[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 149 (Tuesday, December 9, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6405-S6414]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE STUDY OF THE CIA'S DETENTION
AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I want to thank the leader for his
words and for his support. They are extraordinarily welcome and
appreciated.
Today, a 500-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence
Committee's 5\1/2\ year review of the CIA's detention and interrogation
program, which was conducted between 2002 and 2009, is being released
publicly. The executive summary, which is going out today, is backed by
a 6,700-page classified and unredacted report with 38,000 footnotes
which can be released, if necessary, at a later time.
The report released today examines the CIA's secret overseas
detention of at least 119 individuals and the use of coercive
interrogation techniques, in some cases amounting to torture.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have gone through a great deal of
introspection about whether to delay the release of this report to a
later time. This clearly is a period of turmoil and instability in many
parts of the world. Unfortunately, that is going to continue for the
foreseeable future whether or not this report is released.
There are those who will seize upon the report and say ``See what the
Americans did,'' and they will try to use it to justify evil actions or
incite more violence. We can't prevent that, but history will judge us
by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness
to face an ugly truth and say ``never again.''
There may never be the right time to release this report. The
instability we see today will not be resolved in months or years. But
this report is too important to shelve indefinitely.
My determination to release it has also increased due to a campaign
of mistaken statements and press articles launched against the report
before anyone has had the chance to read it. As a matter of fact, the
report is just now, as I speak, being released. This is what it looks
like.
Senator Chambliss asked me if we could have the minority report bound
with the majority report. For this draft that is not possible. In the
filed draft it will be bound together. But this is what the summary of
the 6,000 pages looks like.
My words give me no pleasure. I am releasing this report because I
know there are thousands of employees at the CIA who do not condone
what I will speak about this morning and who work day and night, long
hours, within the law, for America's security in what is certainly a
difficult world. My colleagues on the Intelligence Committee and I are
proud of them, just as everyone in this Chamber is, and we will always
support them.
In reviewing the study in the past few days, with the decision
looming over the public release, I was struck by a quote found on page
126 of the executive summary. It cites a former CIA inspector general,
John Helgerson, who in 2005 wrote the following to the then-Director of
the CIA, which clearly states the situation with respect to this report
years later as well:
We have found that the Agency over the decades has
continued to get itself in messes related to interrogation
programs for one overriding reason: we do not document and
learn from our experience--each generation of officers is
left to improvise anew, with problematic results for our
officers as individuals and for our Agency.
[[Page S6406]]
I believe that to be true. I agree with Mr. Helgerson. His comments
are true today. But this must change.
On March 11, 2009, the committee voted 14 to 1 to begin a review of
the CIA's detention and interrogation program. Over the past 5 years a
small team of committee investigators pored over the more than 6.3
million pages of CIA records the leader spoke about to complete this
report or what we call the study. It shows that the CIA's actions a
decade ago are a stain on our values and on our history. The release of
this 500-page summary cannot remove that stain, but it can and does say
to our people and the world that America is big enough to admit when it
is wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes. Releasing
this report is an important step to restore our values and show the
world that we are, in fact, a just and lawful society.
Over the next hour I wish to lay out for Senators and the American
public the report's key findings and conclusions. I ask that when I
complete this, Senator McCain be recognized. Before I get to the
substance of the report, I wish to make a few comments about why it is
so important that we make this study public.
All of us have vivid memories of that Tuesday morning when terrorists
struck New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania. Make no mistake--on
September 11, 2001, war was declared on the United States. Terrorists
struck our financial center, they struck our military center, and they
tried to strike our political center and would have had brave and
courageous passengers not brought down the plane. We still vividly
remember the mix of outrage, deep despair, and sadness as we watched
from Washington--smoke rising from the Pentagon, the passenger plane
lying in a Pennsylvania field, and the sound of bodies striking
canopies at ground level as innocents jumped to the ground below from
the World Trade Center. Mass terror that we often see abroad had struck
us directly in our front yard, killing 3,000 innocent men, women, and
children.
What happened? We came together as a nation with one singular
mission: Bring those who committed these acts to justice. But it is at
this point where the values of America come into play, where the rule
of law and the fundamental principles of right and wrong become
important.
In 1990 the Senate ratified the Convention against Torture. The
convention makes clear that this ban against torture is absolute. It
states:
No exceptional circumstances whatsoever--
Including what I just read--
whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political
instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as
a justification of torture.
Nonetheless, it was argued that the need for information on possible
additional terrorist plots after 9/11 made extraordinary interrogation
techniques necessary.
Even if one were to set aside all of the moral arguments, our review
was a meticulous and detailed examination of records. It finds that
coercive interrogation techniques did not produce the vital, otherwise
unavailable intelligence the CIA has claimed.
I will go into further detail on this issue in a moment, but let me
make clear that these comments are not a condemnation of the CIA as a
whole. The CIA plays an incredibly important part in our Nation's
security and has thousands of dedicated and talented employees.
What we have found is that a surprisingly few people were responsible
for designing, carrying out, and managing this program. Two contractors
developed and led the interrogations. There was little effective
oversight. Analysts, on occasion, gave operational orders about
interrogations, and CIA management of the program was weak and
diffused.
Our final report was approved by a bipartisan vote of 9 to 6 in
December of 2012 and exposes brutality in stark contrast to our values
as a nation.
This effort was focused on the actions of the CIA from late 2001 to
January of 2009. The report does include considerable detail on the
CIA's interactions with the White House, the Departments of Justice,
State, and Defense, and the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The review is based on contemporaneous records and documents during
the time the program was in place and active. These documents are
important because they aren't based on recollection, they aren't based
on revision, and they aren't a rationalization a decade later. It is
these documents, referenced repeatedly in thousands of footnotes, that
provide the factual basis for the study's conclusions. The committee's
majority staff reviewed more than 6.3 million pages of these documents
provided by the CIA, as well as records from other departments and
agencies. These records include finished intelligence assessments, CIA
operational and intelligence cables, memoranda, emails, real-time chat
sessions, inspector general reports, testimony before Congress,
pictures, and other internal records.
It is true that we didn't conduct our own interviews, and I wish to
state why that was the case. In 2009 there was an ongoing review by the
Department of Justice Special Prosecutor, John Durham. On August 24,
Attorney General Holder expanded that review. This occurred 6 months
after our study had begun. Durham's original investigation of the CIA's
destruction of interrogation videotapes was broadened to include
possible criminal actions of CIA employees in the course of CIA
detention and interrogation activities.
At the time, the committee's vice chairman, Kit Bond, withdrew the
minority's participation in the study, citing the Attorney General's
expanded investigation as the reason.
The Department of Justice refused to coordinate its investigation
with the Intelligence Committee's review. As a result, possible
interviewees could be subject to additional liability if they were
interviewed, and the CIA, citing the Attorney General's investigation,
would not instruct its employees to participate in interviews.
Notwithstanding, I am very confident of the factual accuracy and
comprehensive nature of this report for three reasons:
No. 1, it is 6.3 million pages of documents reviewed, and they reveal
records of actions as those actions took place, not through
recollections more than a decade later.
