committee chairwoman taking senate floor. he'll unveil the highly anticipated and controversial report on the cia's use of torture to gather intelligence in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. what we know right now the report is six years in the making, the full classified report 6700 pages long. what will be released as a 500-page summary. some redacted. plus minority views by republicans disputing certain findings by the democratic majority on the intelligence committee. in anticipation of the report's release, u.s. embassies and military bases throughout the middle east and elsewhere are bracing for violence. in addition crisis response units including some 2,000 marines are on heightened alert right now. those who read the report, they say that accuses three cia directors and their deputies of lying to congress, the white house, and the american people. it cites 20 cases where investigators say torture produced no useful information. those who read it are saying the report is graphic describing

techniques like water boarding. also slamming detainees into walls, sleep deep elevation, dousing them with cold water, even alleging threaten one with a buzzing power drill. it was not used in that case. prosecute bush who authorized the program insisted it saved u.s. lives and vice president dick cheney telling the new york time it was, quote, absolutely totally justified. he said when we had that program in place, we kept the country safe from anymore mass casualty attack which was our objective. he suggested that the cia mislead the white house is just a, quote, crock. joining me now is loretta sanchez. congresswoman, thank you for being with me today. you've been aware of the discussions ahead of time. the concern of perhaps new violence that will be triggered

by the release of this report. what is your thought? should it be released and why now? >> absolutely. we need to have transparency. the american people need to understand what the american government is doing. my husband was the senior prosecutor at guantanamo and he and his team refused to use any of this information gathered by torture because they thought it was unreliable. i remember him telling me they could get more by giving a prisoner mcdonald's happy meal than on the reliability of this torture related information. >> what criticisms have been made about the release and i shared some with you. the former vice president dick cheney. i would like to share the response from former bush white house communications director nicole wallace and what she said earlier on "morning joe." >> months after 9/11, there were three people who we thought knew about imminent attacks, and we

did whatever we had to do. i pray to god until the we do whatever we have to do. and the notion it somehow makes america less great is asinine and dangerous. >> does it make america less great? >> well, america has its value systems and people and other people from around the country look at it really as the shining light of democracy of human rights, et. cetera. so of course we've seen over time that image is tarnished because of the things that happened included this torture by the cia. i want to remind you that this was done by the cia our military did not do this. they used the normal military techniques that they knew for interrogation. they were not schooled in the types of things that this report will talk about. >> and this report focussing on cia techniques and what lthey have used. standby, i would like to bring

in our senior white house correspondent chris jansing. you got your hands on an exclusive statement from the president. >> this is an advanced copy of the statement that the white house will release. it's the president's reaction to it. let me real you a relevant portion. he said the report contains a documents a troubling program. he says that it reinforces his long held view that the harsh methods are not only inconsistent with our vaus as a nation. they did not serve our broader counter terrorism efforts or national security interests. he said they did significant damage to america's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interests with our allies and partners and he said he'll continue to use his authority as president to make sure that these kinds of measures are never taken again. these are strongly worded comments consistent with what we've heard from the president from the second day of his administration outlawed the kind of techniques that are outlined

in the report that is going to be released later today. i can also tell you, richard, top white house officials have been huddled in meetings throughout the day. they're going do a briefing later on about reaction to specific parts of this report, and preparing for the release of it including the president's chief of staff dennis mcdonough and his top communications official. again, more than a full page statement released from the white house will be officially released with the release of this report. >> nbc's senior white house correspondent, thank you. the latest statement from the president. back to congresswoman sanchez. you heard what the response will be from the president based on what chris told us. part of this response is also came yesterday from the white house press secretary josh ernst. he refused to say whether the techniques that had been described that will be critiqued here in the report coming from the senate he refused to say

that the harsh interrogations lead to finding bin laden. i want share what he said yesterday and i'll get your response. >> you're asking a difficult question there are varieties of views on. the president's views wherever you come down on the equation of, yes, it yielded information that was helpful. it yielded information it was crucial, or no, it didn't yield any helpful information. the president believes regardless what the answer to the question is, that the use of these techniques was not worth it. because of the harm that was done to our national values and the sense of what it is that we believe in as americans. he say rodriguez wrote a fifth about the techniques supporting the use of it. he he said it dead d le-- did ld to perhaps some of the outcomes they desired. they laid out the objectives in the beginning. what, if in the end, this did

