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Published on December 17, 2014
This is an excerpt from a radio interview on NPR
The Senate Intelligence Committee released a report Tuesday on the interrogation techniques used by the CIA after 9/11. The report has elicited a number of sharply differing perspectives.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST: This is a WEEKEND EDITION from NPR News. I’m Rachel Martin. And this is For The Record, and a warning that some listeners might find descriptions in this story disturbing. It took five years of investigating and more than 6,000 pages to lay it all out. The Senate Intelligence Committee released its report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation practices this past week. The chairman of the committee, Dianne Feinstein, said the result was devastating.
SENATOR DIANNE FEINSTEIN: It shows that the CIA’s actions a decade ago are a stain on our value and on our history.
MARTIN: There were the things the American public already knew – the secret prisons, the waterboarding detainees, the sleep deprivation. But the report detailed other abuse including something called rectal rehydration, and the revelation that one detainee in American custody died of hypothermia. Many Republicans say the report is a partisan attack, and they point out Senate Democrat’s who led the investigation never interviewed any CIA employees. Former vice president Dick Cheney went on Fox News to defend the CIA.
VICE PRESIDENT DICK CHENEY: The notion that the committee is trying to peddle – that somehow the agency was operating on a rogue basis, and we weren’t being told or the president wasn’t being told is just a flat out lie.
MARTIN: Then on Thursday, the current director of the CIA, John Brennan, responded to the Senate report in a rare press conference. In his opening remarks, Brennan said the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques or EITs were used in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 when the U.S. Government was desperately trying to prevent another attack.
