people who did this actually consider these mistakes (they don't) and that they will be held even a little bit accountable (which looks unlikely). As it is, it's as much bragging as it is auditing: nothing bad will come to those who committed these heinous acts, and it will provide no discouragement for those who come after and have to make the decision about whether or not to torture.

shit_parade2• 12 years ago

a steam valve to relieve pressure keeps the great death machine running smoothly.

javajosh• 12 years ago

This is a really good point, and shouldn't be lost in the outrage. Of course, the outrage shouldn't be lost either, but you're right: some of our morality is salvaged by the publication of this report.

baconner• 12 years ago

Its something yes, but considering no one will be charged at all for well documented and extremely grave crimes well... Its hard to take solace in being a little better than a full on totalitarian regime.

moo• 12 years ago

It is called hypocrisy. These debates are not real, they are planned and can be shut off like a spigot.

pknerd2• 12 years ago

I am sure CIA torture report has definitely shaken average Americans.

zghst7• 12 years ago

The average American reads "torture" and moves on. America is no longer a society whose government is afraid of it, instead we prefer to be 'managed' for the sake of convenience.

arh682• 12 years ago

Classification has become a tool to protect careers, not the nation. These people all acted individually towards whatever incentives they saw desirable. Money, power over helpless detainees, I don't know. Specific people did exactly what they wanted to do. And it's not like the whole CIA was on board, but the people who disagreed can get the fuck out of the room and let the adults play torture games.

    CIA attorneys, discussing aspects of the campaign involving off-the-record 
    disclosures, cautioned against attributing the information to the CIA itself.
    One senior attorney stated that the proposed press briefing was "minimally 
    acceptable, but only if not attributed to a CIA official." The CIA attorney 
    continued: "This should be attributed to an 'official knowledgeable' about 
    the program (or some similar obfuscation), but should not be attributed to a 
    CIA or intelligence official.

    Another CIA attorney noted that the draft "makes the [legal] declaration I
    just wrote about the secrecy of the interrogation program a work of fiction.."
    CTC Legal urged that CIA leadership needed to "confront the inconsistency" 
    between CIA court declarations "about how critical it is to keep this 
    information secret" and the CIA "planning to reveal darn near the entire 
    program.

auston• 12 years ago

Is there a difference in these documents?

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy2.pdf

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy3.pdf

ilyanep• 12 years ago

The first is the executive summary of the official study. The second appears to be additional views added by individual senators on the committee. The third is a rebuttal from the Republicans on the committee.

random_rr2• 12 years ago

This is shameful... I found this website trawling around http://rectalrehydration.com/

junto• 12 years ago

let's assume a group like Occupy started to gain enough traction that they became a serious threat to the status quo. that is to say, that the current power base started to shift to a form of politics outside the current two party flip flop system the USA has today.

How long do you think it would be before those 'subversive' groups, even as non-violent, would start to receive the same treatment?

There are few of us prepared to stick our heads above the parapet. Those that do, end up fucked. I.e. Snowden, Assange and Manning.

Sometimes I dream about a people's takeover, Fight Club style, where each man on the street reminds those in power who cooks their food, who washes their clothes, who takes care of their children. A subtle collective threat en-mass to fight the power.

Then I drift back off to sleep.

   I am the People, the Mob
   Carl Sandburg, 1878 - 1967

   I am the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass.
   Do you know that all the great work of the world is 
   done through me?

   I am the workingman, the inventor, the maker of the 
   world’s food and clothes.

   I am the audience that witnesses history. The Napoleons 
   come from me and the Lincolns. They die. And then I send 
   forth more Napoleons and Lincolns.

   I am the seed ground. I am a prairie that will stand for 
   much plowing.

   Terrible storms pass over me. I forget. The best of me is 
   sucked out and wasted. I forget. Everything but Death 
   comes to me and makes me work and give up what I have. 

   And I forget.

   Sometimes I growl, shake myself and spatter a few red 
   drops for history to remember. Then—I forget.

   When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the 
   People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget 
   who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then 
   there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: 
   “The People," with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or 
   any far-off smile of derision.

   The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then.

sabfdkjwab• 12 years ago

Actually, there were already leaked plans from the FBI to assassinate Occupy members if the movement became too influential.

http://whowhatwhy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/FloridaFBIS...

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/3/25/why_did_fbi_monitor_oc...

I guess we can't let those plebeians have their way, now, can we?

rjohnk• 12 years ago

I'm surprised no one has brought up Homeland's past two episodes. It's fiction to be sure, but I think the raw emotions can be seen in the episodes. I have issues with people here being armchair ethics police.