lead to the capture of individuals like ksm? >> it would be interesting to see the report from feinstein's committee. the intelligence committee from the senate side. they certainly took a long time. it's just an executive summary of some of the techniques. many of us in the congress know for awhile that using the type of torture does not real actionable intelligence. in fact, it gives you bad information. people will do anything sometimes to stay alive. it's not the right information. and many of us here who have studied this, who have followed this understand that. and so it really is important for the american people to understand and this report will give us some glimpse of the fact that torture really doesn't work. and more importantly, it puts our military and our embassy mission folks who are in other countries who get taken captive

at a higher risk that they will be tortured than because we have done the same thing. >> congresswoman loretta sanchez of new york. thank you so much for your time today. -- >> of california. >> california. i'm sorry. i'm from california i should have remembered that. >> let's bring in our "newsnation" panel today in new york not california. good day to you. richard, i want to start with you. you know, how real are these concerns that have been voiced about more violence that u.s. embassies and u.s. interests abroad? >> it's possible. i think critics of the report the release of the report are probably drumming it little bit. it's possible you could have some people, extremists in cairo who are looking for any excuse to throw stones at the embassy to use it as a pretext.

i don't think it's going to change al qaeda's view on the united states or drive people into terrorism. it's one more arrow in their already quite full quiver of anger. >> yeah. how does it register? we're talking about it quite steadily here for the last several days. how does it register with these groups if at all? >> the idea it's going to be some truth and reconciliation process. that the people of the world will see this process and feel they have been given the truth and reconcile is probably not the case. if you're a young man living in nigeria or indonesia and you read this report, or your newspaper accounts of the report, you won't see look at the u.s. coming clean. you'll see look at the u.s. what terrible brutality they did to muslims. >> we expect to hear from diane feinstein, the senator from california, who is the chairwoman within the next five or six minutes. we're getting ready for that

release and what she will be saying shortly. evan, you monitor -- we've talked about this throughout the years what is happening in the digital sphere, if you will. you often will get some measure or understanding of how these stories are being reacted to. any reaction so far? >> no. i think the reaction we can expect to see is that, sure, al qaeda will put this in the pr propagan propaganda. i think particularly al qaeda in the arabian peninsula which was founded, primarily guantanamo bay individuals. i'm sure they'll make some reference to this. one thing about this particular is that we don't see here any visual images like we had. those visual images carried the day. i think those propelled people forward even people that weren't naunsed in the world of al qaeda or isis or whatnot. what that we have some advantage. there's no doubt that al qaeda will use this and i agree with richard. if you read the report, it seems

to be many of the conspiracy theories that are talked about the united states they come alive in this kind of material. unfortunately, there's also the problem that there continues to be the mantra among some that torture produces reliable evidence. and if there is actual evidence that show it's not correct it's important that the american public as well as american policy makers are confronted with that evidence. >> and they're about to be depending on what comes out. redactions. you whererote on the issue. who may or may not have to face the music. >> right. like the identities of people who carried out the abuses and the identities of the abused. it's still classified secret list of all the people who were held inside sites. at one point former cia director said that fewer than 100 people were held. was it 99 people?

the committee, in fact, find it was more than 100 people? only 14 of the people were ever transferred to guantanamo from the site. the list who was held, what was done to each individual. that remains a discred s s a se. as does the identities of the abusers. who were the people who operated. who were cia officers and cia contractors who were involved for years in running sites in thailand, afghanistan, poland, roman romania. we'll know names that are familiar to people, the three cia directors in charge while the programs were operating. two of their deputies will probably be named and top people including, as you say, jose rodriguez. >> richard, when we think of this, some of the details that may come out about the operation

