The CIA released a declassified version of a 2004 inspector general’s report that was sharply critical of the agency’s detention and torture program. The long-awaited report contains shocking details about the treatment of detainees and states in no uncertain terms that high-level CIA officials in Langley micromanaged the torture of detainees.

The inspector general’s probe stated that the use of torture against detainees, which Bush administration officials claim was necessary to thwart imminent terrorist attacks “did not uncover any evidence that these plots were imminent.”

“The Agency faces potentially serious long-term political and legal challenges as a result of the [Counterterrorist Center] Detention and Interrogation Program, particularly its use of EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] and the inability of the U.S. Government to decide what it will ultimately do with terrorists detained by the agency,” the report concluded.

According to the report, CIA officials at agency headquarters ordered interrogators to continue waterboarding Abu Zubaydah, the first high-level detainee captured after 9/11, even though interrogators believed he was cooperating.

“[redacted] is evidenced in the final waterboard session of Abu Zubaydah. According to a senior CTC officer, the interrogation team considered Abu Zubaydah to be compliant and wanted to terminate EITs. [redacted] believed Abu Zubaydah continued to withhold information, [three lines redacted] at the time it generated substantial pressure from Headquarters to continue use of the EITs.

“According to this senior officer, the decision to resume use of the waterboard on Abu Zubaydah was made by senior officers of the DO [Directorate of Operations].  [redacted] to assess Abu Zubaydah’s compliance and witnessed the final waterboard session, after which, they reported back to Headquarters that the EITs were no longer needed on Abu Zubaydah.”

The report also said CIA interrogators and contractors used “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented detention and interrogation techniques” that exceeded the legal guidelines for interrogation cited in Justice Department memoranda.

In one instance, a CIA interrogator, who lacked experience conducting interrogations, repeatedly pressed the carotid artery of a detainee until he passed out.

“The extent of these actions is illustrative of the consequences of the lack of clear guidance at the time and the Agency’s insufficient attention to interrogations in [redacted],” according to the report.

Helgerson’s report also said that then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was told numerous times about interrogation-related violations and instead of taking action approved of the repeated use of waterboarding against one detainee, despite the fact that it went above and beyond what the Justice Department had authorized in the legal opinions.

“According to the [CIA's] General Counsel, the Attorney General acknowledged he is fully aware of the repetitive use of the waterboard and that the CIA is well within the scope of the DoJ opinion and the authority given to CIA by that opinion. The Attorney General was informed the waterboard had been used 119 times on a single individual,” the report said, referring to a July 2003 Principals Committee briefing about the CIA’s detention and torture program.

After that meeting, the CIA’s General Counsel, John Rizzo, prepared a Memorandum for the Record dated Aug. 5, 2003 that said Ashcroft “confirmed that DoJ approved of the expanded use of various EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques] including multiple applications of the waterboard” that was inconsistent with the DOJ’s legal opinion.

A review of the detention and torture program was launched in January 2003 after the agency’s Office of the Inspector General received word from agency officials that “unauthorized interrogation techniques” were used against Abd Al-Rahim Al Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the U.S.S. Cole bombing.

Al Nashiri was captured in late October 2002, was waterboarded 12 days after his capture, and a month later was singled out in a speech George W. Bush gave at the fairgrounds in Shreveport, Louisiana.

“The other day we hauled a guy in named al-Nashiri. It’s not a household name here in America. I can understand why some go blank when they hear his name. But he was the al-Qaeda commander in the Gulf States,” Bush said on Dec. 3, 2002.

“Let me just put it to you this way: He no longer has the capacity to do what he did in the past, which was to mastermind the USS Cole that killed – the plot on the Cole that killed American soldiers. He’s out of action for the good of the world.

“Sometimes you’ll see it and sometimes you won’t. But you’ve got to know that in this war against terror, the doctrine stands that says, ‘Either you’re with us or you’re with the terrorists.’”

About three weeks after Bush’s speech, according to the report, one interrogator, who pretended to be an operative from a Middle East intelligence agency, threatened to rape Al Nashiri’s mother in front of him. Interrogators also threatened Al Nashiri with a gun and revved power drill while he stood naked and hooded during the interrogation.

“The debriefer used an unloaded semi-automatic handgun as a prop to frighten Al-Nashiri into disclosing information….Nashiri sat shackled and [he] racked the handgun once or twice close to Al-Nashiri’s head. On what was probably the same day, the debriefer used the power drill to frighten Al-Nashiri. With [redacted] consent, the debriefer entered the detainee’s cell and revved the drill while the detainee stood naked and hooded. The debriefer did not touch Al-Nashiri with the power drill,” the report says.