Also, I have just skimmed the report, so may be in error, but is there any context to those tortured? If they did not share with the CIA when they asked nicely, why? Did the tortured gun down innocent civilians? Are they known to have plans for a large attack? What would you do in that situation?

I refuse to make the jump to "America the Gestapo" I refuse to make black and white "torture is wrong, always" OR "they got what's coming to them".

There is evil. There is good. We get into theological and moral implications if I go any further so I'll stop there lest I get downvoted because I believe in some old white guy with a beard.

GordonS• 12 years ago

If they did not share with the CIA when they asked nicely, why?

Maybe because they were innocent? Maybe because they just didn't know the answers? But let's brutally torture them for years anyway... just in case?

Did the tortured gun down innocent civilians?

According to the report, some of the detainees, including a mentally disabled man, were known to be innocent themselves.

Presumably there isn't any real evidence that any of them have actually done anything. Otherwise they would surely be tried in a court, rather than being brutally tortured in secret camps for years on end, with no legal counsel or so much as a shred of humanity?

If I was tortured using the utterly disgusting methods in this report, I would quickly claim to have gunned down civilians, eaten babies, or indeed whatever else I though they wanted me to say...

Honestly, reading parts of this report left me feeling nauseated. I don't understand how anyone can even consider agreeing with what these sub-human monsters have done, regardless of context. That they will get away with this, and some even profit greatly from it, further sickens me.

patrickg_zill• 12 years ago

Two thoughts:

1. The CIA hacked the Senate's computers and performed other surveillance on them. Since they were caught, it is likely that this did not shall we say, endear the CIA to the Senate.

2. Unless and until the people in the CIA that did these things, and the bosses who approved these things, face jail time, loss of government pensions, etc. I predict that nothing will change.

rsanek• 12 years ago

Check out the comparison between the Hayden testimony and what this report found -- from pg. 462 onward (~37 pages total) it's a point-by-point refutation. Language in almost all of the examples includes "This testimony is incongruent with CIA records" and even "This testimony is inaccurate".

jdimov3• 12 years ago

What is scarier: that US gov has been lying about this or that US gov genuinely doesn't know what's going on within its agencies?

delecti• 12 years ago

In all likelihood there's plenty of both going on.

raquo• 12 years ago

I hope we can all agree now that a country' ideology doesn't matter, what matters is how the power is structured. And that's not pretty.

chroma• 12 years ago

It's a shame the report is so partisan. The democrat and republican sides disagree on basic facts, such as whether torture worked in extracting information, and whether that information helped to save lives. Both sides accuse the other of cherry-picking to bolster their cause. Since the primary records are unavailable to us, there's no way to get a more trustworthy opinion on the program. The CIA's behavior is probably pretty horrible, but it's unwise to be very confident in that assessment.

Another interesting fact is that torture may work, or it may not, yet many people don't want torture to work. But think about it for a second: If torture worked, it would be an opportunity to save lives. Torturing one known criminal to extract information that could save dozens (or hundreds) of innocents is unsavory to say the least, but it's better than the alternative. (To reverse the situation, one wouldn't kill dozens of innocents to prevent the torture of a known criminal.) Simply ignoring the issue and saying, "Torture is always wrong," can lead to more death and suffering than thoughtfully considering the issue.

I'm not talking about some hypothetical ticking time bomb scenario. This can actually apply to real life. Consider collateral damage. In war, it is acceptable to accidentally kill innocent people. It is also acceptable to intentionally kill combatants. But torturing combatants to extract information that would reduce collateral damage is unacceptable. It's such a strange instance of moral blindness.

Note that this doesn't mean I would want torture to be legal even if it worked. It seems like there's a good case to be made for keeping torture illegal, since doing so would force a would-be torturer to be sure about the circumstances; so sure that they'd willingly to go to prison to save innocent people.

Edit: So far, both replies are attacking positions I do not endorse. I'm saying make torture illegal even if it works. I'm saying ticking time bomb scenarios are poor justifications for torture. But I'm also saying that torture may save lives in some circumstances. If we're willing to accept the horror of collateral damage, we should also be willing to reduce it using methods as horrific as torture.

Synaesthesia• 12 years ago

Firstly, torture doesn't work, but it's not about that.

Violence simply isn't morally legitimate ever, whether it's aggression or as a response to violence (possibly even greater violence).

Whether it's torture, murder, whatever, it doesn't matter. Doing it in the name of war or national security doesn't make a moral difference.

The ticking time bomb thing is just an excuse for this behaviour.

zghst7• 12 years ago

I disagree about violence. The animal kingdom is inherently violent. Is it socially inappropriate to use violence in most parts of Western civilization? Yes. But in other places around the world (and in some cultures and groups in the West), violent behavior is the norm. It's brutal, it has lasting effects, it's demoralizing to the victim, however it is what we are all born with.

