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 Both congressional and intelligence officials confirmed that the
CIA continues to dispute significant aspects of a draft of the
report which the Senate committee approved a year ago. It runs to
thousands of pages and remains highly classified.
The dispute — and revelations by former government contractor Edward
Snowden about sweeping electronic surveillance by the National
Security Agency — have sparked political debate over whether
congressional oversight of U.S. spy agencies is effective enough.
Four years ago, after President Barack Obama took office, the Senate
Intelligence Committee, chaired by Democrat Dianne Feinstein,
launched a sweeping investigation into Bush administration
practices, reviewing millions of pages of ultra-secret reports
documenting the handling of militants.
However, as criminal investigations related to CIA interrogations
were continuing, the committee did not interview key witnesses,
including CIA officials involved in the agency activities. This
prompted some agency supporters to question the Senate report's
balance.
Over the past year, the CIA laid out its concerns about the Senate
committee report in written submissions and meetings with committee
officials.
"We are in the very final stages of incorporating some of the CIA's
response into the report, though the key findings and conclusions
remain highly critical of the CIA's past detention and interrogation
activities," Feinstein said in a statement.
Committee aides said the panel hoped to finish work on an updated
version of the report, taking note of CIA comments, by the end of
the year. The committee could then vote to request declassification,
which would allow the public to see the report, or at least parts of
it.
Disagreements between the CIA and the Democratic majority on the
committee, who conducted much of their inquiry without committee
Republicans' involvement, appear to be profound.
Officials familiar with the draft report said committee
investigators' made highly critical assessments of the value of
controversial practices like the creation of "secret prisons"
overseas where harsh interrogation techniques, including
"waterboarding" and sleep deprivation, were used on captured
militants.
LITTLE INTELLIGENCE GAINED
Committee Democrats have concluded that the CIA obtained little or
no critical intelligence from the use of secret prisons and harsh
interrogations tactics, which human rights advocates characterize as
torture.
"Clandestine 'black sites' and coercive interrogation techniques
were terrible mistakes that damaged our reputation, angered our
allies and did not produce actionable intelligence that was not
achievable through non-coercive tactics," Feinstein said.
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Harsh interrogation methods were used on some of the most
high-profile militants captured by the United States after the
September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington.
They were disowned and condemned by the Obama administration after
the president took office in 2009.
Officials said the Senate committee report acknowledges that the use
by the Bush-era CIA of a practice known as "rendition" — in which
captured militants were transferred without legal process by the CIA
to third countries where they were often mistreated — did produce
useful intelligence.
The Obama administration has not renounced the use of rendition and
has used the CIA to facilitate extrajudicial transfers of captured
militants for questioning by U.S. personnel and processing in the
U.S. judicial system.
U.S. officials said the CIA's view is that the Senate committee is
wrong to assert that harsh interrogations and the secret prison
program produced no intelligence which proved useful in exposing
dangerous militants or terrorist plots.
The CIA's current director, John Brennan, was a senior agency
official when the harshest CIA tactics were in use. Officials said
that in closed-door meetings with Congress, he complained the Senate
report contained major inaccuracies.
The CIA confirmed that it disputed committee findings.
"Our response agreed with a number of the study's findings, but also
detailed significant errors in the study. Since that time, CIA and
Committee staff have had extensive dialogue on this issue and the
Agency is prepared to work with the Committee to determine the best
way forward on potential declassification," said CIA spokesman Dean
Boyd.
The agency's reservations about the committee inquiry were echoed by
Senator Saxby Chambliss, the committee's top Republican. "I believe
that this study is significantly flawed and does not accurately
portray history. Therefore, the committee should not pursue to
de-classify the study," Chambliss said.
(Reporting by Mark Hosenball; editing by Alistair Bell, Cynthia Osterman and Eric Beech)
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