Senate Report Documents CIA Torture Worse Than Disclosed - Rectal Feeding, Mock Executions, Deaths

The Senate Intelligence Committee report reveals that CIA torture was far more brutal and sadistic than the agency disclosed, documenting techniques that go beyond the authorized list to include rectal feeding and rehydration used as punishment, mock executions, threats to sexually assault detainees’ mothers, and at least one death from hypothermia. The findings expose systematic cruelty that amounts to war crimes under international law, including treatment that the International Committee of the Red Cross characterizes as “torture” and “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment” prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

The report documents numerous cases of torture exceeding authorized techniques. CIA interrogators subjected detainees to “rectal feeding” and “rectal rehydration” without medical necessity, including one detainee who received “rectal rehydration” with his “lunch tray” of hummus, pasta, sauce, nuts, and raisins inserted rectally. Detainees were kept shackled in stress positions for days, forced to stand on broken legs, subjected to prolonged sleep deprivation exceeding 180 hours while standing or in painful positions, waterboarded until completely unresponsive with water flowing from their mouths, confined naked in freezing cells, and threatened with power drills and mock executions.

The torture caused severe physical and psychological harm. Multiple detainees suffered from hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempted self-mutilation including trying to cut their own wrists and chew through their own arteries. CIA cables describe detainees who became “broken” and “barely able to communicate.” Gul Rahman died of hypothermia in November 2002 at a CIA black site in Afghanistan after being shackled nearly naked to a concrete floor overnight in freezing temperatures. His death was ruled a homicide, yet the CIA officer responsible, a station chief, was never prosecuted and later received a $2,500 cash award.

The psychologists who designed the torture program, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, had no interrogation experience and based their methods on a theory of “learned helplessness” derived from experiments on dogs. The CIA paid their company over $80 million to develop and implement torture techniques. Internal CIA communications show that experienced interrogators and FBI agents warned that the techniques were ineffective, illegal, and would produce false confessions, yet the agency continued the program and expanded its use. The torture regularly began on “Day One” of detention before any attempt at standard interrogation, demonstrating it was used for punishment and compliance rather than intelligence gathering.

The report reveals that CIA leadership knew the program was failing while publicly defending its necessity. When detainees provided false information under torture, interrogators applied more torture, creating a cycle where victims would say anything to make the pain stop. The CIA cited one detainee’s fabricated information about non-existent plots “to make it rain” as an intelligence success, while using his false claims to justify continuing his torture. Dozens of detainees were held incommunicado for months or years, denied access to lawyers or the Red Cross, with their families having no knowledge of their whereabouts—a practice that constitutes enforced disappearance under international law.

Despite the report’s documentation of systematic war crimes, no prosecutions result. The only CIA officer imprisoned in connection with the torture program is John Kiriakou, who was prosecuted for revealing the program’s existence to journalists. The architects of the torture program—psychologists Mitchell and Jessen—face a civil lawsuit from torture survivors but reach a settlement before trial. The complete impunity for documented torture, including homicide, demonstrates that international law prohibiting war crimes has no practical enforcement mechanism when perpetrators are American officials. Multiple countries’ courts document torture on their territory but none prosecutes U.S. officials, showing how power shields even documented war criminals from accountability.