The CIA Lied to Congress Repeatedly About the Use of Torture

The CIA lied to Congress and the American people about the brutal interrogation methods it used during the Bush administration.

The agency lied about the severity of the torture it inflicted on detainees, as well as the quality of information that these methods garnered.

Why?

Why would the CIA want to torture people, even if it wasn’t effective? The answer to that probably goes back decades and is intertwined with areas of activity that our government has engaged in that the American people know very little about.

Something as monstrous as the government-sanctioned use of torture doesn’t spring fully grown from the head of the government Zeus. It grows through long years of mortal compromises, piled one on top the other. One of the many disturbing things about all this is that only the lowest level people involved have ever, or will probably ever, be brought to anything resembling justice.

From The Washington Post:

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.