Does that mean violence is 100% unacceptable? If it wasn't, then we would not eat meat, many sports would not be popular, they wouldn't display fights in movies, etc. As an element of evolution, violence in some form will persist and thrive in our society.

acjohnson55• 12 years ago

"Violence simply isn't morally legitimate ever, whether it's aggression or as a response to violence (possibly even greater violence)."

That requires some justification

Confusion2• 12 years ago

  The democrat and republican sides disagree on basic facts, 
  such as whether torture worked in extracting information,

That is not a 'basic fact' that any of the people involved in the report is qualified to determine from the records.

Whether torture 'works' is highly subjective. Why was certain information given? How correct was the information? How relevant was the information to preventing (further) criminal activity? And even if you could assess the upside, there is still the downside to compare to it.

Do you want to live in a country where hundreds of people may be detained for years without trial, without recourse, while being tortured, because one of them may at some point give up some information that may prevent some future criminal activity?

You say

  Torturing one known criminal to extract information that could save dozens 
  (or hundreds) of innocents is unsavory to say the least, but it's better 
  than the alternative.

but that's a false dichotomy. In actual fact you would have to torture many criminals to extract information that saves lives. And the torturing, and having the ability to torture, has a cost. How do you quantify that cost and judge it less than the lives saved? Because if you allow torture, police will use it on every criminal. If you ever get arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, you will get tortured, because you may know something about other people that were there. And they won't believe you if you say you don't know them. And it could take a while to sort that out.

tim333• 12 years ago

It's a shame the report is so partisan

Is it partisan? There's not much mention of Republicans and Democrats in the report. OK it happened under the Bush presidency but could potentially have happened otherwise.

aaronbrethorst• 12 years ago

The Republican rebuttal: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy3.pdf

and some commentary about it: http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/republicans-dismiss-senate-tortur...

brianstorms• 12 years ago

Meanwhile, legendary Silicon Valley angel Ron Conway appears to support the CIA and its torture program.

http://www.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2014/12/09/ron-conway-twee...

https://twitter.com/RonConway/status/542404171865927681

rasz_pl3• 12 years ago

Leszek Miller, prime minister of Poland at the time of US concentration camps and architect of CIA-PL deal, was interviewed couple of times since 2005 on TV. Every time he urged to "shut the fuck up about it already", to not upset "our allies", and to stop directing "terrorist" attention at our country. Thats pretty much current state of TV coverage in Poland.

"Funny coincidence": We had Andrzej Lepper, opposition leader in government of Leszek Miller, commit "suicide" in 2011. Whats so weird about that? Lepper was famous for announcing TALIBAN presence in village Klewki at the end of 2001. Klewki is 50km from Stare Kiejkuty and Szymany - locations of US concentration camp.

arca_vorago• 12 years ago

First, I would like to comment on the fact that given the current state of surveillance, I think a re-evaluation of oversight processes needs to be done. If the CIA isn't properly reporting to the White House, the NSC, and is avoiding oversight by congress, then who the fuck is managing these things? On that same note, what kind of NSC would allow that kind of movement? One that really knows whats going on and approves but doesn't want to be seen as complicit is my guess. Otherwise, the director, or more precisely, the AD, would be the main guy "in the know", but what kind of skeletons does he have and who knows them? What is the real power structure here beyond the official chain of command?

How rogue does the Company have to get before someone reigns it in? And with the current state of surveillance, how could any congressmember practically seek to do it? Between the Agency and the Company, they have dirt on them all.

My second comment is on torture itself. I'm guessing the main scapegoat is going to be the contractors pulled in post 9/11. Class 11: My Story Inside the CIA's First Post-9/11 Spy Class, is a must read for anyone interested in this factor. That being said though, as I have posited about the GOT in more general terms, I have doubts about the actual intentions of these kinds of programs in the first place.

I'll forget the pragmatic and philosophical discussion about torture effectiveness for information extraction for a moment, and just come out and say it.

This is how you create terrorists... on purpose.

Need a war? You need someone to fight. Don't have someone? Create them.

There's also the side ancillary benefit of the possibility of turning some of the radicals into doubles, who then can be used for all kinds of fun stuff. The leader of ISIS spent much time in camp Bucca. The guy responsible for the Benghazi attack also spent time in one of these kinds of facilities. Is this really the goal? Looking for good people to turn so they can be manipulated from afar (and then probably killed so they don't talk).

