The Senate Intelligence Committee prepares to release a report on the CIA's anti-terrorism tactics on Tuesday and US officials moved to shore up security at American facilities around the world as a precaution.
The report will include graphic details about sexual threats and other harsh interrogation techniques the CIA meted out to captured militants in the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, sources familiar with the document said on Monday.
The report, which Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein said would be released on Tuesday, describes how al Qaeda operative Abdel Rahman al Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened with a buzzing power drill, the sources said. The drill was never actually used on him.
It documents how at least one detainee was sexually threatened with a broomstick, the sources said.
Preparing for a worldwide outcry from the publication of such graphic details, the White House and US intelligence officials said on Monday they had shored up security of U.S. facilities worldwide.
The report, which took years to produce, charts the history of the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" program, which President George W. Bush authorized after the September 11 attacks. Bush ended many aspects of the program before leaving office, and President Barack Obama swiftly banned "enhanced interrogation techniques," which critics say are torture, after his 2009 inauguration.
A pair of Republican lawmakers called the release of the report "reckless and irresponsible. "We are concerned that this release could endanger the lives of Americans overseas, jeopardize U.S. relations with foreign partners, potentially incite violence, create political problems for our allies, and be used as a recruitment tool for our enemies," Senators Marco Rubio and Jim Risch said in a statement on Monday.
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