US bases, embassies prepare for violence

Executive summary excoriates the CIA

Tribune News Service

WASHINGTON

U.S. forces and diplomatic missions overseas braced Monday for the release of the public version of a long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report into the CIA’s use of torture after a U.S. intelligence community warning of a “heightened potential” for a “violent response,” U.S. officials said.

The report’s roughly 500-page executive summary, which the White House said would be unveiled today, excoriates the CIA, concluding that it didn’t gain significant intelligence or the cooperation of detainees by using the harsh interrogation methods, had wrongly subjected some people to the procedures and misled the White House and Congress about the results.

The Democrat-led committee’s conclusions are being fiercely disputed by current and former CIA officials, former President George W. Bush and senior officials of his administration, and some lawmakers, mostly Republicans.

They contend that the program produced valuable information that disrupted terror plots and led to the capture of key al-Qaida operatives.

“We did what we were asked to do, we did what we were assured was legal. And we know our actions were effective,” Jose Rodriguez, the former senior CIA official who oversaw the program, wrote in an op-ed piece published Sunday in The Washington Post.

The committee voted in December 2012 to approve a final draft of a 6,300-page classified version of the report and an executive summary, findings and conclusions for release to the public.

But the release was delayed by an uproar over CIA monitoring of the committee staff’s computers and a battle over administration demands to black out information that it contended could reveal the identities of undercover CIA officers and anger foreign governments.

The $40 million report sidesteps an assessment of the responsibility for abuses of Bush, who authorized the program, former Vice President Dick Cheney, a key advocate who closely monitored the interrogations, and other senior officials who played significant roles.

Even so, the executive summary of 20 case studies examined by the committee was expected to reveal new chilling details of the treatment of detainees that the panel’s chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., described as “un-American” and “brutal.”

“Everybody needs to know what happened and why it happened and how we never have to let this happen again,” said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former Navy pilot who was captured and tortured by the North Vietnamese and a fierce critic of the CIA program.

After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Bush authorized the CIA to use 10 harsh interrogation techniques on suspected al-Qaida terrorists who were abducted overseas and detained in secret “black site” prisons in foreign countries.

The methods, which were used from 2001 until 2006, included wall-slamming, confinement in a box, stress positions, sleep deprivation and waterboarding, a procedure that produces a sensation akin to drowning and is known to have been used on three detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

President Barack Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and other senior current and former U.S. officials, other governments and human-rights organizations have denounced the techniques as torture.

Minority Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA were expected to release separate rebuttals rejecting the findings shortly after the report is made public.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she would be releasing her own “additional views” critical of the way the investigation was conducted, including a decision not to interview CIA and other officials who were involved in the so-called Rendition, Detention and Interrogation Program.

“Although I voted for the release of the report and I believe the techniques are abhorrent and contrary to American values, I remain disappointed in the way the report and investigation were conducted,” Collins said.

In a recent assessment of the possible impact of the release of the executive summary, the U.S. intelligence community warned Congress and government departments that there could be a violent backlash, said a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“The IC [intelligence community] has an obligation and solemn duty to warn of the heightened potential that the release could stimulate a violent response,” said the senior U.S. intelligence official, who requested anonymity because the actual assessment is classified.

“We have shared the information with Congress and with our interagency partners for preparation and planning purposes.”

The Obama administration has been preparing for the executive summary’s release for months amid concerns for the security of U.S. facilities overseas, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest, who revealed that the document would be made public today.

“The administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place at U.S. facilities around the globe,” said Earnest. “But that said, the administration strongly supports the release.”