No. 2, the CIA and CIA senior officers have taken the opportunity to
explain their views on CIA detention and interrogation operations. They
have done this in on-the-record statements in classified committee
hearings, written testimony and answers to questions, and through the
formal response to the committee in June 2013 after reading this study.
No. 3, the committee had access to and utilized an extensive set of
reports of interviews conducted by the CIA inspector general and the
CIA's oral history program.
So while we could not conduct new interviews of individuals, we did
utilize transcripts or summaries of interviews of those directly
engaged in detention and interrogation operations. These interviews
occurred at the time the program was operational and covered the exact
topics we would have asked about had we conducted interviews ourselves.
These interview reports and transcripts included but were not limited
to the following: George Tenet, Director of the CIA when the Agency
took custody and interrogated the majority of detainees; Jose
Rodriguez, Director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, a key player
in the program; CIA General Counsel Scott Mueller; CIA Deputy Director
of Operations James Pavitt; CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo; CIA
Deputy Director John McLaughlin; and a variety of interrogators,
lawyers, medical personnel, senior counterterrorism analysts, and
managers of the detention and interrogation program.
The best place to start on how we got into this situation--and I am
delighted that the previous Chairman Senator Rockefeller is on the
floor--is a little more than 8 years ago, on September 6, 2006, when
the committee met to be briefed by then-Director Michael Hayden.
At that 2006 meeting the full committee learned for the first time--
the first time--of the use of so-called enhanced interrogation
techniques or EITs.
It was a short meeting, in part because President Bush was making a
public speech later that day disclosing officially for the first time
the existence of CIA black sites and announcing
[[Page S6407]]
the transfer of 14 detainees from CIA custody to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
It was the first time the interrogation program was explained to the
full committee, as details had previously been limited to the chairman
and vice chairman.
Then, on December 7, 2007, The New York Times reported that CIA
personnel in 2005 had destroyed videotapes of the interrogation of two
CIA detainees--the CIA's first detainee Abu Zubaydah, as well as Abd
al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The committee had not been informed of the
destruction of the tapes.
Days later, on December 11, 2007, the committee held a hearing on the
destruction of the videotapes. Director Hayden, the primary witness,
testified the CIA had concluded the destruction of videotapes was
acceptable, in part because Congress had not yet requested to see them.
My source is our committee's transcript of the hearing on December 11,
2007. Director Hayden stated that if the committee had asked for the
videotapes, they would have been provided. But of course the committee
had not known the videotapes existed.
We now know from CIA emails and records that the videotapes were
destroyed shortly after CIA attorneys raised concerns that Congress
might find out about the tapes.
In any case, at that same December 11 committee hearing, Director
Hayden told the committee that CIA cables related to the interrogation
sessions depicted in the videotapes were `` . . . a more than adequate
representation of the tapes and therefore, if you want them, we will
give you access to them.'' That is a quote from our transcript of the
December 11, 2007, hearing.
Senator Rockefeller, then-chairman of the committee, designated two
members of the committee staff to review the cables describing the
interrogation sessions of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. Senator Bond,
then-vice chairman, similarly directed two of his staffers to review
the cables. The designated staff members completed their review and
compiled a summary of the content of the CIA cables by early 2009, by
which time I had become chairman.
The description in the cables of CIA's interrogations and the
treatment of detainees presented a starkly different picture from
Director Hayden's testimony before the committee. They described
brutal, around-the-clock interrogations, especially of Abu Zubaydah, in
which multiple coercive techniques were used in combination and with
substantial repetition. It was an ugly, visceral description.
The summary also indicated that Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri did not,
as a result of the use of these so-called EITs, provide the kind of
intelligence that led the CIA to stop terrorist plots or arrest
additional suspects. As a result, I think it is fair to say the entire
committee was concerned and it approved the scope of an investigation
by a vote of 14 to 1, and the work began.
In my March 11, 2014, floor speech about the study, I described how
in 2009 the committee came to an agreement with the new CIA Director,
Leon Panetta, for access to documents and other records about the CIA's
detention and interrogation program. I will not repeat that here. From
2009 to 2012, our staff conducted a massive and unprecedented review of
CIA records. Draft sections of the report were produced by late 2011
and shared with the full committee. The final report was completed in
December 2012 and approved by the committee by a bipartisan vote of 9
to 6.
After that vote, I sent the full report to the President and asked
the administration to provide comments on it before it was released.
Six months later, in June of 2013, the CIA responded. I directed then
that if the CIA pointed out any error in our report, we would fix it,
and we did fix one bullet point that did not impact our findings and
conclusions. If the CIA came to a different conclusion than the report
did, we would note that in the report and explain our reasons for
disagreeing, if we disagreed. You will see some of that documented in
the footnotes of that executive summary as well as in the 6,000 pages.
In April 2014, the committee prepared an updated version of the full
study and voted 12 to 3 to declassify and release the executive
summary, findings and conclusions and minority and additional views.
On August 1, we received a declassified version from the executive
branch. It was immediately apparent the redactions to our report
prevented a clear and understandable reading of the study and prevented
us from substantiating the findings and conclusions, so we obviously
objected.
For the past 4 months, the committee and the CIA, the Director of
National Intelligence, and the White House have engaged in a lengthy
negotiation over the redactions to the report. We have been able to
include some more information in the report today without sacrificing
sources and methods or our national security.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record following my
remarks a letter from the White House, dated yesterday, transmitting
the unclassified parts of report, and it also points out that the
executive summary is 93 percent complete and that the redactions amount
to 7 percent.
Mr. President, this has been a long process. The work began 7 years
ago when Senator Rockefeller directed committee staff to review the CIA
cables describing the interrogation sessions of Abu Zubaydah and al-
Nashiri. It has been very difficult, but I believe documentation and
the findings and conclusions will make clear how this program was
morally, legally, and administratively misguided and that this Nation
should never again engage in these tactics.
Let me now turn to the contents of the study. As I noted, we have 20
findings and conclusions which fall into four general categories:
First, the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were not an
effective way to gather intelligence information; second, the CIA
provided extensive amounts of inaccurate information about the
operation of the program and its effectiveness to the White House, the
Department of Justice, Congress, the CIA inspector general, the media,
and the American public; third, the CIA's management of the program was
inadequate and deeply flawed; and fourth, the CIA program was far more
brutal than people were led to believe.
Let me describe each category in more detail. The first set of
findings and conclusions concern the effectiveness or lack thereof of
the CIA interrogation program. The committee found that the CIA's
coercive interrogation techniques were not an effective means of
acquiring accurate intelligence or gaining detainee cooperation.
The CIA and other defenders of the program have repeatedly claimed
the use of so-called interrogation techniques was necessary to get
detainees to provide critical information and to bring detainees to a
``state of compliance,'' in which they would cooperate and provide
information. The study concludes both claims are inaccurate.
The report is very specific in how it evaluates the CIA's claims on
the effectiveness and necessity of its enhanced interrogation
techniques. Specifically, we used the CIA's own definition of
effectiveness as ratified and approved by the Department of Justice's
Office of Legal Counsel. The CIA claimed that the EITs were necessary
to obtain ``otherwise unavailable'' information that could not be
obtained from any other source to stop terrorist attacks and save
American lives, that is a claim we conclude is inaccurate.
