CFR Update: Report Questions CIA Interrogation Tactics and Effectiveness

Top of the Agenda Report Questions CIA Interrogation Tactics and Effectiveness A Senate report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program after 9/11 condemned (WaPo) enhanced interrogation tactics, including water boarding and sleep deprivation, arguing that such tactics did not yield actionable intelligence. The Senate Intelligence Committee's report has sparked calls from the UN and human rights groups for the prosecution (BBC) of CIA officers, but experts say such action is unlikely. Meanwhile, many Republicans defended (NYT) the CIA and criticized the report's release, saying it puts U.S. personnel at risk.  Analysis "The release of the Senate report will only aid our enemies who will have more fodder for their propaganda mills. It is hard to see how it will serve the interests of the United States, because even if you believe the interrogations in question were war crimes, the reality remains that they were long discontinued. Feinstein's report merely rakes up history and for no good purpose beyond predictable congressional grandstanding," writes CFR's Max Boot in Commentary. "We don’t discount warnings that releasing the report might rouse anti-American sentiment in the near term. But in the long term, the United States will benefit by demonstrating a commitment to transparency and self-criticism—and, most of all, by pledging never to repeat its post-9/11 mistakes," writes the Washington Post. "Criminal prosecutions are both unlikely and unnecessary, but some form of official accountability is essential. This report is a start, but as a polity we have not lived up to our own responsibility, to demand accountability for the wrongs done in our name," writes David Cole in the New Yorker.