A LONG-AWAITED report from the Senate Intelligence Committee on CIA interrogation tactics, including torture, in the years after the September 11 attack was released on Tuesday December 9.
The full report which contains a 600-page executive summary from the Democratic majority led by committee chair, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California.
It has been declassified after months of disputes between the committee and the CIA over redactions.
There have been months of conflict between the CIA and the committee.
An infuriated Feinstein clashed with the CIA in March.
She took to the Senate floor and accused the spy agency of searching Senate computers.
She suggested that the CIA had violated the Constitution and undermined the separation of powers.
A Republican minority report is also set to be released, as well as a rebuttal from the CIA.
Representative, Mike Rogers, R-Mich and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN that US intelligence officials believe that the report’s release will cause ‘violence and deaths’.
He told ABC News that it would be a public relations bonanza for ISIS.
Michael Hayden, who ran the CIA from 2006 to 2009, questioned the expected conclusions of the report.
“To say that we relentlessly, over an expanded period of time, lied to everyone about a programme that wasn’t doing any good that beggars the imagination,” he said on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’.
Bush weighed in Sunday in an interview with CNN and came down strongly on the side of his own CIA officials.
“We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the CIA, serving on our behalf,” he said.
“These are patriots.
“Whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contribution to our country, it is way off base.”
Revelations about CIA mistreatment of captive terrorism suspects have spurred worldwide revulsion and provided ammunition to foreign critics as it exposed the United States of a double standard on human rights at home and abroad.
Teng Jianqun, director of the Centre for Arms Control at the China Institute of International Studies, told CCTV that, “This will have a very negative impact on the image of the United States.”
He said US officials seek to present themselves as “the big boys on human rights affairs in the international community”, publishing evaluations of other countries’ behaviour while clandestinely engaging in ‘notorious’ actions of their own.
Teng described release of the report as evidence of the ‘struggle between the two parties’ after Democrats lost control of the Senate in last month’s mid-term elections and ‘tried to gain something’ by releasing the report on CIA excesses committed during the eight-year tenure of the Republican Bush.
Russia’s Sputnik news agency said in its report: “Interrogation techniques used against terror suspects by the US CIA were brutal and far worse than the agency presented to policy makers and the American public.”
At the United Nations human rights agency in Geneva, on the eve of International Human Rights Day, the world body welcomed the ‘belated’ publication on findings of the Senate investigation into “the crimes of torture and enforced disappearance of terrorist suspects by the Bush-era CIA”.
Ben Emmerson, special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights said: “It has taken four years since the report was finalised to reach this point, the individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.”
Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth said: “The report shows the repeated claims that harsh measures were needed to protect Americans are utter fiction,” and unless those responsible are made accountable, “torture will remain a ‘policy option’ for future presidents.”
Amnesty International director for the Americas, Erika Guevara Rosas, said: “This report provides yet more damning detail of some of the human rights violations that were authorised by the highest authorities in the USA after 9/11. “Despite much evidence having been in the public realm for years, no one has been brought to justice for authorising or carrying out the acts in these CIA programs.”
Britain’s Guardian newspaper called the report a ‘milestone’ in revealing the extent of ‘brutal and ineffective’ torture practices that the agency repeatedly lied about.
“Winning the crown for Most Appalling Human Rights Record in the Western world could be a tough tournament following the release of the CIA torture report,” wrote Sydney Morning Herald columnist Andrew P. Street.
Britain’s Independent newspaper began its report on the details released on interrogation practices by lamenting: “The CIA still refuses to acknowledge them as torture.”
China’s news agency Xinhua said in an editorial on Tuesday that the United States should deal with its controversial human rights record before criticising other countries’ domestic policy issues.
“Perhaps the US government should clean up its own backyard first and respect the rights of other countries to resolve their issues by themselves.”
The editorial piece also lamented: “People rarely hear the US talking about its own problems”, but rather Washington focused on the issues it sees in other countries, including China.