We took 20 examples that the CIA itself claimed to show the success
of these interrogations. These include cases of terrorist plots stopped
or terrorists captured. The CIA used these examples in presentations to
the White House, in testimony to Congress, in submissions to the
Department of Justice, and ultimately to the American people.
Some of the claims are well known: the capture of Khalid Shaikh
Mohammed, the prevention of attacks against the Library Tower in Los
Angeles, and the takedown of Osama bin Laden. Other claims were made
only in classified settings to the White House, Congress, and
Department of Justice.
In each case, the CIA claimed that critical and unique information
came from one or more detainees in its custody after they were
subjected to the CIA's coercive techniques, and that information led to
a specific counterterrorism success. Our staff reviewed every one of
the 20 cases and not a single case holds up.
In every single one of these cases, at least one of the following was
true: One, the intelligence community had
[[Page S6408]]
information separate from the use of EITs that led to the terrorist
disruption or capture; two, information from a detainee subjected to
EITs played no role in the claimed disruption or capture; and three,
the purported terrorist plot either did not exist or posed no real
threat to Americans or U.S. interests.
Some critics have suggested the study concludes that no intelligence
was ever provided from any detainee the CIA held. That is false and the
study makes no such claim. What is true is that actionable intelligence
that was ``otherwise unavailable'' was not obtained using these
coercive interrogation techniques.
The report also chronicles where the use of interrogation techniques
that do not involve physical force were effective. Specifically, the
report provides examples where interrogators had sufficient information
to confront detainees with facts, know when they were lying and when
they applied rapport-building techniques that were developed and honed
by the U.S. military, the FBI, and more recently the interagency High-
Value Detainee Interrogation Group, called the HIG, that these
techniques produced good intelligence.
Let me make a couple of additional comments on the claimed
effectiveness of CIA interrogations. At no time did the CIA's coercive
interrogation techniques lead to the collection of intelligence on an
imminent threat that many believe was the justification for the use of
these techniques. The committee never found an example of this
hypothetical ticking timebomb scenario.
The use of coercive technique methods regularly resulted in
fabricated information. Sometimes the CIA actually knew detainees were
lying. Other times the CIA acted on false information, diverting
resources and leading officers or contractors to falsely believe they
were acquiring unique or actionable intelligence and that its
interrogations were working when they were not.
Internally, CIA officers often called into question the effectiveness
of the CIA's interrogation techniques, noting how the techniques failed
to elicit detainee cooperation or produce accurate information.
The report includes numerous examples of CIA officers questioning the
agency's claims, but these contradictions were marginalized and not
presented externally.
The second set of findings and conclusions is that the CIA provided
extensive inaccurate information about the program and its
effectiveness to the White House, the Department of Justice, Congress,
the CIA inspector general, the media, and the American public.
This conclusion is somewhat personal for me. I remember clearly when
Director Hayden briefed the Intelligence Committee for the first time
on the so-called EITs at that September 2006 committee meeting. He
referred specifically to a ``tummy slap,'' among other techniques, and
presented the entire set of techniques as minimally harmful and applied
in a highly clinical and professional manner. They were not.
The committee's report demonstrates that these techniques were
physically very harmful, and that the constraints that existed on paper
in Washington did not match the way techniques were used at CIA sites
around the world.
Of particular note was the treatment of Abu Zubaydah over a span of
17 days in August 2002. This involved nonstop interrogation and abuse,
24/7, from August 4 to August 21, and included multiple forms of
deprivation and physical assault. The description of this period, first
written up by our staff in early 2009 while Senator Rockefeller was
chairman, was what prompted this full review.
But the inaccurate and incomplete descriptions go far beyond that.
The CIA provided inaccurate memoranda and explanations to the
Department of Justice while its Office of Legal Counsel was considering
the legality of the coercive techniques.
In those communications to the Department of Justice, the CIA claimed
the following: The coercive techniques would not be used with excessive
repetition; detainees would always have an opportunity to provide
information prior to the use of the techniques; the techniques were to
be used in progression, starting with the least aggressive and
proceeding only if needed; medical personnel would make sure that
interrogations wouldn't cause serious harm, and they could intervene at
any time to stop interrogations; interrogators were carefully vetted
and highly trained, and each technique was to be used in a specific way
without deviation, and only with specific approval for the interrogator
and detainee involved.
None of these assurances, which the Department of Justice relied on
to form its legal opinions, were consistently or even routinely carried
out.
In many cases, important information was withheld from policymakers.
For example, foreign intelligence committee chairman Bob Graham asked a
number of questions after he was first briefed in September of 2002,
but the CIA refused to answer him, effectively stonewalling him until
he left the committee at the end of the year.
In another example, the CIA, in coordination with White House
officials and staff, initially withheld information of the CIA's
interrogation techniques from Secretary of State Colin Powell and
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. There are CIA records stating
that Colin Powell wasn't told about the program at first because there
were concerns that ``Powell would blow his stack if he were briefed.''
Source: Email from John Rizzo dated July 31, 2003.
CIA records clearly indicate, and definitively, that after he was
briefed on the CIA's first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, the CIA didn't tell
President Bush about the full nature of the EITs until April 2006. That
is what the records indicate.
The CIA similarly withheld information or provided false information
to the CIA inspector general during his conduct of a special review by
the IG in 2004.
Incomplete and inaccurate information from the CIA was used in
documents provided to the Department of Justice and as a basis for
President Bush's speech on September 6, 2006, in which he publicly
acknowledged the CIA program for the first time.
In all of these cases, other CIA officers acknowledged internally
that information the CIA had provided was wrong.
The CIA also misled other CIA and White House officials. When Vice
President Cheney's counsel David Addington asked CIA General Counsel
Scott Muller in 2003 about the CIA's videotaping the waterboarding of
detainees, Muller deliberately told him that videotapes ``were not
being made,'' but did not disclose that videotapes of previous
waterboarding sessions had been made and still existed. Source: E-mail
from Scott Muller dated June 7, 2003.
There are many more examples in the committee's report. All are
documented.
The third set of findings and conclusions notes the various ways in
which CIA management of the Detention and Interrogation Program--from
its inception to its formal termination in January of 2009--was
inadequate and deeply flawed.
There is no doubt that the Detention and Interrogation Program was,
by any measure, a major CIA undertaking. It raised significant legal
and policy issues and involved significant resources and funding. It
was not, however, managed as a significant CIA program. Instead, it had
limited oversight and lacked formal direction and management.
For example, in the 6 months between being granted detention
authority and taking custody of its first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, the
CIA had not identified and prepared a suitable detention site. It had
not researched effective interrogation techniques or developed a legal
basis for the use of interrogation techniques outside of the rapport-
building techniques that were official CIA policy until that time.
In fact, there is no indication the CIA reviewed its own history--
that is just what Helgerson was saying in 2005--with coercive
interrogation tactics. As the executive summary notes, the CIA had
engaged in rough interrogations in the past.
In fact, the CIA had previously sent a letter to the Intelligence
Committee in 1989--and here is the quote--that ``inhumane physical or
psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not
produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers.''
