The United States was last night confronted with a landmark report into the CIA interrogation of detainees in the wake of the September 11 attacks at “black site” prisons around the world so replete with details of barbarism and inhumane treatment as to call into question the values at the core of the nation’s identity.
The 528-page document, released by the Senate Intelligence Committee and itself a summary of a 6,000-page report that remains classified, accused the agency of going far beyond even those “enhanced techniques” authorised by the Justice Department and lying at every turn about what was happening.
“The CIA’s actions are a stain on our values and on our history,” the committee’s chair, Senator Dianne Feinstein, proclaimed on the floor of the Senate. But she posited also: “The release of this 500-page summary cannot remove that stain, but it can and does say to our people and the world that America is big enough to admit when it’s wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes”, Independent informs.
