Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein has capped off her tenure with the release of the controversial report on CIA Interrogations, just a month in advance of North Carolina GOP Sen. Richard Burr assuming the post when the Republican majority takes over.
According to
the Los Angeles Times, Feinstein persisted through an acrimonious process starting seven years ago when the committee learned for the first time of the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.
The 6,000-page report, released on Tuesday, was based on millions of pages of documents and interviews.
The
investigation concluded that the CIA misled Congress and White House officials about its interrogations of terror suspects and that the program was more brutal than previously disclosed.
The report also found that the techniques were not effective in producing the type of intelligence needed to stop further plots or arrest more suspects, and that in most cases, the information gleaned could have been found using other methods.
Since April, Feinstein
went head-to-head with the CIA and the White House about the extent to which the 480-page executive summary could be released, with the latter attempting to redact extensive amounts of text which Feinstein believed would prevent a true representation of the findings.
Feinstein has served for more than 14 years on the committee and spent much of that time defending the country's intelligence establishment, the LA Times noted.
Specifically, she defended the National Security Agency's secret data collection program and also supported the CIA's covert use of drones for targeted killings.
"I never felt like Dianne was being a partisan Democrat when it comes to national security, and I think that's why she and I kind of 'gee-hawed' so well together," Georgia GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the top Republican on the committee, told the LA Times.
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