s that existed what sort of fallout might our allies. the countries that worked with us. the countries where the they existed in. where might that be? >> i think that -- i don't think this is about changing the opinion of the -- already they're upset and there are cases raised about it. i think it's about changing the narrative of american history. this process was a brutal process. whether it was legal or not i think is highly debatable. it was legal at the time. the cia was asked to do it. the cia was passing on the intelligence to the president. everyone knew what was going on including by the senate who is pretending to be a baseball in the -- babe in the woods. they knew what was going on. i think it's rewriting the narrative of history. how will we remember the period? will we remember the period

which the rogue evil cia who was beating people in some cases to death and politicians didn't know about it or the politicians were plenty aware of this. the cia beat people to death and the senate tried to come out and say, well, you know, we didn't know anything about it. and trying to wash their hands of the situation. to be honest, i think it's a little bit of the latter. >> i want to jump in on the legality point, too. it was authorized. it wasn't tested in u.s. courts. in fact, the reason that the black sites program was closed in september of 2006 was president bush at the time moved 14 people to guantanamo and the rest were basically released. some handed over to proxy detention in other countries. it's because the supreme court said you cannot hold people extralegally like this. they must fall under the geneva convention. it was authorized and richard said lots of people knew what was going on. congress was well briefed. i think he's right. i think none of the things were tested in u.s. courts. i think that's a big question

about the legality. >> should they have been legal? you have a law that says the geneva convention should be suspended? no. they didn't hold them. but they were authorized. >> a lot of discussion right now is whether or not these tactics resulted in useful information. the question really that should be answered is were there any other available means to get that information short of what we did? and i think that's the more fundamental question. that's what we're looking for in the report. is there evidence of that? and that will -- i think, answer whether or not in the future using these tactics or techniques can ever be permitted or permissible or legal. >> again, we're waiting for diane feinstein shortly on the senate floor to release her comments on this 6700 page report. her reaction, her summary of it, and we did receive some early commentary about what she believe believes based on information she got. it was just released and to your

point, evan, of the four points that she makes in this release, one of them is that in no time did the cia course of interrogation technique lead to the imminent threat intelligence. that's what she's saying that, no, nothing came of it. >> cia disputes that. >> and we will get a 100-page -- rebuttal to that. that is her view of the report. >> yeah. but, look, we have to be careful you're not to trash the cia. the cia was acting as a fujs of the executive. it was doing what was told to do. the folks were trying to stop terrorists. again, i think we have to consider what the cia has to say here. they were more -- i think closer than anybody else. if they really believe there is evidence that shows that torture or torture-like techniques lead to evidence stopping actual terrorist attacks, it might be the right time right now to

declassify some information and provide that information to the american public. in absence of that, it's just very difficult to argue in the opposite. >> could it inspire lone wolfes the information getting out there? the headlines that will be read across the world. >> it doesn't help. i don't think it's going to be enough because it doesn't have the emotional impact of images. they talk about we're trying to come clean to the american people. it's a 600-page report. if you look at the lone wolfes they're not the kind of people who necessarily -- >> that pore through that. written by lawyers redactions. it doesn't have that kind of emotional impact. it doesn't help. it will reinforce a mentality that some extremists have. it's more about settling scores between the intelligence committee and the cia. notice it's just really the cia that is being taken to task here. and your previous guest said

that the military didn't do any abusive things. >> that's separate. >> that's wrong, by the way,. the military did things. also, why aren't any of the politicians if you're going go for a full accountability, why not go for the president? he was getting this intelligence every day. what about condi? there's some political scores being settled here between the committee feinstein's committee and the agency. >> one of our colleagues is getting a good glimpse of the report just released. and breaking down some of the details inside of it. ayman, what are you looking at? >> we're get iting some information. in is coming from a background briefing that was held earlier this morning. the report itself just gone up live expected to go up live momentarily once senator feinstein appears on the floor there. there are interesting points made from the background briefing including particularly questions related to whether or

not president bush, at the time, knew of the enhanced interrogation techniques. in one reference there is a note here says that the cia proposed briefing president bush about the enhanced interrogation as far as 2002. we're told the president would not be getting the briefing in the context of that and report does not make clear where in the cia who at the cia decided that the president not be briefed at the point. there are some other issues particularly coming down and this is one of the points we are doesing earlier about operational security. there are no names mentioned in the report. why didn't the cia officials name -- why weren't they named in the report? and during that briefing, the information that we're getting now said that at the time attorney general holder launched a criminal investigation in 2009 expanding on the probe into the cia's destruction of video tapes of interrogations at the time panetta decided that cia officials should not be