[[Page S6409]]
That was a letter from John Helgerson, CIA Director of Congressional
Affairs, dated January 8, 1989.
However, in late 2001 and early 2002, rather than research
interrogation practices and coordinate with other parts of the
government with extensive expertise in detention and interrogation of
terrorist suspects, the CIA engaged two contract psychologists who had
never conducted interrogations themselves or ever operated detention
facilities.
As the CIA captured or received custody of detainees through 2002, it
maintained separate lines of management at headquarters for different
detention facilities.
No individual or office was in charge of the Detention and
Interrogation Program until January of 2003, by which point more than
one-third of CIA detainees identified in our review had been detained
and interrogated.
One clear example of flawed CIA management was the poorly managed
detention facility referred to in our report by the code name COBALT to
hide the actual name of the facility. It began operations in September
of 2002. The facility kept few formal records of the detainees housed
there, and untrained CIA officers conducted frequent unauthorized and
unsupervised interrogations using techniques that were not, and never
became, part of the CIA's formal enhanced interrogation program.
The CIA placed a junior officer with no relevant experience in charge
of the site. In November 2002, an otherwise healthy detainee--who was
being held mostly nude and chained to a concrete floor--died at the
facility from what is believed to have been hypothermia.
In interviews conducted in 2003 by the CIA Office of the Inspector
General, CIA's leadership acknowledged that they had little or no
awareness of operations at this specific CIA detention site, and some
CIA senior officials believed, erroneously, that enhanced interrogation
techniques were not used there.
The CIA, in its June 2013 response to the committee's report, agreed
that there were management failures in the program, but asserted that
they were corrected by early 2003. While the study found that
management failures improved somewhat, we found they persisted until
the end of the program.
Among the numerous management shortcomings identified in the report
are the following: The CIA used poorly trained and nonvetted personnel.
Individuals were deployed--in particular, interrogators--without
relevant training or experience. Due to the CIA's redactions to the
report, there are limits to what I can say in this regard, but it is a
clear fact that the CIA deployed officers who had histories of
personnel, ethical, and professional problems of a serious nature.
These included histories of violence and abusive treatment of others
that should have called into question their employment with the U.S.
Government, let alone their suitability to participate in a sensitive
CIA covert action program.
The two contractors that CIA allowed to develop, operate, and assess
its interrogation operations conducted numerous ``inherently
governmental functions'' that never should have been outsourced to
contractors. These contractors, referred to in the report in special
pseudonyms, SWIGERT and DUNBAR, developed the list of so-called
enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA employed.
They developed a list of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques
that the CIA employed. They personally conducted interrogations of some
of the CIA's most significant detainees, using the techniques including
the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and al-
Nashiri.
The contractors provided the official evaluations of whether
detainees' psychological states allowed for the continued use of the
enhanced techniques, even for some detainees they themselves were
interrogating or had interrogated. Evaluating the psychological state
of the very detainees they were interrogating is a clear conflict of
interest and a violation of professional guidelines.
The CIA relied on these two contractors to evaluate the interrogation
program they had devised and in which they had obvious financial
interests. Again, it is a clear conflict of interest and an avoidance
of responsibility by the CIA.
In 2005, the two contractors formed a company specifically for the
purpose of expanding their work with the CIA. From 2005 to 2008, the
CIA outsourced almost all aspects of its detention and interrogation
program to this company as part of a contract valued at more than $180
million. Ultimately, not all contract options were exercised. However,
the CIA has paid these two contractors and their company more than $80
million.
Of the 119 individuals found to have been detained by the CIA during
the life of the program, the committee found that at least 26 were
wrongfully held. These are cases where the CIA itself determined that
it had not met the standard for detention set out in the 2001
Memorandum of Notification which governed the covert action. Detainees
often remained in custody for months after the CIA determined they
should have been released. CIA records provide insufficient information
to justify the detention of many other detainees.
Due to poor recordkeeping, a full accounting of how many specific
detainees were held and how they were specifically treated while in
custody may never be known. Similarly, in specific instances we found
that enhanced interrogation techniques were used without authorization
in a manner far different and more brutal than had been authorized by
the Office of Legal Counsel and conducted by personnel not approved to
use them on detainees.
Decisions about how and when to apply interrogation techniques were
ad hoc and not proposed, evaluated, and approved in a manner described
by the CIA in written descriptions and testimony about the program.
Detainees were often subjected to harsh and brutal interrogation and
treatment because CIA analysts believed, often in error, that they knew
more information than what they had provided.
Sometimes CIA managers and interrogators in the field were
uncomfortable with what they were being asked to do and recommended
ending the abuse of a detainee. Repeatedly in such cases they were
overruled by people at CIA headquarters who thought they knew better,
such as by analysts with no line authority. This shows again how a
relatively small number of CIA personnel--perhaps 40 to 50--were making
decisions on detention and interrogation despite the better judgments
of other CIA officers.
The fourth and final set of findings and conclusions concerns how the
interrogations of CIA detainees were absolutely brutal, far worse than
the CIA represented them to policymakers and others.
Beginning with the first detainee, Abu Zubaydah, and continuing with
others, the CIA applied its so-called enhanced interrogation techniques
in combination and in near nonstop fashion for days and even weeks at a
time on one detainee. In contrast to the CIA representations, the
detainees were subjected to the most aggressive techniques
immediately--stripped naked, diapered, physically struck, and put in
various painful stress positions for long periods of time. They were
deprived of sleep for days--in one case up to 180 hours; that is 7\1/2\
days, over a week, with no sleep--usually in standing or in stress
positions, at times with their hands tied together over their heads,
chained to the ceiling.
In the COBALT facility I previously mentioned, interrogators and
guards used what they called rough takedowns in which a detainee was
grabbed from his cell, clothes cut off, hooded, and dragged up and down
a dirt hallway while being slapped and punched.
The CIA led several detainees to believe they would never be allowed
to leave CIA custody alive, suggesting to Abu Zubaydah that he would
only leave in a coffin-shaped box. That is from a CIA cable on August
12, 2002.
According to another CIA cable, CIA officers also planned to cremate
Zubaydah should he not survive his interrogation. Source: CIA cable,
July 15, 2002.
After the news and photographs emerged from the U.S. military
detention of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, the Intelligence Committee held a
hearing on the matter on May 12, 2004. Without disclosing any details
of its own interrogation program, CIA Director John
[[Page S6410]]
McLaughlin testified that CIA interrogations were nothing like what was
depicted at Abu Ghraib, the U.S. prison in Iraq where detainees were
abused by American personnel. This, of course, was false.
CIA detainees at one facility, described as a dungeon, were kept in
complete darkness, constantly shackled in isolated cells with loud
noise or music and only a bucket to use for human waste.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons personnel went to that location in
November 2002 and, according to a contemporaneous internal CIA email,
told CIA officers they had never ``been in a facility where individuals
are so sensory deprived.'' Source: CIA email, sender and recipient
redacted, December 5, 2002.
Throughout the program, multiple CIA detainees subjected to
interrogations exhibited psychological and behavioral issues including
hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-
mutilation. Multiple CIA psychologists identified the lack of human
contact experienced by the detainees as a cause of psychiatric
problems.
