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Hadley Malcolm speaks with Washington Enterprise Editor Ray Locker about the implications of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture after 9/11. (USA NOW, USA TODAY)
This March 1, 2003, photo obtained by the Associated Press shows Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind, shortly after his capture during a raid in Pakistan.(Photo: AP)
1. The results. The Senate Intelligence Committee is releasing the results of a 5½-year review of CIA interrogations of terrorist suspects in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The report concludes that the interrogations were more brutal than the CIA had previously admitted — "in some cases amounting to torture," according to committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
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2. Main conclusions. The report concludes that in order to get approval for the program, the CIA provided false information about the interrogations to the White House, Congress, the Justice Department and others. The report even suggests the CIA misled President George W. Bush about the effectiveness of the interrogations.
3. Useful intelligence? The committee report concludes that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not provide any worthwhile intelligence. It also indicates that CIA officers themselves repeatedly questioned whether the interrogations were useful.
4. Secret facilities. The CIA's had a secret detention facility that was managed by a junior officer with no relevant experience. The committee concluded the facility kept few records of its operations, and senior officials had little information about what was going on there. According to the committee, "In November 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to a concrete floor died from suspected hypothermia at the facility."
5. Waterboarding. The committee believes that the best-known of the interrogation techniques — a simulated drowning known as "waterboarding" — may have been used more often that the CIA has previously acknowledged.
6. This is not the whole thing. The report issued Tuesday is an executive summary of the full report, which is 6,200 pages long and remains classified.
7. There is more than one side to this story. GOP Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Jim Risch of Idaho condemned the release of the report. "This report does not qualify as either serious or constructive. This was a partisan effort that divided members of the committee, and the committee against the people of the CIA," they wrote in a joint statement. "We voted against this report because it is flawed."
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