interviewed because they would not have legal protection from potential prosecution. so these are just some of the glimpses we're getting now. this was from a briefing held earlier today regarding this report, richard. >> thank you so much. ayman mohyeldin looking at the details what might have. richard, you wanted to say something? >> i think it goes back to your point. there are plenty of cia names in the report. many names. some people are named over 100 times. it's just not the name of the actual person who was doing the physical abuse. there was some talk about using pseudonyms. with computer programs that are available, it's quite easy even in a long report to extract pseudonyms and compare and contrast when they are used and usually figure out who the person is. the people who aren't named the are actual people pouring the buckets of water. a lot of cia officials to the

cia top directors -- they are certainly named. >> all three, in fact -- >> many more than three. >> adding more details to what ayman showed us. as i said before, the cia had said there were fewer than 100 people. it turns out according to the senate intelligence report there were 119 people. >> right. >> more than the cia stated publicly before. the cia in 2005 turned over much of the interrogation, outside contractors paid them $80 million to continue interrogating and abusing detainees around the world. i think those are some pretty sharp statistics and information that will, you know, people will want to know about that i think we haven't heard about before from previous journalistic reporting and other documents released over time. >> is that number 119 whatever that number may be, is that a relevant number when you look at what they're saetsassessing? i think they looked at 20 specific cases that the cia said

did lead to some actionable -- if you will, it was actionable intelligence. >> the cia in this report has a few main points. to say the horrible chapter habited in american history. the cia carried out abuses, it misrepresented what it was doing, and it was a waste of time. those are the main point she's trying to put out in this large report that we're going to hear very soon. the cia feels we were asked to do this. everybody knew about it. and now you're throwing us under a bus. and that's the question. are they being thrown under a bus? are they being punished reputationly for something they were asked to do? there's been a lot of bad blood between the committee and the cia. >> huge! >> accusations of withholding classified information. people were yelling at each other in the senate chambers. this is -- let's just say we want to hear what the cia has to

say as well. >> somebody in the briefing that ayman was talking about andrea mitchell was there. she joins us live now. what did you learn? >> first of all, you have reported a lot of details that i've been putting into the computer coming out of the briefing. it started at 8:00 this morning and went for an hour and a half. we weren't prerermitted to repo it until the senate committee posted the majority report on the website. as discussing, their main contention there could have been actionable intelligence found by other means other than the so called enhanced interrogation techniques. the report uses that euphemism. diane feinstein will use the word torture which president obama acknowledged. the descriptions are more graphic. they said the cia mislead congress, the white house, and other policy makers and the american people about just how graphic it was. while the cia pushes back and

says they were authorized to do everything. they were office of legal counsel guidelines that president bush signed a directive a classified directive in september of 2001 right after 9/11 authorizing the secret prisons and the detentions. what they say is that none of his findings, not that classified finding in 2001 authorized the specific interrogation technique that were used. and was just mentioned, the who psychologists they designed the interrogations. they made $80 million before this program was stopped. by coming up with the techniques. one of the key detainees back in 2002 had give up mohamed's name before he was interrogated with the technique. he was intergatded for techniques, water boarded 83 times, nonstop to the point he

passed out. the only reason they know that they have notes from a medic brought in revive him. not cia notes. there was also the celebrated case which we did know about where the head of covert operations jose rodriguez actually erased video of the interrogations against the orders of the white house counsel and of the cia. and investigated by eric holder and people in the justice department to who followed up on this. and eventually there were no prosecutions. after he acknowledged destroying those video tapes, that's when the then cia director miked hayden said to the committee, okay, we will give you describing the interrogation which was destroyed improperly. it was when they saw the cable with the details for the first time with the interrogation techniques even those who had been briefed very vaguely, they

