US Senate report on CIA interrogation techniques

As expected the release of the US Senate report on interrogation techniques used by the CIA has caused a political firestorm.

The actual report can be found here.

I’ve decided to cite two sources, one the Washington Post the other the Wall Street Journal

The Washington Post article gives a long overview of the report and provides comments from various sources. This is their initial description of the report:

An exhaustive, five-year Senate investigation of the CIA’s secret interrogations of terrorism suspects renders a strikingly bleak verdict of a program launched in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, describing levels of brutality, dishonesty and seemingly arbitrary violence that at times brought even agency employees to moments of anguish.

The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee delivers new allegations of cruelty in a program whose severe tactics have been abundantly documented, revealing that agency medical personnel voiced alarm that waterboarding methods had deteriorated to “a series of near drownings” and that agency employees subjected detainees to “rectal rehydration” and other painful procedures that were never approved.

So what was the White House response to the report (from the Washington Post)?

In a statement from the White House, Obama said the Senate report “documents a troubling program” and “reinforces my long-held view that these harsh methods were not only inconsistent with our values as nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests.” Obama praised the CIA’s work to degrade al-Qaeda over the past 13 years, but said its interrogation program “did significant damage to America’s standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with allies and partners.”

Part of the CIA response (from the Washington Post):

“The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day,” CIA Director John Brennan, who was a senior officer at the agency when it set up the secret prisons, said in a written statement. The program “did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.”

The Wall Street Journal op-ed agrees with the CIA and also the minority report released by Republicans who are members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:

It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.

It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.

It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.

This is a highly emotive issue that will continue to divide opinions sharply. On one hand some will claim that Feinstein is just being open about the truth, whilst others will say its all just playing politics.