Senate Intelligence Committee Votes to Release Report on CIA Torture
After an intense behind-the-scenes bureaucratic fight, the Senate Intelligence Committee on this day voted 11–3 to release a summary of its report on the interrogation measures used by the CIA in the war on terrorism by the administration of President George W. Bush.
The Intelligence Committee had never before released a report so critical of any presidential administration. Reportedly, two of the main points of the report were that the CIA’s “harsh interrogation” techniques were ineffective in obtaining useful intelligence and that the CIA lied to Congress and the public about that point.
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 at Torturing Democracy (timeline, documents, documentary): http://www.torturingdemocracy.org/
Read key documents in the U.S. use of torture: Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel, eds, The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu Ghraib (2005)
Read the text of the UN Convention Against Torture: http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/39/a39r046.htm
Learn more: Susan Herman, Taking Liberties: The War on Terror and the Erosion of American Democracy (2011)