The executive summary includes far more detail than I am going to
provide here about things that were in these interrogation sessions,
and the summary itself includes only a subset of the treatment of the
119 known CIA detainees. There is far more detail--all documented--in
the full 6,700-page study. This briefly summarizes the committee's
findings and conclusions.
Before I wrap up, I wish to thank the people who made this
undertaking possible. First, I thank Senator Jay Rockefeller. He
started this project by directing his staff to review the operational
cables that described the first recorded interrogations after we
learned that the videotapes of those sessions had been destroyed. That
report was what led to this multiyear investigation, and without it we
wouldn't have had any sense of what happened.
I thank other Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, one of
whom is on the floor today, from the great State of New Mexico. Others
have been on the floor who voted to conduct this investigation and to
approve its result and make the report public.
Most importantly, I want to thank the Intelligence Committee staff
who performed this work. They are dedicated and committed public
officials who sacrificed a significant portion of their lives to see
this report through to its publication. They have worked days, nights,
and weekends for years in some of the most difficult circumstances. It
is no secret to anyone that the CIA does not want this report coming
out, and I believe the Nation owes them a debt of gratitude. They are
Dan Jones, who has led this review since 2007, and more than anyone
else, today's report is a result of his effort. Evan Gottesman and Chad
Tanner, the two other members of the study staff, each wrote thousands
of pages of the full report and have dedicated themselves and much of
their lives to this project. Alissa Starzak, who began this review as
co-lead, contributed extensively until her departure from the committee
in 2011.
Other key contributors to the drafting, editing, and review of the
report were Jennifer Barrett, Nick Basciano, Mike Buchwald, Jim
Catella, Eric Chapman, John Dickas, Lorenzo Goco, Andrew Grotto, Tressa
Guenov, Clete Johnson, Michael Noblet, Michael Pevzner, Tommy Ross,
Caroline Tess, and James Wolfe; and finally, David Grannis, who has
been a never-faltering staff director throughout this review.
This study is bigger than the actions of the CIA. It is really about
American values and morals. It is about the Constitution, the Bill of
Rights, our rule of law. These values exist regardless of the
circumstances in which we find ourselves. They exist in peacetime and
in wartime, and if we cast aside these values when convenient, we have
failed to live by the very precepts that make our Nation a great one.
There is a reason why we carry the banner of a great and just nation.
So we submit this study on behalf of the committee to the public in the
belief that it will stand the test of time, and with it the report will
carry the message: ``Never again.''
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
The White House,
Washington, December 8, 2014.
Hon. Dianne Feinstein,
Chairman, Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Chairman Feinstein: I write in response to your
letters to the President transmitting versions of the
executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence's report regarding the
Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) former detention and
interrogation program.
The President believes that the Agency's former detention
and interrogation program was inconsistent with our values as
a Nation. To reflect our values, one of his first acts in
office was to sign an Executive Order that brought an end to
the program.
Since the Committee first delivered a version of its
executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the report
(report) in April, the Administration has worked in good
faith with the Committee on the declassification effort. On
August 1, the Administration provided a version of the
report, as well as minority and additional views that would
declassify 85 percent of the text. Since then, at the request
of the Committee, the Administration has continually sought
to reduce further the redactions in the report in a manner
that also protects U.S. national security. We have
appreciated the constructive dialogue with the Committee over
the last few months, which allowed us to work through more
than 400 of the Committee's requests for declassification.
Today, we are delivering to the Committee a version of the
Committee report, as well as minority and additional views,
that are over 93 percent declassified. The minimal redactions
are the result of a considerable effort by the Director of
National Intelligence, working with the CIA, Department of
Defense, Department of State, and other agencies, to review
and declassify hundreds of pages of information related to
the historical CIA program.
As we have shared with you in prior letters and
conversations, the President supports making public the
declassified version of the Committee's important report as
he believes that public scrutiny and debate will help to
inform the public's understanding of the program and to
ensure that such a program will never be repeated. As we have
also shared with you, in advance of release of the Committee
report, the Administration has planned to take a series of
security steps to prepare our personnel and facilities
overseas. We have already initiated those security
precautions and will continue to implement them consistent
with prior conversations about the timing of the Committee's
expected release of its report.
The Committee report reflects a significant five year
effort, and we commend the Committee and its staff on its
completion. The report also reflects extraordinary
cooperation by the Executive Branch to ensure access to the
information necessary to review the CIA's former program,
including more than six million pages of records. We must
now, however, begin to look forward to the future. The men
and women in the Intelligence Community are fundamental to
America's national security. They perform an important
service to our country in very trying circumstances. They
make extraordinary sacrifices to keep the American people
safe, often without any expectation of credit or
acknowledgment. As they carry on the nation's critical work,
they have the President's support and appreciation, as I know
they have yours.
Sincerely,
W. Neil Eggleston,
Counsel to the President.
I very much appreciate your attention, and I yield to Senator McCain.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Ms. Heitkamp). The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Madam President, I wish to begin by expressing my
appreciation and admiration to the personnel who serve in our
intelligence agencies, including the CIA, who are out there every day
defending our Nation.
I have read the executive summary and I also have been briefed on the
entirety of this report. I rise in support of the release--the long-
delayed release--of the Senate Intelligence Committee's summarized
unclassified review of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques
that were employed by the previous administration to extract
information from captured terrorists. It is a thorough and thoughtful
study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose to
secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the United
States and our allies, but actually damaged our security interests as
well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.
I believe the American people have a right--indeed a responsibility--
to know what was done in their name, how these practices did or did not
serve our interests, and how they comported with our most important
values.
I commend Chairwoman Feinstein and her staff for their diligence in
seeking a truthful accounting of policies I hope we will never resort
to
[[Page S6411]]
again. I thank them for persevering against persistent opposition from
many members of the intelligence community, from officials in two
administrations, and from some of our colleagues.
The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us
difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in
attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it
nonetheless. They must know when the values that define our Nation are
intentionally disregarded by our security policies, even those policies
that are conducted in secret. They must be able to make informed
judgments about whether those policies and the personnel who supported
them were justified in compromising our values, whether they served a
greater good, or whether, as I believe, they stained our national
honor, did much harm, and little practical good.
What were the policies? What was their purpose? Did they achieve it?
Did they make us safer, less safe, or did they make no difference? What
did they gain us? What did they cost us? What did they gain us? What
did they cost us? The American people need the answers to these
questions. Yes, some things must be kept from public disclosure to
protect clandestine operations, sources, and methods, but not the
answers to these questions. By providing them, the committee has
empowered the American people to come to their own decisions about
whether we should have employed such practices in the past and whether
we should consider permitting them in the future.
This report strengthens self-government and ultimately, I believe,
American security and stature in the world. I thank the committee for
that valuable public service.
I have long believed some of these practices amounted to torture as a
reasonable person would define it, especially but not only the practice
of waterboarding, which is a mock execution and an exquisite form of
torture. Its use was shameful and unnecessary, and, contrary to
assertions made by some of its defenders and as the committee's report
makes clear, it produced little useful intelligence to help us track
down the perpetrators of 9/11 or prevent new attacks and atrocities.
