Senate Report on Torture: CIA “Harsh Interrogations” Exceeded Legal Authority
A classified Senate report on the controversial CIA “harsh interrogations” in the war on terrorism under President George W. Bush concluded that officials exceeded legal authority and that the CIA lied to Congress about the interrogations, according to leaked reports on this day.
The leaks came in the context of a bitter battle between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA over the report. Senator Diane Feinstein (D–California), chair of the Committee, made an unprecedented speech on the floor of the Senate, on March 11, 2014, in which she accused the CIA of spying on the committee, lying to Congress, and violating the separation of powers.
After bitter fighting among Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and between the Committee and the CIA, the Senate Committee on December 9, 2014 released a heavily redacted 525 page summary of the 6,000 page report on torture by the CIA.
Read the Senate Torture Report: http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf
Learn more: Alfred W. McCoy, A Question of Torture (2006)
Learn more at Torturing Democracy (timeline, documents, documentary): http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/
Read other key documents: Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel, eds, The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (2005)