The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that torture or enhanced interrogation techniques did not help Americans to find Osama bin Laden in May 2011. The finding could deepen the worst conflict in years between lawmakers and the CIA.
Though both its 6,200-word report and its 400-word executive summary are still classified, the intelligence committee released information Monday by allowing aides to talk to the press.
Popular culture from television series “Homeland” and “24” to movie “Zero Dark Thirty” portray torture or harsh treatment as an effective and necessary way to get information. In the fearful times after 9/11, people working in intelligence tried to find a way to protect America from another attack. The Bush administration during those years claimed to follow the Constitution while providing the CIA with what it thought were necessary tools.
Now the Senate Intelligence Committee is trying to evaluate whether intelligence operatives crossed an ethical and legal line.
From the moment of bin Laden’s death almost three years ago, former Bush administration figures and top CIA officials have cited the evidence trail leading to the al-Qaeda mastermind’s walled Pakistani compound as vindication of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” they authorized after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. They have denied that any of the techniques were torture.
But Democratic and some Republican senators have called that account misleading, saying simulated drowning known as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other such practices were not only cruel but also ineffective.
Congressional aides and outside experts said the intelligence committee’s report supports the idea that the interrogation practices were ineffective, after examining the treatment of several high-level terror detainees and the information they provided on bin Laden. The aides and people briefed on the report demanded anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly about the still-confidential document.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
The most high-profile detainee linked to the bin Laden investigation was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused 9/11 mastermind who was waterboarded 183 times. Intelligence officials have noted that Mohammed, confirmed after his 2003 capture, knew an important al-Qaeda courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.
The Senate report concludes such information wasn’t critical, according to aides. Mohammed only discussed al-Kuwaiti months after being waterboarded, while he was under standard interrogation, they said. And Mohammed neither acknowledged al-Kuwaiti’s significance nor provided interrogators with the courier’s real name.
The debate over how investigators put the pieces together is significant because years later, the courier led U.S. intelligence to the sleepy Pakistani military town of Abbottabad. There, in May 2011, Navy SEALs killed bin Laden in a secret mission.
CIA Interference
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a speech on the Senate floor on March 11 that the CIA had interfered with her committee’s investigation of interrogation practices. The CIA destroyed video of interrogations and replaced it with affidavits. It gave her committee millions of unorganized documents via an inconveniently located secure network far from Capitol Hill. Feinstein said the CIA removed hundreds of records on two occasions in 2010 that Senate staff had chosen to include in the final report or to investigate further.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) who was tortured while a prisoner of war in North Vietnam in the 1960s, has supported Feinstein. He opposes torture, and does not think it produces useful information. Yet he believes the intelligence officers acted in good faith as best they could.
He wrote, “I know those who approved and employed these practices were dedicated to protecting Americans. … I don’t believe anyone should be prosecuted for having used these techniques, and I agree that the administration should state definitively that they won’t be.”
While McCain doubted whether harsh interrogation helped find bin Laden, and warned that use of such techniques endangered American soldiers, his essential argument was ethical. He wrote, “Ultimately, this is more than a utilitarian debate. This is a moral debate. It is about who we are.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee will vote Thursday on whether to declassify its executive summary. If it agrees, the process will take some time.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Friends Read Free