claim, by the cia what had happened that's when they launched this investigation back in 2009. it was supported with a bipartisan vote. only one objection on the senate committee at that point. it was only later that republicans began to object to the way they say the democrats were handling this investigation. richard? >> again, we're waiting diane feinste feinstein. we see harry reid speaking out in. feinstein expected to any moment release her comments there. speaking for about an hour on this 6700 page report that's coming out very shortly. andrea, part of that will be a 100-page response from the cia. any sense of what that might have in? >> i think the cia, first of all, said we did what we were told to do. why aren't you investigating? they may not say it quite as bluntly but their view is why aren't you investigating dick

cheney, george bush, condoleezza rice? we're carrying out policies we were told to carry out, and you're ignoring the view after the pressure immediately after 9/11. we thought there would be another terror attack. most americans did. we thought it was part of a wider plot. we were told do anything you can to keep america safe. that the context is important. even critics of the policies -- i interviewed jeremy yesterday who was the chief of staff at the cia under leon panetta, and it was ended by gorpg bush -- excuse me the bush policies were ended by barack obama. on january 22nd, 2009 two days after he took office, he signed an order that was intended to close guantanamo. we know how that did not work out. and intended to immediately end any of these interrogations. or the policies. they ended several years earlier but to stop having any legal

authority for them, and the point there was that they didn't understand fully what the pressure was on the agencies immediately after 9/11. so even jeremy bash said you have to understand the context. leon panetta said the agency really was following what they thought were directives from the white house and george bush, and you know dick cheney defended them. but, again, bush did not, according to the report, did not know the specifics. in fact, when he was briefed by a man at the cia when he was briefed for the first time in 2006, under orders from the cia inspector general who had questioned two cia directors hayden and george tenant and both told they had not briefed george bush in 2004. the ig, the inspector general from the cia said you've got to

brief the president on the details of these interrogation techniques. there's no paper trail indicating whether he was told verbally. according to the evidence at least in this report based on no interviews just on documents. the cia documents say they briefed the president for the first time in 2006. according to the memo he was uncomfortable with what he saw. >> diane feinstein now on the senate floor. andrea, thank you so much. straight to diane feinstein. >> if necessary at the later time. the report released today examines the cia's secret overseas detention of at least 119 individuals, and the use of cohearsive interrogation techniques. in some cases, amounting to torture. over the past couple of weeks, i've gone through a great deal of introspection about to delay the release of this report to a

later time. this clearly is a period of turmoil and instability in many parts of the world. unfortunately, that's going to continue for the foreseeable future. whether this report is released or not. there are those who will seize upon the report and say see what the americans did? and they will try to use it to justify evil actions or incite more violence. we can't prevent that, but history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say never again. there may never be the right time to release this report. the instability we see today will not be resolved in month or years. the report is too important to shelf indefinitelily. my determination to release it has also increased due to a

campaign of mistaken statements and press articles launched against the report before anyone has had the chance to read it. as a matter of fact, the report, as i speak, being released. this is what it looks like. senator chambliss asked me if we could have the minority report bound with the majority report. for this draft that is not possible, but in the final draft it will be bound together. but this is what the summary of the 6,000-pages look like. my words give me no pleasure. i'm releasing this report because i know there are thousands of employees at the cia who do not condone what i will speak about this morning. and who were day and night long

hours within the law for america's security in what is certainly a difficult world. my colleagues on the intelligence committee and i am proud of them. just as erin in this chamber is. and we will always support them. in reviewing a study in the past few days, with the decision looming over the public release, i was struck by a quote found on page 126 of the executive summary. it cites the former cia inspector general in 2005 wrote the following to the then director of the cia, which clearly states the situation with respect to this report. we found that the agency over the decades continued to get itself into messes related to interrogation programs for one

overriding reason. we do not document and learn from our experience. each generation of officers is left to impro vise anew with programmatic results for our officers as individuals and for our agency. i believe that to be true. i agree with him. his comments are true today, but this must change. on march 11, 2009, the committee voted 14-1 to begin a review of the cia's detention and interrogation program. over the past five years, a small team of committee investigators pored over the more than 6.3 million pages of cia records the leader spoke about to complete this report or what we call the study. it shows that the cia's actions

