The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (57 page)

On December 5, 2007, the conference committee considering the Fiscal Year 2008 Intelligence Authorization bill voted to restrict the CIA’s interrogation techniques to those authorized by the Army Field Manual. Opponents of the provision referenced Director Hayden’s testimony on the effectiveness of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques in acquiring critical information.
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On December 6, 2007, the
New York Times
revealed that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of CIA interrogations in 2005.
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The CIA claimed that the Committee had been told about the destruction of the videotapes at a hearing in November 2006.
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A review of the Committee’s transcript of its November 16, 2006, hearing found that the CIA’s claim of notification was inaccurate. In fact, CIA witnesses testified at the hearing that the CIA did not videotape interrogations, while making no mention of past videotaping or the destruction of videotapes.
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At the CIA briefing to the Committee on December 11, 2007, Director Hayden testified about: (1) the information provided to the White House regarding the videotapes, (2) what the tapes revealed, (3) what was not on the tapes, (4) the reasons for their destruction, (5) the legal basis for the use of the waterboard, and (6) the effectiveness of the CIA’s waterboard interrogation technique. Much of this testimony was inaccurate or incomplete. Director Hayden also testified that what was on the destroyed videotapes was documented in CIA cables, and that the cables were “a more than adequate representation of the tapes.” Director Hayden committed the CIA to providing the Committee with access to the cables.
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On February 5, 2008, after the House of Representatives passed the conference report limiting CIA interrogations to techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual, Director Hayden testified in an open Committee hearing against the provision. Director Hayden also stated, inaccurately, that over the life of the CIA program, the CIA had detained fewer than 100 people.
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On February 13, 2008, the Senate passed the conference report.
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I. President Vetoes Legislation Based on Effectiveness Claims Provided by the CIA; CIA Declines to Answer Committee Questions for the Record About the CIA Interrogation Program

On March 8, 2008, President Bush vetoed the Intelligence Authorization bill. President Bush explained his decision to veto the bill in a radio broadcast that repeated CIA representations that the CIA interrogation program produced “critical intelligence” that prevented specific terrorist plots. As described in this summary, and in greater detail in Volume II, the statement reflected inaccurate information provided by the CIA to the president and other policymakers in CIA briefings.”
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Three days later, the House of Representatives failed to override the veto.
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On May 22, 2008, the CIA informed the Committee that the vetoed legislation “has had no impact on CIA policies concerning the use of EITs.”
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As noted, CIA Director Goss had previously testified to the Committee that “we cannot do it by ourselves,” and that “[w]e need to have the support of our oversight committee.”
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As further noted, the OLC’s 2007 memorandum applying the Military Commissions Act to the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques relied on the CIA’s representation that “none of the Members expressed the view that the CIA interrogation program should be stopped, or that the techniques at issue were inappropriate.”
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In June 2008, the CIA provided information to the Committee in response to a reporting requirement in the Fiscal Year 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act. The CIA response stated that all of the CIA’s interrogation techniques “were evaluated under the applicable U.S. law during the time of their use and were found by the Department of Justice to comply with those legal requirements.” This was inaccurate. Diapers, nudity, dietary manipulation, and water dousing were used extensively by the CIA prior to any Department of Justice review. As detailed in the full Committee Study, the response included additional information that was incongruent with the history of the program.
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On June 10, 2008, the Committee held a hearing on the Department of Justice memoranda relating to the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program, to which the Committee had recently been provided limited access.
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At the hearing, ██████ CTC Legal provided inaccurate information on several topics, including the use of sleep deprivation and its effects.
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Acting Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury also testified, noting that the Department of Justice deferred to the CIA with regard to the effectiveness of the CIA interrogation program.
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The Committee then submitted official Questions for the Record on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques and on the effectiveness of the program, including how the CIA assessed the effectiveness of its interrogation techniques for purposes of representations to the Department of Justice.
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The CIA prepared responses that included an acknowledgment that ██████ CTC Legal, ███████, had provided inaccurate information with regard to the “effectiveness” of the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques.
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The prepared responses were never provided to the Committee. Instead, on October 17, 2008, the CIA informed the Committee that it would not respond to the Committee’s Questions for the Record and that instead, the CIA was “available to provide additional briefings on this issue to Members as necessary.”
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In separate letters to Director Hayden, Chairman Rockefeller and Senator Feinstein referred to this refusal to respond to official Committee questions as “unprecedented and . . . simply unacceptable,”
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and “appalling.”
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The Committee’s scrutiny of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program continued through the remainder of 2008 and into the 111th Congress, in 2009. On February 11, 2009, the Committee held a business meeting at which Committee staff presented a memorandum on the content of the CIA operational cables detailing the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and ‘Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in 2002.
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CIA Director Hayden had allowed a small number of Committee staff to review the cables at CIA Headquarters, and as noted, had testified that the cables provided “a more than adequate representation” of what was on the destroyed CIA interrogation videotapes.
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The chairman stated that the Committee staff memorandum represented “the most comprehensive statement on the treatment of these two detainees, from the conditions of their detention and the nature of their interrogations to the intelligence produced and the thoughts of CIA officers and contractors in the field and Headquarters.”
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After the staff presentation, the vice chairman expressed his support for an expanded Committee investigation, stating, “we need to compare what was briefed to us by the Agency with what we find out, and we need to determine whether it was within the guidelines of the OLC, the MON, and the guidelines published by the Agency.”
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Other members of the Committee added their support for an expanded investigation, with one member stating, “these are extraordinarily serious matters and we ought to get to the bottom of it . . . to look at how it came to be that these techniques were used, what the legal underpinnings of these techniques were all about, and finally what these techniques meant in terms of effectiveness.”
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The Committee held two subsequent business meetings to consider and debate the terms of the Committee’s proposed expanded review of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. The first, on February 24, 2009, began with bipartisan support for a draft Terms of Reference.
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The Committee met again on March 5, 2009, to consider a revised Terms of Reference, which was approved by a vote of 14–1.
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On December 13, 2012, after a review of more than six million pages of records, the Committee approved a 6,300-page Study of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program.
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On April 3, 2014, by a bipartisan vote of 11–3, the Committee agreed to send the revised findings and conclusions, and an updated Executive Summary of the Committee Study to the president for declassification and public release.

