The program authorized CIA officers to use extreme interrogation techniques, including sleep deprivation, waterboarding, painful stress positions, dietary manipulation, walling, 'rectal rehydration' or rectal feeding, etc. All of them amount to nothing less than a torture, according to the US Senate Intelligence Committee.
Mock executions, “hard takedowns” and sleep deprivation topped CNN’s list of extreme interrogation techniques. “Hard takedowns” involved agency’s officers forcing the detainees to run up and down the hall naked. "As they ran him along the corridor, a couple of times he fell and they dragged him through the dirt," the report said in reference to one such case.
CIA officers kept some of the detainees awake for up to 180 hours. The prisoners were often forced to stand in painful stress positions during such sessions. Sometimes their hands were shackled above their heads.
Another enhanced interrogation technique on CNN's list involved a detainee being kept in total darkness and cold temperatures. He was shackled, had to remain in a stress position and was denied access to bathroom.
CIA officers also made “vague threats” in reference to relatives and loved ones of the detainees, using "fear for the well-being of [prisoner’s] family to [the agency’s] benefit," the report said. The operatives "threatened at least three detainees with harm to their families — to include threats to harm the children of a detainee, threats to sexually abuse the mother of a detainee and a threat to 'cut [a detainee's] mother's throat,'" the report stated.
The revelations were made public on Tuesday after a 525-page summary of a comprehensive 6,700-page report, produced by the US Senate Intelligence Committee following a lengthy investigation, was made public. The report, sent to the White House, the CIA, the US Department of Justice, the US Department of Defense, the US Department of State, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, remains classified.
