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Al Jazeera America
After a long and drawn-out process involving multiple branches of the U.S. government, the summary of an exhaustive report detailing Bush-era CIA detention and interrogation policies is anticipated to be released on Tuesday. The report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) examines the CIA’s use of torture after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and looks at the efficacy of such intelligence-gathering methods.The report, which cost the federal government more than $40 million to produce, is said to cast doubt on intelligence gains gleaned from an interrogation program that embraced torture.
The CIA has fiercely debated the report’s conclusions, and the Obama administration has warned that its public disclosure could prove embarrassing for the U.S. and even compromise its policy positions.
In 2009, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13491, outlawing torture. However, he has frequently expressed his disinterest in re-examining its past use — choosing instead to “look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
The Guardian
The CIA is bracing for what could be one of the most damaging moments in its history: a public airing of its post-9/11 embrace of torture.The Senate intelligence committee is poised to release a landmark inquiry into torture as early as Tuesday, even as the Obama administration has made a last-ditch effort to suppress a report that has plunged relations between the CIA and its Senate overseer to a historic low point.
The release of the torture report will represent the third major airing of faulty CIA intelligence in 15 years, following official commissions into the 9/11 plot and Saddam Hussein’s defunct illicit weapons programs.
Despite months of negotiation over how much of the 6,000-page report will be declassified, most of its findings will never see the light of the day. But even a partial release of the report will yield a furious response from the CIA and its allies.
On Sunday, George W Bush made a show of support for CIA operatives who had participated in torture, calling them “patriots”.
CNN
Washington (CNN) -- Thousands of Marines have been put on a higher state of alert around the world in advance of the anticipated release of a Senate report on coercive interrogation techniques as a precaution, a U.S. defense official tells CNN.White House spokesman Josh Earnest at the briefing Monday said the Senate committee has told them they will release the enhanced interrogation report Tuesday.
The Marines are all part of contingency response forces positioned in key areas to respond to a crisis. The alert status means the units are put on a shorter readiness time to be available and capable of deploying to a crisis such as an embassy or U.S. base coming under threat. Those exact warning times remain classified, but the Marines can be able of deploying within just a few hours of being notified.
New York Times
WASHINGTON — A long-awaited Senate report condemning torture by the Central Intelligence Agency has not even been made public yet, but former President George W. Bush’s team has decided to link arms with former intelligence officials and challenge its conclusions.The report is said to assert that the C.I.A. misled Mr. Bush and his White House about the nature, extent and results of brutal techniques like waterboarding, and some of his former administration officials privately suggested seizing on that to distance themselves from the controversial program, according to people involved in the discussion. But Mr. Bush and his closest advisers decided that “we’re going to want to stand behind these guys,” as one former official put it.
Senate Panel Faces New Obstacle to Release of Torture ReportDEC. 5, 2014
Mr. Bush made that clear in an interview broadcast on Sunday. “We’re fortunate to have men and women who work hard at the C.I.A. serving on our behalf,” he told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contributions to our country, it is way off base.”
Reuters
Graphic details about sexual threats and other harsh interrogation techniques the CIA meted out to captured militants will be detailed by a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the spy agency's anti-terror tactics, sources familiar with the document said.The report, which the committee's majority Democrats are expected to release on Tuesday, describes how senior al Qaeda operative Abdel Rahman al Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened by his interrogators with a buzzing power drill, the sources said. The drill was never actually used on Nashiri.
In another instance, the report documents how at least one detainee was sexually threatened with a broomstick, the sources said.