US intelligence fears violence, deaths abroad after CIA torture report release
The US intelligence agencies predict that the publication of a Senate report on the use of torture on terror suspects by the CIA will cause “violence and deaths” abroad, with security beefed up at US foreign installations.
The 480-page report on Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation techniques after 9/11 is to be to be released next week. The document is a summary of a larger 6,000-page study, which still remains classified.
The US intelligence agencies as well as foreign governments have said privately that the publication of the paper will be used by the extremists to promote deadly violence, Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican, told CNN’s State of the Union program.
Rogers questioned the very need for the report to be released as the investigation of CIA torture by the Justice Department saw no criminal charges filed.
An unnamed US intelligence official told AP, that US Congress has been warned "of the heightened potential that the release could stimulate a violent response."
On Friday, US Secretary of State John Kerry urged the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, to consider the timing of the release report.
In a later interview with Los Angeles Times, Feinstein provided no comment on Kerry’s plea, only stating that "we have to get this report out."
The brutal interrogations by the CIA undermined "societal and constitutional values that we are very proud of. Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again," the California Democrat stressed.
READ MORE: John Kerry asks to delay CIA torture report
AP also cited an unnamed congressional aide, who said that Washington has boosted security at American installations around the globe in view of the publication.
According to the aide, the US administration has been in talks to declassify the report since April, with both president Obama and his director of national intelligence endorsing its release.
The report will make first public account of CIA's use of torture on al-Qaida detainees held in secret facilities in Europe and Asia a decade ago.
US officials familiar with the report said that it includes new – disturbing – details about the CIA's use of sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, humiliation and waterboarding.
The report also states that the torture failed to produce life-saving intelligence, despite opposite claims by current and former intelligence officials, including CIA director, John Brennan.
