WASHINGTON \u2014 A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that \u201cit is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture\u201d and that the nation\u2019s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.<\/p>\n
The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before had been \u201cthe 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.\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s task force on detainee treatment, led by two former members of Congress with experience in the executive branch \u2014 a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a Democrat, James R. Jones \u2014 seeks to produce a stronger national consensus on the torture question.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s record by the Senate Intelligence Committee, based exclusively on agency records, rather than interviews, remains classified.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs long as the debate continues, so too does the possibility that the United States could again engage in torture,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n
The use of torture, the report concludes, has \u201cno justification\u201d and \u201cdamaged the standing of our nation, reduced our capacity to convey moral censure when necessary and potentially increased the danger to U.S. military personnel taken captive.\u201d The task force found \u201cno firm or persuasive evidence\u201d that these interrogation methods produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means. While \u201ca person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,\u201d much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says. <\/p>\n