The CIA is Found Guilty of Torture

Top takeaways from the CIA torture report By Jeremy Diamond

The Senate Intelligence Committee released their 525 page summary that assessed the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the post-9/11 era. One of the reports biggest conclusions found that the CIA's "enhanced interrogation" included torture. The CIA claimed in its defense that the coercive interrogations "saved lives", but the Senate committee refutes this claim in its report. The committee also found that the enhanced interrogation did not accurately obtain information. There was false confessions obtained during these interrogations that lead the CIA to pursue dead ends. The report went on to disclaim 20 examples that the CIA used to defend their enhanced interrogation program. Some other conclusions of the report included that torture did not help the CIA find Osama bin Laden, there has been a death of a detainee after being chained naked to a concrete floor, the CIA misled the White House, Congress, and other agencies, and two government psychologists started a company that brought in $81 million on interrogations.


The Senate Intelligence Committee's report will have drastic impacts on how the CIA will conduct its interrogations in the future. Also the report covered multiple issues, so there will be reform in many areas of the CIA. I think that it is good that the information is coming out and the CIA is being held responsible. I am surprised it took this long for the report to come about, and I am interested in what action Congress or the committee will do from this point on.