Former Secretary of State Colin Powell was reportedly kept in the dark about the CIA's detention and interrogation practices in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
The Associated Press reported that the revelation came from a still-classified 6,300-page Senate report on the CIA’s program that's being passed around the White House. A four-page White House summary of the Senate report was accidentally leaked in an email to an AP reporter, however, revealing many of the report's findings.
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In addition to the revelations about Powell and the State Department, the report, which has been years in the making, also claims that some U.S. ambassadors were advised to keep information from their superiors at the State Department, specifically information regarding interrogations of al-Qaida detainees at so-called black sites overseas.
Commenting on the document, a former CIA official said that according to guidelines set by the National Security Council, it would be standard practice for ambassadors to not share information about covert operations.
The unnamed official said Powell was eventually informed about the interrogation techniques that included waterboarding, but may not have been informed when they were first used in 2002.
According to the leaked White House summary, the Senate report concludes that the CIA's interrogation techniques failed to produce life-saving intelligence, and that the agency misled Congress and the Justice Department about the program. The report stops short, however, of saying the CIA's program constituted legally-defined torture, but suggests it was torture under a common definition.
Current and former CIA officials flatly deny the conclusions of the Senate report, as do some Senate Republicans. They say crucial information was gleaned by the program.
The report has allegedly ruined the relationship between the CIA and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee. President Barack Obama relies heavily on the CIA, and is likely to temper if not reserve criticism of the agency in light of the new report, despite having declared some of the techniques torture and ordering them stopped in the past.
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