◆Part 1: The Study
On 9 December 2014 the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the declassified Findings and Conclusions and Executive Summary of its Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency Detention and Interrogation Program. The Study was ordered printed as Senate Report 113 288.
The full classified Study exceeded 6700 pages. The Committee said it was based primarily on more than 6 million pages of CIA records. The Findings and Conclusions were approved on 13 December 2012. Declassification revisions were dated 3 December 2014.
The Committee stated 20 findings. Finding 1 said the CIA use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.
◆Part 2: The Numbers
The Committee review of CIA records determined that the CIA detained at least 119 individuals. At least 39 of them were subjected to the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques.
Of the 119 known detainees, at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard in the September 2001 Memorandum of Notification. Those cases included an intellectually challenged man whose CIA detention was used solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information.
CIA statements that it detained fewer than 100 individuals, and that less than a third of those were subjected to the techniques, were inaccurate. The Committee found the CIA never conducted a comprehensive audit or developed a complete and accurate list of the individuals it had detained.
◆Part 3: The Methods
Finding 3 said the interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others.
The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting. Abu Zubaydah became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth. Internal CIA records described the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad as evolving into a series of near drownings. He was waterboarded at least 183 times.
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. In at least two of those cases the CIA nonetheless continued the sleep deprivation.
At least five CIA detainees were subjected to rectal rehydration or rectal feeding without documented medical necessity. The CIA placed detainees in ice water baths. CIA officers threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families, including threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee, and a threat to cut a detainee mother throat.
◆Part 4: COBALT
Conditions at CIA detention sites were poor. They were especially bleak early in the program.
CIA detainees at the COBALT detention facility were kept in complete darkness and constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste. Lack of heat at the facility likely contributed to the death of a detainee. The chief of interrogations described COBALT as a dungeon. Another senior CIA officer stated that COBALT was itself an enhanced interrogation technique.
COBALT began operations in September 2002 and ultimately housed more than half of the 119 CIA detainees identified in the Study. On a date in November 2002 a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor died from suspected hypothermia at the facility. The Committee record identifies that detainee as Gul Rahman.
◆Part 5: The Contractors
Two contract psychologists devised the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques and played a central role in the operation, assessments, and management of the program. Their prior experience was at the United States Air Force Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape school. Neither psychologist had any experience as an interrogator. Neither had specialized knowledge of al Qaida, a background in counterterrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic expertise.
In 2005 the psychologists formed a company specifically for the purpose of conducting their work with the CIA. Shortly thereafter the CIA outsourced virtually all aspects of the program. In 2006 the value of the CIA base contract with the company, with all options exercised, was in excess of 180 million dollars. The contractors received 81 million dollars prior to the contract termination in 2009.
In 2008 contractors made up 85 percent of the workforce for detention and interrogation operations in the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Group.
◆Part 6: The Lies
Finding 2 said the CIA justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness. The Committee reviewed 20 of the most frequent and prominent examples of purported counterterrorism successes that the CIA attributed to the techniques, and found them to be wrong in fundamental respects.
Finding 5 said the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice, impeding a proper legal analysis of the program. Finding 6 said the CIA actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight. Finding 7 said the CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision making.
According to CIA records, no CIA officer, up to and including CIA Directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, briefed the president on the specific CIA enhanced interrogation techniques before April 2006. By that time, 38 of the 39 detainees identified as having been subjected to the techniques had already been subjected to them.
CIA records indicate that the Detention and Interrogation Program cost well over 300 million dollars in non personnel costs. The program created tensions with United States partners and allies. The Committee found the program caused immeasurable damage to the United States public standing, as well as to the United States longstanding global leadership on human rights in general and the prevention of torture in particular.
◆Part 7: The End
The CIA last used its enhanced interrogation techniques on 8 November 2007. The CIA did not hold any detainees after April 2008.
By 2006, press disclosures, the unwillingness of other countries to host existing or new detention sites, and legal and oversight concerns had largely ended the CIA ability to operate clandestine detention facilities. Finding 19 said the program was inherently unsustainable and had effectively ended by 2006.
The Committee Study stands as the congressional record of what the CIA did, what it claimed, and what the documents showed.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency Detention and Interrogation Program. Findings and Conclusions. Approved 13 December 2012. Updated for Release 3 April 2014. Declassification Revisions 3 December 2014. Senate Report 113 288. 9 December 2014.