Resolution to Discourage the Future Use of Torture in Intelligence Gathering and to Encourage the Release of the Full Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Regarding the Use of Torture in the Bush-Cheney Administration
Dr. Steven Ferber PhD., Arlington Democrats, with Amnesty International - Arlington Chapter
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report regarding the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) Detention and Interrogation Program is a 6,700 page document that details the CIA’s use of morally abhorrent and horrific acts of torture160. Acts of torture described in the report include waterboarding to the point of inducing convulsion and vomiting, a practice that President Theodore Roosevelt witnessed in the Philippines and clearly branded as torture161. One detainee was chained, partly unclothed, to a concrete floor and left to die of hypothermia. Others were stripped, hooded, bound with Mylar tape, given medically unnecessary rectal feedings, and dragged through corridors while being physically abused. The CIA placed detainees in ice water “baths” to induce hypothermia and threatened to sexually abuse or otherwise harm the family members of detainees162.
The Report is the product of a multi-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee conducted into the CIA's torture program. In addition to describing the immoral brutality of the program, it also shows that torture often failed to produce intelligence or produced false information. In a public response to the Report, CIA Director Brennan himself admitted that the CIA did not know whether torture had produced any useful intelligence163. Further, the Report shows that the CIA repeatedly misled Congress, the President, and the Department of Justice about the extent, severity, and outcomes of the torture program164. The entire program was developed and overseen by a pair of psychologists without any background in interrogation who were paid over 80 million dollars for their “expertise” and “results”.165
Most of the 6,700 page Torture Report is classified and has never been shared with the American people. Instead a 525 page Executive summary of the Intelligence Report was declassified (highly redacted) and released in 2014. The investigation into CIA torture had bipartisan support from the time it began through the release of the declassified summary. Republicans and Democrats alike were horrified by the brutality the CIA inflicted upon its prisoners.
President Trump has expressed an interest in torturing prisoners, in his words, "even if it doesn't work." Trump has also been on the record as saying, "Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your a** I’d approve it...Does it work? Does torture work? And the answer was yes. Absolutely.”166 We have a responsibility to ensure that our fellow citizens hear about both the brutality and ineffectiveness of the torture program, and that we make clear to our politicians that it was wrong. We will lose something irrecoverable if we allow torture to become accepted by our society.
After the Senate Intelligence Committee finished investigating the torture program, Senators John McCain and Dianne Feinstein led a bipartisan coalition of Senators to pass a law mandating that all CIA interrogations adhere to the humane standards in the Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations167. The same law also provides the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all detainees.
The McCain-Feinstein law provides an important bulwark against the return of CIA torture. That being said, the current President supports the use of torture and his CIA Director, Gina Haspel, reportedly ran a secret CIA “black site” in Thailand where some of these abuses took place and facilitated the destruction of 92 videotapes of torture that occurred there.
Congress should act to ensure that unethical lawyers don't again skew the law to allow for torture by releasing the full 6,000 page Torture Report, requiring that all interrogations be videotaped, and banning the use of contractors in interrogations.
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the 2020 8th Congressional District Democratic Convention calls on US Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine to renew their efforts to have the full, unredacted Intelligence Report released to the American public and strengthen protections against the use of torture to collect information from intelligence informants by requiring that all interrogations be videotaped and banning the use of contractors in interrogations.
160 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY’S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf
161 NPR: Waterboarding: A Tortured HIstory https://www.npr.org/2007/11/03/15886834/waterboarding-a-tortured-history
162Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study: CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY’S DETENTION AND INTERROGATION PROGRAM https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/CRPT-113srpt288.pdf
163 Wall Street Journal: CIA Chief Agrees Some Methods Were Abhorrent, Defends Agency
https://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-director-brennan-addresses-critical-interrogation-report-1418323857
164 The Guardian: Dianne Feinstein statement on CIA torture report 'cover-up' – full text
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/11/dianne-feinstein-cia-senate-statement-full-text
165 Amnesty USA: https://www.amnestyusa.org/pdfs/sscistudy1.pdf
166 CNN: Donald Trump: Torture “aboslutely works” -- but does it? https://www.cnn.com/2017/01/26/politics/donald-trump-torture-waterboarding/index.html 167 Center for Victims of Torture: McCain-Feinstein Amendment
https://www.cvt.org/sites/default/files/attachments/u11/downloads/McCain-Feinstein%20Amendment%20Factsheet_November% 202015.pdf