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Senate torture report: six top findings

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday released an executive summary of its investigation into the Central Intelligence Agency’s detention and interrogation program – an investigation launched in 2009 after lawmakers learned that the CIA had destroyed videotapes of detainee interrogations. Here are six top findings in the report.

5. The conditions in which detainees were held were far worse than what CIA told Congress

  • By Anna Mulrine Staff writer

The detention sites were “especially bleak early in the program,” the report said, and included completely dark cells where people were shackled next to a bucket to use for a bathroom and were blasted with loud music and noise. Lack of heat in one center “likely contributed” to the death of at least one detainee.

Detainees were subjected to “rough takedowns,” in which five CIA officers “would scream at a detainee, drag him outside of his cell, cut his clothes off, and secure him with Mylar tape.” The report continued, “The detainee would then be hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched.”

This, coupled with extended solitary confinement, inflicted extreme harm on people, including “hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation,” the report concluded. “Multiple psychologists identified the lack of human contact experienced by detainees as a cause of psychiatric problems.”

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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