Really and truly, I don't think we can have this discussion properly without bringing JFK into this picture. I've spent a long time trying to understand these big picture things, and my conclusion is not one that you want to hear. Namely, that there was a slow, silent coup against the American government that was fully completed at JFKs assassination. Also, please don't forget that it was the JFK incident that led the Agency to develop the anti conspiracy plan to make the phrase "conspiracy theory" anathema to public debate and discourse.

pdkl952• 12 years ago

Even if you ignore JFK, a good case can be made that the security agencies (probably FVEY?) currently seem to have at least de facto control basically anywhere they want. Exercising that control got a lot easier - and less obvious - as technology became available. Traditional informants and enforcers sometimes get noticed, but JOIN...WHERE user.id=foo across phone location data is very hard to discover.

The key part, I think, is that COINTELPRO ended in name only. Worse, as the use of the internet increased, the number of times I've had to consider "JTRIG-style disruption, paid corporate shill, or useful idiot" has increased dramatically.

While a "silent coup" is one possibility, I have been liking how Dan Geer's described[1] the high-level picture of our situation as a Cold Civil War. Cold wars are fought by proxy, and there has been a lot of pointer-chasing to trace in the modern political situation.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI ( http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt )

shit_parade2• 12 years ago

Of related interest is the Op-Ed in the NY Times by ACLU executive director Anthony D. Romero:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/opinion/pardon-bush-and-th...

It's saddening to read such a two-faced argument by the head of an organization I supported with both time and money. When even the ACLU would rather call for pardons instead of prosecution because they no longer believe it politically viable I feel there is little left to say on the matters of justice and law in my country.

I can only hope Romero is soon fired so the ACLU can return to it's core mandate as written by them:

The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country. ~

Once a country abandons it's laws it is soon then abandoned by it's people.

nickbauman3• 12 years ago

Reading the report leaves me slack-jawed considering my own history. My great uncle was an officer of the Geheime Feldpolizei, a secret state security organization developed to combat native resistance against Nazi occupation during WWII. His job was to infiltrate and destroy Maquis French and their supporters (the resistance). The means they used were mass betrayal, example executions, torture, even the wholesale destruction of entire villages.

In 1946 he was charged with Crimes Against Humanity and sentenced as a war criminal by an allied tribunal consisting mostly of official American personnel. He deserved exactly what he got. What he did was utterly unconscionable even in a time of war.

I cannot, however, imagine representatives of today's America having the same kind of tribunal against war criminals with the same kind of standing. It is now simply unimaginable in anything but lurid, obscene terms. Dark days indeed.

rhino3692• 12 years ago

America did a hell of a lot worse than this stuff during WWII. In fact, this stuff is child's play.

We loaded up air planes with incendiary bombs and flew over Toyko purposely igniting their wooden homes to purposely cause a firestorm that killed .1 million people in a single night. Pretty fucking brutal.

Pooring ensure up a guys ass is pretty bad, but we instead of letting our B-52's bomb Taliban villages into nothing, we use drones.

Progress is slow, but it's happening.

nickbauman3• 12 years ago

I won't argue with you on this. I think if we're at the point of comparing effects against intent in the discussion, nobody proves anything much anymore. Shades of darkness are less important now than working together to change the direction towards light, peace.

EdSharkey• 12 years ago

I hear some modest outrage in people's comments, but I sincerely doubt most of you want to actually confront the leadership simply because they're aligned with you politically on most other things.

Other than tossing out some words, I fear most of you are going to do nothing and continue voting for the same ol' status quo crooks and cronies.

argumentum• 12 years ago

This release is a great development, and despite the overwhelming angst and disgust that many here are (rightly) feeling about these actions, it affirms that we aren't a totalitarian state. That our system of checks and balances does work, imperfectly for sure, but what system is perfect? If you aim for perfection, you will always fall short, but surely this means you should correct your aim and do better, not give up. And better we will do.

Those comparing these actions to the KGB, or Gestapo, are wrong on two counts: scale and intention. There is a difference between the mistreatment of few hundred and that of a few million. There's a difference between the goal of fighting nihilistic terrorists and the goal of exterminating undesirable ethnicities and dissidents.

That we are better than the worst may seem small consolation, but it is something that needs pointing out, if only to protect against moral relativism. To be able to reach towards righteousness, we must be able to distinguish not only right from wrong, but more right from right and more wrong from wrong. Moral relativism is seductive, but it's a crutch that prevents us from building a better society.

The United States of America has unique responsibilities in the world, perhaps in world history, we are the stewards of liberal civilization. As such, we should certainly aim for the highest standards and chastise and correct ourselves when we fail. But only fools could think that if we go away, or withdraw unto ourselves, the world will suddenly be a better place (as many is this thread seem to suggest). Those who deny the reality of power can never fight it's ill-effects.

hawleyal3• 12 years ago

ITT: Shock, awe, denial, scapegoating, buck-passing, et al.

fny• 12 years ago

"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."[0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm3Cr1dAnco

US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

Related Stories