The United States has ordered its embassies and military units abroad on high alert just as the Senate was preparing to release a damning report on the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques in overseas facilities after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on America.
The report was expected to provide details about the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques under the Bush administration, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation and use of stress positions that have been slammed by human rights groups as torture.
Conceding that the Senate action detailing the CIA methods could place American nationals and facilities at a greater risk abroad, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the administration has taken steps to ensure security precautions at US facilities around the world.
The proposed action, detailing as it does the much-denounced CIA procedures under the Bush administration, has pitted the Democrats against the Republicans. It would be one of the last major acts of the Democrat-controlled Senate just a month before Republicans assume charge of both Houses of Congress.
President Obama himself has gone on record in the past, commenting” “We tortured some folks.” As spokesman Earnest put it, “the President believes that the use of those tactics was unwarranted, that they were inconsistent with our values and did not make us safer.” Obama also felt the methods did not enhance America’s security interests. The Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by California Senator Dianne Feinstein, is expected to release a redacted 480-page executive summary of a report running into more than 6,000 pages.
Republicans have warned the Senate panel and the Obama administration against the release of the report, stating that it could trigger “violence and deaths” abroad. Republican lawmaker Mike Rogers said the CIA interrogations, conducted a decade ago, would be used by extremists to incite a new wave of violence.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney also attacked the Democrats’ plan to release the report, saying in an interview that the harsh interrogations a decade ago were “absolutely, totally justified”. He dismissed allegations that the agency withheld information from the White House or inflated the value of its methods.
In the run-up to the planned release of the report, Secretary of State John Kerry urged Senator Feinstein to consider the timing, but the latter indicated she would press ahead with her plan, saying: “We have to get this report out.”