The Official Senate Report on CIA Torture

Now available to the public for the first time, the Senate's landmark torture report delivers a damning indictment on CIA interrogation practices.

Finally declassified and released after five years in the making, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program, which describes in excruciating detail what Obama has called “harsh methods . . . inconsistent with our values as a nation,” is now available to the American public—citizens who have a right to know the truth.

Considered one of the most important government documents ever to be published, the torture report compiles the Senate committee’s findings of the CIA’s program to detain and interrogate terrorist threats in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, from 2001 to 2006 during the Bush administration. Among other controversial conclusions, the report has found that the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” were not effective in acquiring intelligence to avert terrorist threats. The study also shows that the CIA misled the public, Congress, the Department of Justice, and even the White House on the effectiveness and the scope and severity of their interrogation techniques. The exhaustive and disturbing account also provides grisly accounts on horrific practices that occurred in CIA black sites: prisoners experienced sleep deprivation in stressful positions for up to 180 hours; being stripped and shackled, hooded and dragged down a long corridor while being punched; waterboarding; and “rectal feeding.”

Based on six million CIA documents and requiring $40 million to complete, the entire 6,000-page report still remains classified. Only 525 pages of summary have been published, with 7 percent of its content redacted, and it is now at the disposal of American readers who have the opportunity to learn what occurred during this dark chapter in modern American history. The Senate report delivers a scathing, shocking, and controversial judgment, and gives us much to think about in terms of our longstanding position on freedom, democracy, dignity, and human rights.