Don’t believe the headlines, Georgia Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss said Tuesday, at least when it comes to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s voluminous report on CIA interrogations.
Chambliss, the committee's top Republican, split with the committee's Democratic staff in the course of seven contentious years of producing the report. Democrats released a declassified 500-page executive summary Tuesday describing the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" — often branded torture — in sometimes gruesome detail and concluding that the methods were not effective in foiling terrorist plots.
Chambliss and the committee's GOP staff countered with a 150-page rebuttal accusing the report of containing political bias. They also presented evidence that suspects, after being subjected to waterboarding or sleep deprivation, helped investigators put the pieces together to capture terrorists and foil plots.
“The study essentially refuses to admit that CIA detainees, especially CIA detainees subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques, provided intelligence information which helped the United States government and its allies to neutralize numerous terrorist threats,” Chambliss said in a speech on the Senate floor.
“On its face, this refusal doesn’t make sense, given the vast amount of information gained from these interrogations, the thousands of intelligence reports that were generated as a result of them, the capture of additional terrorists and the disruption of the plots those captured terrorists were planning.”
Chambliss voted earlier this year to release the report, but he said he did so only so it would be paired with the Republican rebuttal, and he opposes the idea of releasing more detail about the CIA’s practices. Aside from the safety concerns for U.S. personnel — the State Department put American embassies on high alert ahead of the report’s release — Chambliss said the report could shake allies.
“This is going to be damaging for decades to come,” Chambliss told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“I’m not sure some of our partners will ever get over it. Otherwise, what’s going to happen 10 years from now? Whatever we’re doing today, is it going to be exposed 10 years from now? That’s what they’re thinking,” Chambliss said. “I know because we’ve heard from some of them.”
About the Author
