Hypothermia, Broken Limbs, and Rectal Feeding: Details from the CIA Torture Report
One prisoner at a CIA black site froze to death. Others were forced to stand on broken feet, threatened sexually with broomsticks, or subjected to “rectal feeding” for no apparent medical reason. The Senate Intelligence Committee released those details and more Tuesday in the 500-page executive summary of its report on the CIA’s Bush-era “enhanced interrogation” program.
Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein unveiled the long-awaited, long-delayed report by the Senate Intelligence Committee on the CIA’s now-discontinued “Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation” program this morning, calling it a “stain on our country and our values.”
The controversial 6,700-page report describes, among other things, detainees being kept in a dark, freezing, dungeon-like prison, being kept awake for up to 180 hours at a time, and being subjected to “near-drowning” over and over. The three-year Senate investigation concluded the “brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values” were not effective in prying intelligence from detainees.
The report also found that the CIA misled the public, the White House and Congress on both the brutality of the program and its effectiveness.
"The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting," the report states. "Abu Zubaydah, for example, became ‘completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.’ Internal CIA records describe the waterboarding of Khalid Shaykh Mohammad as evolving in to a ‘series of near drownings.’"
CIA interrogators threatened detainees with broomsticks and power drills and threatened to rape and kill detainees’ mothers. Other detainees with broken feet and legs were subjected to stress positions for extended periods of time.