THE TORTURE REPORT

THE CLAIM

That the CIA operated a torture programme, misrepresented both its methods and its results to Congress and the public, and then improperly accessed the computers of the committee investigating it.

THE THEORY, AS ITS PROPONENTS TELL IT

The distinguishing feature of this file is that the investigating body was the agency's own oversight committee, working from the agency's own cables.

The study was built from more than six million pages of internal CIA documents. Its central findings were that the interrogation techniques were more brutal and more widely used than the Agency had represented, that the Agency's claims about intelligence obtained were inaccurate, and that no unique and otherwise unavailable intelligence had been produced by the techniques.

Specific practices documented include waterboarding beyond authorised limits, sleep deprivation of up to 180 hours, confinement in boxes, rectal rehydration and rectal feeding without medical necessity, and threats against detainees' families. At least one detainee died of hypothermia at a site the Agency had not disclosed.

The oversight conflict is the second half. In 2014 the committee chair alleged the CIA had searched Senate computers used for the review. The Agency denied it, its director apologised after an Inspector General review found the search had occurred, and an internal accountability board then largely exonerated the officers involved.

WHAT IS KNOWN

The executive summary was released in December 2014 and is public. The full 6,700-page study remains classified.

The CIA's own response accepted some findings and disputed others, particularly the conclusion that no unique intelligence was obtained, which remains argued between the Agency and the committee.

The Inspector General confirmed that CIA personnel accessed the committee's computer network, and Director John Brennan apologised to the committee leadership.

The Justice Department declined to prosecute anyone in connection with the programme, and no person has faced criminal liability for it.

EVIDENCE FOR

• The study itself, built from six million pages of the Agency's own internal documents.
• The CIA's partial acceptance of the findings in its formal response.
• The Inspector General's confirmation of the search of Senate computers, and the director's apology.
• Detainee deaths and undisclosed sites documented in the Agency's own cable traffic.

EVIDENCE AGAINST (THE COMMITTEE'S STRONGEST CLAIMS)

• The finding that no unique intelligence was obtained is genuinely contested. The CIA's response and a minority report both dispute it, and reasonable people have read the same cables differently.
• The committee did not interview CIA personnel directly, working from documents instead, which the Agency has repeatedly raised as a methodological objection.
• The study was produced by one party in a long institutional conflict, which does not make it wrong and is a fact about it.

ASSESSMENT

Confirmed, and it belongs in this cabinet as much for the second story as the first. An oversight committee spent five years and produced a study from an agency's own records concluding the agency had misled it, and while that was happening the agency accessed the committee's computers, denied it, was found to have done it, apologised, and then cleared the people involved. Ninety-two percent of the study is still classified. Compare OSA-112, where the same institution ran an illegal programme and was stopped by a journalist rather than by oversight.

WHAT WOULD CHANGE THE GRADE

• CONFIRMED from the agency's own cables: the committee built 6,700 pages from six million pages of internal CIA documents, and the Agency's formal response accepted a number of the findings.
• Genuinely contested: the conclusion that no unique intelligence was obtained. The CIA response and a minority report dispute it, and the committee worked from documents without interviewing Agency personnel.
• Separately confirmed: the CIA searched the Senate committee's computers during the review, denied it, was found by its own Inspector General to have done it, and the director apologised. An internal board then largely cleared those involved.
• Ninety-two percent of the study remains classified.

FURTHER READING

• Senate report on CIA torture · Wikipedia
• SSCI, Committee Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, executive summary (2014)
• CIA Office of Inspector General, report on the search of SSCI computers (2014)