I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will
produce more bad than good intelligence. I know victims of torture will
offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors
will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their
torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their
suffering. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that
which most distinguishes us from our enemies--our belief that all
people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights which are
protected by international conventions the United States not only
joined but for the most part authored.
I know too that bad things happen in war. I know that in war good
people can feel obliged for good reasons to do things they would
normally object to and recoil from. I understand the reasons that
governed the decision to resort to these interrogation methods, and I
know that those who approved them and those who used them were
dedicated to securing justice for victims of terrorist attacks and to
protecting Americans from further harm. I know their responsibilities
were grave and urgent and the strain of their duty was onerous. I
respect their dedication, and I appreciate their dilemma. But I dispute
wholeheartedly that it was right for them to use these methods which
this report makes clear were neither in the best interests of justice,
nor our security, nor the ideals we have sacrificed so much blood and
treasure to defend.
The knowledge of torture's dubious efficacy and my moral objection to
the abuse of prisoners motivated my sponsorship of the Detainee
Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibits ``cruel, inhuman or degrading
treatment'' of captured combatants, whether they wear a nation's
uniform or not, and which passed the Senate by a vote of 90 to 9.
Subsequently, I successfully offered amendments to the Military
Commissions Act of 2006, which, among other things, prevented the
attempt to weaken Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and
broadened definitions in the War Crimes Act to make the future use of
waterboarding and other ``enhanced interrogation techniques''
punishable as war crimes.
There was considerable misinformation disseminated then about what
was and wasn't achieved using these methods in an effort to discourage
support for the legislation. There was a good amount of misinformation
used in 2011 to credit the use of these methods with the death of Osama
bin Laden. And there is, I fear, misinformation being used today to
prevent the release of this report, disputing its findings and warning
about the security consequences of their public disclosure.
Will the report's release cause outrage that leads to violence in
some parts of the Muslim world? Yes, I suppose that is possible and
perhaps likely. Sadly, violence needs little incentive in some quarters
of the world today. But that doesn't mean we will be telling the world
something it will be shocked to learn. The entire world already knows
we waterboarded prisoners. It knows we subjected prisoners to various
other types of degrading treatment. It knows we used black sites,
secret prisons. Those practices haven't been a secret for a decade.
Terrorists might use the report's reidentification of the practices as
an excuse to attack Americans, but they hardly need an excuse for that.
That has been their life's calling for a while now.
What might come as a surprise not just to our enemies but to many
Americans is how little these practices did aid our efforts to bring 9/
11 culprits to justice and to find and prevent terrorist attacks today
and tomorrow. That could be a real surprise since it contradicts the
many assurances provided by intelligence officials on the record and in
private that enhanced interrogation techniques were indispensable in
the war against terrorism. And I suspect the objection of those same
officials to the release of this report is really focused on that
disclosure--torture's ineffectiveness--because we gave up much in the
expectation that torture would make us safer--too much.
Obviously, we need intelligence to defeat our enemies, but we need
reliable intelligence. Torture produces more misleading information
than actionable intelligence. And what the advocates of harsh and cruel
interrogation methods have never established is that we couldn't have
gathered as good or more reliable intelligence from using humane
methods.
The most important lead we got in the search for bin Laden came from
using conventional interrogation methods. I think it is an insult to
the many intelligence officers who have acquired good intelligence
without hurting or degrading prisoners to assert that we can't win
these wars without such methods. Yes, we can, and we will.
But in the end torture's failure to serve its intended purpose isn't
the main reason to oppose its use. I have often said and I will always
maintain that this question isn't about our enemies; it is about us. It
is about who we were, who we are, and who we aspire to be. It is about
how we represent ourselves to the world.
We have made our way in this often dangerous and cruel world not by
just strictly pursuing our geopolitical interests but by exemplifying
our political values and influencing other nations to embrace them.
When we fight to defend our security, we fight also for an idea--not
for a tribe or a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion or for a
King but for an idea that all men are endowed by the Creator with
inalienable rights. How much safer the world would be if all nations
believed the same. How much more dangerous it can become when we forget
it ourselves, even momentarily.
Our enemies act without conscience. We must not. This executive
summary of the committee's report makes clear that acting without
conscience isn't necessary. It isn't even helpful in winning this
strange and long war we are fighting. We should be grateful to have
that truth affirmed.
Now, let us reassert the contrary proposition: that is it essential
to our success in this war that we ask those who fight it for us to
remember at all times that they are defending a sacred ideal of how
nations should be governed and conduct their relations with others--
even our enemies.
Those of us who give them this duty are obliged by history, by our
Nation's highest ideals and the many terrible sacrifices made to
protect them, by our respect for human dignity, to make
[[Page S6412]]
clear we need not risk our national honor to prevail in this or any
war. We need only remember in the worst of times, through the chaos and
terror of war, when facing cruelty, suffering, and loss, that we are
always Americans and different, stronger, and better than those who
would destroy us.
Madam President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent to speak in
a seated position.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Madam President, I come to the floor to wholly
support the comments of my colleagues, the Senator from California and
the Senator from Arizona, to speak about a matter of great importance
to me personally but more importantly to the country.
The Senate Intelligence Committee's entire study of the CIA's
detention and interrogation program--I will just call it the program--
is the most in-depth, the most substantive oversight initiative the
committee has ever taken. I doubt any committee has done more than
this. It presents extremely valuable insights into crucial oversight
questions and problems that need to be addressed by the CIA.
Moreover, this study exemplifies why this committee was created in
the first place following the findings of the Church Committee nearly
40 years ago, and I commend my friend and the committee's leader, the
Senator from California, for shepherding this landmark initiative to
this point. For years, often behind closed doors, without any
recognition, she has been a strong and tireless advocate, and she
deserves our thanks and recognition.
It is my hope and expectation that beyond the initial release of the
executive summary and findings and conclusions, that the entire 6,800
pages, with 37,500 footnotes, will eventually be made public--and I am
sure it will--with the appropriate redactions. Those public findings
will be critical to fully learning the necessary lessons from this dark
episode in our Nation's history and to ensure that it never happens
again. It has been a very long, very hard fight to get to this point.
Especially in the early years of the CIA's detention program, it was a
struggle for the committee to get the most basic information or any
information at all about the program.
The committee's study of the detention and interrogation program is
not just the story of the brutal and ill-conceived program itself; this
study is also the story of the breakdown in our system of governance
that allowed the country to deviate in such a significant and horrific
way from our core principles. One of the profound ways that breakdown
happened was through the active subversion of meaningful congressional
oversight--a theme mirrored in the Bush administration's warrantless
wiretapping program during that same period.
I first learned about some aspects of the CIA's detention and
interrogation program in 2003 when I became vice chair of the
committee. At that point and for years after, the CIA refused to
provide me or anybody else with any additional information about the
program. They further refused to notify the full committee about the
program's existence. My colleagues will remember there was always the
Gang of 4, the Gang of 6, or the Gang of 8. They would take the
chairman and vice chairman, take them to the White House, give them a
flip chart, 45 minutes for the Vice President, and off he would go.