a decade ago are a stain on our value and on our history. 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. releasing this report is an important step to restore our values and show the world that we are in fact a just and lawful society. over the next hour, i would like to lay out for senators and the american public the report's key findings and conclusions. i ask that when i complete this senator mccain be recognized. before i get to the stan-- subse of the report, i would like to make a few comments about why it's so important we make this

study public. all of us have vivid memoryies f the tuesday morning when terror struck new york, washington, and pennsylvania. make no mistake, september 11th, 2011, war was declared on the united states. terrorists struck our financial center. they struck our military center, and tried to strike our political center and would have had brave and courageous passengers not brought down the plane. we still vividly remember the mix of outrage and deep despair and sadness as we watched from washington. smoke rising from the pentagon. the passenger plane lying in a pennsylvania field. the sound of bodies striking canopies at ground level as innocents jumped to the ground below from the world trade center. mass terror that we often see

abroad had struck us directly in our front yard killing 3,000 innocent men, women, and children. what happened? we came together as a nation with one singular mission bring those who committed these abilities to justice. but at this point where the values of america come into play with the rule of law and the principles of right and wrong become important. in 1990 the united states senate ratified the convention against torture. the convention makes clear that this ban against torture is absolute. it says, and i quote, no exceptional circumstances whatsoever including what i just read, whether a state of war or a threat of war internal

political instability or any other public emergency may be invoked as a justification for torture. nonetheless, it was argued that the need for information on possible additional terrorist plots after 9/11 made extraordinary interrogation techniques necessary. even if one were to set aside all of the moral arguments our review was a meticulous and detailed examination of records. it finds that coercive interrogation techniques did not produce the vital unavailable intelligence the cia has claimed. i will go into further detail on this issue in a moment. but let me make clear these comments are not a condemnation of the cia as a whole. the cia plays an incredibly

important part in our nation's security. and has thousands of dedicated and talented employees. what we have found is a surprisingly few people were responsible for designing, carrying out, and managing this program. two contractors developed and lead the interrogations. there was little effective oversight. analysts on occasion gave operational orders that interrogations and cia management of the program was weak and defused. our final report was approved by a bipartisan vote of 9-6 in december 2012, and exposes brutality in stark contrast to our values as a nation.

effort was focussed on the actions of the cia from late 2001 to january of 2009. the report does not include -- the department of justice, state, defense, and the senate intelligence committee. the review is based on con t contemporaneous reviews. these documents are important because they aren't based on recollection. they aren't based on revision, and they aren't a racialzation of decade later. it's these documents referenced repeatedly in thousands of footnotes that provide the

factual basis for the study's conclusions. the committee's majority staff reviewed more than 6.3 million pages of these documents provided by the cia as well as records from other departments and agencies. these records include finished intelligence assessments, cia operational and intelligence cables, memoranda, e-mails, real time chat sessions, inspector general reports, testimony before congress, pictures, and other internal records. it's true we didn't conduct our own interviews and let me tell you why that was the case. in 2009, there was an ongoing review by department of justice special prosecutors john durham. on august 24th, attorney general holder expanded that review.

this occurred six months after our study had begun. durham's original investigation of the cia's destruction of interrogation video tapes was broaden to include possible criminal actions of cia employees in the course of cia detention and interrogation activities. at the time, the committee's vice chairman withdrew the minority's participation in the study citing the attorney general's expanded investigation as the reason. the department of justice refused to coordinate its investigation over the intelligence committee's review. as a result, possible interviewees could not could be subject to additional liability if they were interviewed. and the va citing the attorney general's investigation would

not instruct this employee's to participate in interviews. notwithstanding this, i am really confident of the factual accuracy and comprehensive nature of this report for three reasons. first, it's the 6.3 million pages of documents reviewed. they reveal records of actions as those actions took place. not through recollections more than a decade later. second, the cia and the cia senior officers have taken the opportunity to explain their views on cia detention and intergangs of operations. they have done this on the record statements and classified committee hearings. written testimony and answered questions. through the formal response to the committee in june 2013, after reading the study.