Terms of Reference

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Study of the
Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program

Adopted March 5, 2009

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) detention and interrogation program consists of these terms of reference:

• A review of how the CIA created, operated, and maintained its detention and interrogation program, including a review of the locations of the facilities and any arrangements and agreements made by the CIA or other Intelligence Community officials with foreign entities in connection with the program.
  
• A review of Intelligence Community documents and records, including CIA operational cables, relating to the detention and interrogation of CIA detainees.
  
• A review of the CIA’s assessments that particular detainees possessed relevant information and how the assessments were made.
  
• An evaluation of the information acquired from the detainees including the periods during which enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) were administered.
  
• An evaluation of whether information provided to the Committee by the Intelligence Community adequately and accurately described the CIA’s detention and interrogation program as it was carried out in practice, including conditions of detention, such as personal hygiene and medical needs, and their effect on the EITs as applied.
  
• An evaluation of the information provided by the CIA to the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), including whether it accurately and adequately described:
  
  1. the implementation, effectiveness and expected effects of EITs;
     
  2. the value of information obtained through the use of EITs; and
     
  3. the threat environment at the time the EITs were being used or contemplated for use on CIA detainees.
     
• An evaluation of whether the CIA’s detention and interrogation program complied with:
  
  1. the authorizations in any relevant Presidential Findings and Memoranda of Notification;
     
  2. all relevant policy and legal guidance provided by the CIA; and
     
  3. the opinions issued by the OLC in relation to the use of EITs.
     
• A review of the information provided by the CIA or other Intelligence Community officials involved in the program about the CIA detention and interrogation program, including the location of facilities and approved interrogation techniques, to U.S. officials with national security responsibilities.
  

The Committee will use those tools of oversight necessary to complete a thorough review including, but not limited to, document reviews and requests, interviews, testimony at closed and open hearings, as appropriate, and preparation of findings and recommendations.