Senator Roberts and I went down by car and were instructed we couldn't
talk to each other on the way back from one of those meetings. It was
absurd. They refused to do anything to be of assistance.
The briefings I received provided little or no insight into the CIA's
program. Questions or followup requests were rejected, and at times I
was not allowed to consult with my counsel. I am not a lawyer. There
are legal matters involved here. They said we couldn't talk to any of
our staff, legal counsel or not, or other members of the committee who
knew nothing about this because they had not been informed at all.
It was clear these briefings were not meant to answer any questions
but were intended only to provide cover for the administration and the
CIA. It was infuriating to me to realize I was part of a box checking
exercise that the administration planned to use, and later did use, so
they could disingenuously claim they had--in a phrase I will never be
able to forget--``fully briefed Congress.''
In the years that followed I fought and lost many battles to obtain
credible information about the detention and interrogation program. As
vice chair I tried to launch, as has been mentioned, a comprehensive
investigation into the program, but that effort was blocked.
Later in 2005, when I fought for access to over 100 specific
documents cited in the inspector general report, the CIA refused to
cooperate.
The first time the full Senate Intelligence Committee was given any
information about this detention program was September 2006. This was
years after the program's inception and the same day the President
informed the Nation.
The following year when I became chairman, the vice chairman, Kit
Bond, and I agreed to push for significant additional access to the
program. For heaven's sake, at least allow both the Senate Intelligence
Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, on a full basis, to be
informed about this and also to include our staff's counsel on these
matters. We finally actually prevailed and got this access. I think I
withheld something from them until they agreed to do that which enabled
us to have much-needed hearings on the program, which we proceeded to
do.
As chairman, I made sure we scrutinized it from every angle. However,
the challenge of getting accurate information from the CIA persisted.
It was during this period that the House and Senate considered the 2008
Intelligence Authorization Act and a potential provision that set the
Army Field Manual--which is the only way to go--as the standard for the
entire American Government, including the CIA. This would have
effectively ended the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, a term
eerily sanitized in bureaucratic jargon for what, in a number of cases,
amounted to torture.
As chairman, I knew the inclusion of the Army Field Manual provision
would jeopardize the entire bill. I thought it might bring it down.
People would think it was too soft or too radical or whatever, but I
was committed to seeing the bill signed into law. In the end, it was an
easy decision.
I supported including the provision to end the CIA's program because
it was the right thing to do. I did it because Congress needed to send
a clear signal that it did not stand by the Bush administration's
policy.
The House and Senate went on to pass the bill with bipartisan votes.
Although the Bush administration vetoed the bill to preserve its
ability to continue these practices, it was an important symbolic
moment.
In the same period, I also sent two committee staffers, as our
chairwoman has indicated, to begin reviewing cables at the CIA
regarding the agency's interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. I
firmly believed we had to review those cables, which are now the only
source of important historical information on this subject, because the
CIA destroyed its tapes of some of their interrogation sessions. The
CIA destroyed those tapes against the explicit direction from the White
House and the Director of National Intelligence.
The investigation that began in 2007 grew under Chairman Feinstein's
dedication and tremendous leadership into a full study of the CIA's
detention and interrogation program. The more the committee dug, the
more the committee found, and the results we uncovered are both
shocking and deeply troubling.
First, the detention and interrogation program was conceived by
people who were ignorant of the topic and made it up on the fly based
on the untested theories of contractors who had never met a terrorist
or conducted a real-world interrogation of any kind.
Second, it was executed by personnel with insufficient linguistic and
interrogation training and little, if any, real-world experience.
Moreover, the CIA was aware that some of these personnel had a
staggering array of personal and professional failings--enumerated by
the committee's chairman--including potentially criminal activity, that
should
[[Page S6413]]
have disqualified them immediately not only from being interrogators
but from being employed by the CIA or anybody in government.
Nevertheless, it was consistently represented that these
interrogators were professionalized and carefully vetted--their term--
and that became a part of the hollow legal justification of the entire
program.
Third, the program was managed incompetently by senior officials who
paid little or no attention to critical details. It was rife with
troubling personal and financial conflicts of interest among the small
group of the CIA officials and contractors who promoted and defended
it. Obviously it was in their interest to do so.
Fourth, as the chairman indicated, the program was physically very
severe, far more so than any of us outside the CIA ever knew. Although
waterboarding has received the most attention, there were other
techniques I personally believe--one in particular--that may have been
much worse.
Finally, its results were unclear at best, but it was presented to
the White House, the Department of Justice, the Congress, and the media
as a silver bullet that was indispensable to saving lives. That was
their mantra. In fact, it did not provide the intelligence it was
supposed to provide or the CIA argued that it did provide.
To be perfectly clear, these harsh techniques were not approved by
anyone ever for the low-bar standard of learning useful information
from detainees. These techniques were approved because the Bush
officials were told, and therefore believed, that these coercive
interrogations were absolutely necessary to elicit intelligence that
was unavailable by any other collection method and would save American
lives. That was simply not the case.
For me, personally, the arc of this story comprises more than a
decade of my 30 years of work in the Senate and one of the hardest
fights--I think the hardest fight--I have ever been through. Many of
the worst years were during the Bush administration.
However, I did not fully anticipate how hard these last few years
would be in this administration to get this summary declassified and to
tell the full story of what happened. Indeed, to my great frustration,
even after months of endless negotiations, significant aspects of the
story remain obscured by black ink.
I have great admiration for the President, and I am appreciative of
the leadership role he has taken to depart from the practices of the
Bush administration on these issues. His Executive order formally ended
the CIA's detention program practices, and that is a good example. It
is a great example.
It was, therefore, with deep disappointment that over the course of a
number of private meetings and conversations I came to feel that the
White House's strong deference to the CIA throughout this process has
at times worked at cross-purposes with the White House's stated
interest in transparency and has muddied what should be a clear and
unequivocal legacy on this issue.
While aspiring to be the most transparent administration in history,
this White House continues to quietly withhold from the committee more
than 9,000 documents related to the CIA's programs. I don't know why.
They won't say, and they won't produce.
In addition to strongly supporting the CIA's insistence on the
unprecedented redaction of fake names in the report, which obscures the
public's ability to understand the important connections which are so
important for weaving together the tapestry, the administration also
pushed for the redaction of information in the committee's study that
should not be classified, contradicting the administration's own
Executive order on classification.
Let me be clear.
That order clearly states that in no case shall information fail to
be declassified in order to conceal violations of law and efficiency or
administrative error or prevent embarrassment to a person,
organization, or agency.
In some instances, the White House asked not only that information be
redacted but that the redaction itself be removed so it would be
impossible for the reader to tell that something was already hidden.
Strange.
Given this, looking back, I am deeply disappointed, rather than
surprised, that even when the CIA inexplicably conducted an
unauthorized search of the committee's computer files and emails at an
offsite facility, which was potentially criminal, and even when it
became clear that the intent of the search was to suppress the
committee's awareness of an internal CIA review that corroborated parts
of the intelligence committee's study and contradicted public CIA
statements, the White House continued to support the CIA leadership,
and that support was unflinching.
