U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes
By SCOTT SHANE --- Published: April 16, 2013
WASHINGTON — A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the
practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.
The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before
had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president
and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our
custody.” The study, by an 11-member panel convened by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group,
is to be released on Tuesday morning.
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The use of torture, the report concludes, has “no justification” and “damaged the standing of our nation, reduced our
capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel
taken captive.” The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods produced
valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While “a person subjected to torture might
well divulge useful information,” much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says.Interrogation
and abuse at the C.I.A.’s so-called black sites, the Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba and war-zone detention centers,
have been described in considerable detail by the news media and in declassified documents, though the Constitution
Project report adds many new details.
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