The New York Times.
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.
Debate over the coercive interrogation methods used by the
administration of President George W. Bush has often broken down on
largely partisan lines. The Constitution Project’s task force on
detainee treatment, led by two former members of Congress with
experience in the executive branch — a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a
Democrat, James R. Jones — seeks to produce a stronger national
consensus on the torture question.
While the task force did not have access to classified records, it is
the most ambitious independent attempt to date to assess the detention
and interrogation programs. A separate 6,000-page report on the Central
Intelligence Agency’s record by the Senate Intelligence Committee, based
exclusively on agency records, rather than interviews, remains
classified.
