Senate hits out at CIA torture regime

A damning US Senate report concluded that the CIA misled Congress and the American public by downplaying the severity of its interrogations and overstating intelligence gleaned from the sessions, The Washington Post said.

Several officials familiar with the classified 6,300-page document, years in the making, said it detailed the brutality of an enhanced interrogation programme that yielded little actionable intelligence beyond what was already obtained from detainees before they were subjected to the objectionable techniques.

“The CIA described (its programme) repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” a US official briefed on the document told the daily. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”