CIA ‘misled’ public on interrogation program

WASHINGTON - Reuters

The findings relate to CIA practices under former President George W Bush

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) misled the U.S. government and public for years about aspects of its brutal interrogation program, concealing details about harsh treatment of detainees and other issues, according to a report in the Washington Post.

U.S. officials who have seen a Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA interrogation program described damning new information about a network of secret detention facilities, also called “black sites,” the daily said. The Intelligence Committee is responsible for oversight of the CIA. It completed the 6,300-page draft report on the interrogation program more than a year ago but it remains classified.

At the “black sites,” prisoners were sometimes subjected to harsh interrogation techniques even when analysts were sure they had no more information to give. In March, Senator Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the CIA of searching computers used by committee staffers compiling the report and she questioned whether the agency had broken the law in doing so.