and third, the committee had access to and utilized an extensive set of reports of interviews conducted by the cia inspector general and oral history program. while we could not conduct new interviews of individuals we did utilize transcripts or summaries of interviews of those directly engaged in detention and interrogation operations. these interviewinterviews occure time it was operational. and covered the topics we would asked about had we conducted interviews ourselves. the interview reports and transcripts included but were not limited to the following: george tenant, director of the cia when the agency took custody and interrogated the majority of

detainees. jose rodriguez, director of the cia's counter terrorism center, a key player in the program. cia general counsel scott muller, cia deputy director of operations, cia acting general counsel, and cia deputy director john maclaughlin. and a variety of interrogators, lawyers, medical personnel, senior counter terrorism analysts, and managers of the detention and interrogation program. the best place to start about how we got into this. i'm delighted senator rockefeller is on the floor is a little more than eight years. in september -- on september sixth 2006 when the committee met to be briefed by then director michael hayden.

at that 2006 meeting, the full committee learned for the first time of the use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques or eits. it was a short meeting in part because president bush was making a public speech later that day disclosing officially for the first time the existence of cia black sites. and announcing the transfer of 14 detainees from cia custody to guantanamo bay cuba. it was the first time the interrogation program was explained to the full committee as details had previously been limited to the chairman and choice chairman. on december 7th, 2007, the new york times reported cia personnel in 2005 destroyed video tapes of the interrogation

of two cia detainees. the cia's first detainee as well as. the committee had not been informed of the destruction of the tapes. days later, on december 11th, 2007, the committee held a hearing on the destruction of the video tapes. director hayden, the primary witness testified that the cia had concluded that the destruction of video tapes was acceptable, in part, because congress had not yet requested to see them. my source is our committee's transcript. director hayden stated that if the committee had asked for the video tape, they would have been provided. but, of course, the committee had not known that the video tapes existed. and we know from cia e-mails and

records that the video tapes were destroyed shortly after cia attorneys raised concerns that congress might find out about the tapes. at the same december committee hearing the cia cables related to the interrogation sessions depicted in the video tapes were, and i quote, a more than adequate representation of the tapes. and therefore if you want them we'll give you access to them. that's our transcript december 11th, 2000 hearing. 2007 hearing. senator rockefeller then chairman of the committee designated two members of the committee staff to review the cables describing the interrogation sessions.

senator bond similarly directed two of his staffers to review the cables. the designated staff members completed their review and compiled a summary of the content of the cia cables by early 2009. by which time i had become chairman. the description in the cables of cia's interrogations and the treatment of detainees presented a starkly different picture from director hayden's testimony before the committee. they described brutal around the clock interrogations. especial -- in which multiple techniques were used in combination and substantial repetition. it was an ugly visceral description. the summary also indicated that

the prisoners did not, as a result of the use of the so-called eits provide the kind of intelligence that lead the cia to stop terrorist plots or arrest additional suspects. as a result, i think it's fair to say the entire committee was concerned, and it approved the scope of an investigation by a vote of 14-1, and the work began. in my march 11, 2014 floor speech about the study, i described how in 2009 the committee came to an agreement with the new cia director leon panetta for access to documents and other records about the cia's detention and interrogation program. so i won't repeat that here. from 2009 to 2012, our staff conducted a massive and unprecedented review of cia

records. draft sections of the report were produced by late 2011 and shared with the full committee. the final report final report w in december 2012 and approved by the committee by a bipartisan vote of 9-6. after that vote, i sent the full report to the president and asked the administration to provide comments on it before it was released. six months later in june of 2013, the cia responded. i directed them that if the cia pointed out any weather, we would fix it. we did fix one bullet point. if the cia came to a different conclusion than the report did, we would note that in the report and explain our reasons for disagreeing if we disagree.

you will see some of that documented in the footnotes of that executive summary as well as in the 6,000 pages. in april 2014, the committee prepared an updated version of the full study and voted 12-3 to declassify and release the executive summary. findings and conclusions and minority and additional views. on august 1, we received a declassified version from the executive branch. it was immediately apparent that the redactions to our report presented a clear and understandable reading of the study and prevented us from substantiating the findings and conclusions. we obviously objected. for the past four months, the committee and the cia, the director of national intelligence and the white house

have engaged in a lengthy negotiation over the redactionses to the report. we have been able to include some more information in the report today without sacrificing sources and methods of our national security. i would like to ask following my remarks that a letter from the white house dated yesterday conveying the report also points out that the report is 93% complete and that the redactions amount to 7% of the bulk of the report. >> without objection. >> thank you, mr. chairman. mr. president this has been a long process. the work began seven years ago when senator rockefeller directed staff to review the cia cables describing the interrogations sessions.