Despite these frustrations, I have also seen how hard Chairman
Feinstein has fought against great odds, stubborn odds, protective
odds, mysterious odds, which are not really clear to me. I have tried
to support her thoughtful and determined efforts at every opportunity
to make sure as much as of the story can be told as possible, and I am
deeply proud of the product the committee ended up with.
Now it is time to move forward. For all of the misinformation,
incompetence, and brutality of the CIA's program, the committee's study
is not and must not be simply a backward-looking condemnation of the
past. The study presents a tremendous opportunity to develop forward-
looking lessons that must be central to all future activities.
The point has been made--I thoroughly agree--that the vast majority
of people who work at the CIA--and there are tens and tens of thousands
of them--do very good work and are working very hard and have
absolutely nothing to do with any of this. But if this report had not
been released, the country would have felt that everybody at the CIA--
and the world would have felt it--was involved in this program. It is
important to say that that was not the case. It was just 30 or 40
people at the top. Many of the people you see on television blasting
this report were intimately involved in carrying it out and setting it
up.
The CIA developed the detention program in a time of great fear,
anxiety, and unprecedented crisis. It is at these times of crisis when
we need sound judgment, excellence, and professionalism from the CIA
the most.
When mistakes are made, they call for self-reflection and scrutiny.
For that process to begin, we first have to make sure there is an
absolutely accurate public record of what happened. We are doing that.
The public release of the executive summary and findings and
conclusions is a tremendous and consequential step toward that end.
For some, I expect there will be the temptation to reject and cast
doubt, to trivialize, to attack or rationalize parts of the study that
are disturbing or are embarrassing. Indeed, the CIA program's dramatic
divergence from the standards that we hold ourselves to is hard to
reconcile. However, we must fight that shortsighted temptation to wish
away the gravity of what this study found.
How we deal with this opportunity to learn and improve will reflect
on the maturity of our democracy. As a country, we are strong enough to
bear the weight of the mistakes we have made. As an institution, so is
the Central Intelligence Agency. We must confront this dark period in
our recent history with honesty and critical introspection. We must
draw lessons, and we must apply those lessons as we move forward.
Although it may be uncomfortable at times, ultimately we will grow
stronger, and we will ensure that this never happens again.
I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Madam President, I know the time for recess for
caucus is approaching and I know there are other Members on the
Democratic side who want to speak. It is now time for a Member from the
Republican side to speak.
I ask unanimous consent that the recess be delayed for 5 minutes so
the distinguished Senator from South Carolina might speak.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is ordered.
The Senator from South Carolina.
Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you very much. I have been a military lawyer for
over 30 years. That has been one of the highlights of my life--to serve
in the Air Force. During the debate about these
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techniques, I was very proud of the fact that every military lawyer
came out on the side that the techniques in question were not who we
are and what we want to be.
We are one of the leading voices of the Geneva Convention. We have
stood by the Geneva Convention since its inception. I am convinced that
the techniques in question violate the Geneva Convention. I am also
convinced that they were motivated by fear, fear of another attack. Put
yourself in the shoes of the people responsible for defending the
country right after 9/11. We had been hit. We had been hit hard.
Everybody thought something else was coming.
As we rounded these guys up, there was a sense of urgency and a
commitment to never let it happen again that generated this program.
Who knew what, when? I do not know. All I can tell you is the people
involved believed they were trying to defend the country and what they
were doing was necessary. Did they get some good information? Probably
so. Has it been a net loser for us as a country? Absolutely so. All I
can say is the techniques in question were motivated by fear of another
attack, and people at the time thought this was the best way to defend
the Nation. I accept that on their part.
But as a nation, I hope we have learned the following: In this
ideological struggle, good versus evil, we need to choose good. There
is no shortage of people who will cut your head off. The techniques in
question are nowhere near what the enemies of this Nation and radical
Islam would do to people under their control. There is no comparison.
The comparison is between who we are and what we want to be. In that
regard, we made a mistake. No one is going to jail because they should
not, because the laws in question--the laws that existed at the time of
this program--were, to be generous, vague.
I spent about a year of my life with Senator McCain working with the
Bush administration and colleagues on the Democratic side to come up
with the Detainee Treatment Act which clearly puts people on notice of
what you can and cannot do. Going forward we fixed this problem. How do
I know it is a problem? I travel. I go to the Mideast a lot. I go all
over the world. It was a problem for us. Whether we like it or not, we
are seen as the good guys. I like it.
Sometimes good people make mistakes. We have corrected the problem.
We have interrogation techniques now that I think can protect the
Nation and are within our values. The one thing I want to stress to my
colleagues is that this is a war of an ideological nature. There will
be no capital to conquer. We are not going to take Tokyo. We are not
going to take Berlin. There is no air force to shoot down; there is no
navy to sink. You are fighting a radical extreme ideology that is
motivated by hate. In their world, if you do not agree with their
religion, you are no longer a human being.
The only way we can possibly defeat this ideology is to offer
something better. The good news for us is that we stand for something
better. We stand for due process. We stand for humane treatment. We
stand for the ability to have a say when you are accused of something.
Our enemies stand for none of that. That is their greatest weakness.
Our greatest strength is to offer a better way.
When you go to Anbar Province and you go to other places in the
Mideast that have experienced life under ISIS--ISIL--and Al Qaeda, the
reaction has almost been universal: We do not like this. When America
comes over the hill, and they see that flag, they know help is on the
way.
To the CIA officers who serve in the shadows, who intermingle with
the most notorious in the world, who are always away from home never
knowing if you are going back: Thank you. There is a debate about
whether this report is accurate line by line. I do not know. Is this
the definitive answer to the program's problems? I do not know, but I
do know the program hurt our country.
Those days are behind us. The good guys air their dirty laundry. I
wished we had waited because the world is in such a volatile shape
right now. I do fear this report will be used by our enemies. But I
guess there is no good time to do things like this.
So to those who helped prepare the report, I understand where you are
coming from. To those on my side who believe that we have gone too far,
I understand that too. But this has always been easy for me. I have
been too associated with the subject matter for too long. Every time
our Nation cuts a corner, and every time we act out of fear and abandon
who we are, we always regret it. That has happened forever. This is a
step toward righting a wrong. To our enemies: Take no comfort from the
fact that we have changed our program. We are committed to your demise.
We are committed to your incarceration and killing you on the
battlefield, if necessary.
To our friends, because we choose a different path, do not mistake
that for weakness. What we are doing today is not a sign of weakness.
It is a sign of the ultimate strength--that you can self correct, that
you can reevaluate and you can do some soul searching, and you can come
out with a better product. The tools available to our intelligence
community today over time will yield better results, more reliable
results. The example we are setting will, over time, change the world.
To defeat radical Islam you have to show separation. Today is a
commitment to show separation. The techniques they employ to impose
their will have been used for thousands of years. They are always, over
time, rejected. The values we stand for--tolerance, humane treatment of
everyone; whether you agree with them or not--have also stood the test
of time. Over time, we will win, and they will lose. Today is about
making that time period shorter. The sooner America can reattach itself
to who she is, the worse off the enemy will be.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska.
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