CIA Torture Report to Be Released: US on Alert

Local Editor

The US has increased security measures at its embassies, military units and other interests around the world ahead of the release of a Senate report on the CIA's use of torture, the White House said.

"There are some indications that the release of the report could lead to a greater risk that is posed to US facilities and individuals all around the world," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.

In parallel, he added that the administration has taken the prudent steps to ensure that the proper security precautions are in place at US facilities around the globe.

Earnest also said that the Obama administration supports the declassification of the report that reveals the torture techniques the CIA used.

He noted that President Barack Obama believes the tactics were "unwarranted," and that they have not made the US "safer."
Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren also said the disclosure of the report would trigger "unrest."

Warren said that the War Department has requested that combatant commands take protective measures.
The Pentagon has also put on alert American troops across the world particularly in the Middle East as anti-US sentiment runs high there.

Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, warned on Sunday that the release of the report will spark violence and cost lives abroad.
The report includes disturbing details about CIA torture techniques, such as sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, humiliation and the simulated drowning process known as waterboarding.

The 500-page summary of the report, set to be released Tuesday, is understood to suggest that the CIA's use of techniques like waterboarding did not produce significant intelligence and that CIA officers misled those responsible for the program's oversight, including higher-level agency officials, the White House and Congress.

Speaking to The New York Times on Monday, former Vice President Dick Cheney, a fierce defender of the government's use of torture, said that the idea that the CIA misled the White House "is just a crock."

"What I keep hearing out there is they portray this as a rogue operation and the agency was way out of bounds and then they lied about it," Cheney said. "I think that's all a bunch of hooey. The program was authorized. The agency did not want to proceed without authorization, and it was also reviewed legally by the Justice Department before they undertook the program."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team