it's been very difficult. i believe the documentation and the findings inclusions will make clear how this program was morally, legally, and administratively misguided and this nation should never again engage in these tactics. let me turn to the contents of the study. as i noted, we have 20 findings and conclusions. they fall into four general categories. first, the cia's enhanced interrogation techniques were not an effective way to gather intelligence information. second, the cia provided extensive amounts of inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness, to the white house, the department of justice, congress, the cia inspector general, the media and

the american public. third, the cia's management of the program was inadequate and deeply flawed. fourth, the cia program was far more brutal than people were led to believe. let me describe each category in more detail. the first set of findings and conclusions concerned the effectiveness or lack there of of the interrogation program. the committee found that the cia's coercive interrogation techniques were not an effective means of acquiring accurate intelligence or gaining detainee cooperation. the cia and other defenders of the program have repeatedly claimed that the use of so-called interrogation techniques was necessary to get detainees to provide critical information and to bring detainees to a state of

compliance in which they would cooperate and provide information. the study concludes that both claims are inaccurate. the report is very specific in how it evaluates the cia's claims on the effectiveness and necessity of enhanced interrogation techniques. specifically we use the cia's own definition of effectiveness as ratify and approved by the department of justice's office of legal counsel. the cia's claims that the eits were necessary to obtain otherwise available information that could not be obtained from any other source to stop terrorist attacks and save american lives. that's a claim we conclude is inaccurate. we took 20 examples that the cia

itself claimed to show the success of these interrogations. these include cases of terrorist plots stopped or terrorists captured. the cia used these examples in presentations to the white house and testimony to congress and submissions tolt department of justice and ultimately to the american people. some of the claims are well-known. the capture of khalid shaikh mohammed. the prevention of tax against the library tower of los angeles. and the take down of osama bin laden. other claims were made only in classified settings. to the white house, congress, and department of justice. in each case, the ci acclaimed

that critical and unique information came from one or more detainees in its custody after they were subjected to the cia's coercive techniques. that information led to specific counter terrorism success. our staff reviewed every one of the 20 cases. not a single case holds up. in every single one of these cases, at least one of the following was true. one, the intelligence community had information separate from the use of eits that led to the terrorist disruption or capture. two, information from a detainee subjected to eits played no role in the claim disruption or capture and three, the purported terrorist plot either did not exist or posed no real threat to

americans or united states interest. some critics have suggested that the study concludes that no intelligence was provided from any detainee the cia held. that is false. the study makes no such claim. what is true is that actionable intelligence that was otherwise unavailable, otherwise unavailable was not obtained using the coercive techniques. the report also chronicles where the use of interrogation techniques that do not involve physical force were effective. specifically, the report provides examples where interrogator his sufficient information to confront detainees with facts. know when they were lying and when they apply and where they

applied rapport building techniques that were developed and honed by the united states military, the fbi, and more recently the inner agency high value detainee interrogation group that these techniques produced good intelligence. let me make a couple of additional comments on the claimed effectiveness of cia interrogations. at no time did the cia's interrogation techniques lead to the collection of intelligence on an imminent threat that many believe was the justification for the use of these techniques. the committee never fountain example of this hypothetical ticking time bomb scenario. the use of coercive technique methods regularly resulted in fabricated information. sometime the cia actually knew

detainees were lying. other times the cia acted on false information, diverting resources and leading officers or contractors to falsely believe they were acquiring unique or actionable intelligence and that the interrogations were working when they were not. internally cia officers often called into question the effectiveness of the cia's interrogation techniques, noting how the techniques failed to elicit detainee cooperation or produce accurate information. it reports new officers of them questioning the claims, but they were marginalized and not presented externally. e