The IG report said that the debriefer who threatened Al Nashiri with a handgun did not receive the required two weeks training in interrogations. Debriefers traditionally question suspects after the suspect has already disclosed information to the interrogator.

The report notes that an interrogator “is a person who completes a two-week interrogations training program, which is designed to train, qualify, and certify a person to administer EITs [enhanced interrogation techniques]. An interrogator can administer EITs during the interrogation of a detainee only after the field, in coordination with Headquarters, assesses the detainee as withholding information.

“An interrogator transitions the detainee from a non-cooperative to a cooperative phase in order that a debriefer can elicit actionable intelligence through non-aggressive techniques during debriefing sessions.”

Nashiri was one of three detainees whose waterboarding was personally authorized by Dick Cheney. Additionally, his interrogation was captured on videotape, which the CIA destroyed.

Interrogators also threatened to kill self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed’s children “if anything else happens in the United States.”

A mock execution was also conducted against a detainee. Outside of the cell where one detainee had been held, CIA officers staged a confrontation. When the detainee was lead outside he  “passed a guard who was dressed as a hooded detainee, lying motionless on the ground, and made to appear as if he had been shot to death.”

It is a violation of anti-torture laws to threaten a prisoner in U.S. custody with imminent death. At least one interrogator feared CIA officers would be prosecuted.

“One officer expressed concern that, one day, agency officers will wind up on some ‘wanted list’ to appear before the World Court for war crimes,” the report said. Another interrogators added, “Ten years from now we’re going to be sorry we’re doing this … (but) it has to be done.”

The report further states that the CIA’s understanding of the way al-Qaeda operated was limited.

“According to a number of those interviewed for this Review, the Agency’s intelligence on Al-Qa’ida was limited prior to the initiation of the [Counter Terrorist Center] Interrogation Program,” the report says. “The Agency lacked adequate linguists or subject matter experts and had very little hard knowledge of what particular Al-Qa’ida leaders—who later became detainees—knew. This lack of knowledge led analysts to speculate about what a detainee ’should know,’ vice information the analyst could objectively demonstrate the detainee did know. [redacted]

“When a detainee did not respond to a question posed to him, the assumption at Headquarters was that the detainee was holding back and knew more; consequently, Headquarters recommended resumption of EITs.”

The report does state that the capture and interrogation of suspected terrorists helped thwart terrorist plots and provided valuable intelligence.

“In this regard, there is no doubt that the program has been effective.” But the use of methods such as waterboarding and whether those tactics were effective “is a more subjective process and not without some concern.”

Helgerson’s report contained 10 recommendations on what steps the agency should take to deal with the violations. But those recommendations were completely redacted in the declassified version of the report.

Helgerson issued a statement Monday after the report was released stating that the Obama administration should have released the contents of the recommendations he had made.

“The most important findings of the review related to basic systemic issues: had management controls been established; were necessary laws, regulations and guidelines in place and understood; had staff officers and contractors been adequately trained; and had they discharged their responsibilities properly?

“The essence of the report is expressed in the Conclusions and Recommendations,” Helgerson said. “I am disappointed that the Government did not release even a redacted version of the Recommendations, which described a number of corrective actions that needed to be taken.”

Helgerson said it appeared that many of the torture techniques “were designed solely because they were degrading.”

He added that he took agency manager at their word that torture produced “a large amount of valuable intelligence.” But he suggested government officials should undertake a comprehensive review conducted by an “independent panel of experts” with interrogation-related backgrounds should evaluate the “quality of intelligence” gained through torture.

Helgerson said the CIA needed to “answer more definitively the question of whether the particular interrogation techniques used were effective and necessary, or whether such information could be acquired using more traditional methods.”

Moreover, he said his investigation, launched in January 2003, was undertaken “in part because of expressions of concern by Agency employees that the actions in which they were involved, or of which they were aware, would be determined by judicial authorities in the U.S. or abroad to be illegal.”

“Many expressed to me personally their feelings that what the Agency was doing was fundamentally inconsistent with long established U.S. Government policy and with American values, and was based on strained legal reasoning,” Helgerson said. “We reported these concerns.

He also said CIA officers were left “scrambling” in the aftermath of 9/11 and were forced to “improvise” when interrogating suspected terrorist “as management oversight, staffing, training, written guidance, and many processes and procedures were still being established.”

He said the common thread among all of the problems he discovered with the torture and detention program was “that management controls and operational procedures were not in place…”

On specific methods, such as waterboarding, Helgerson said:

We found that waterboarding had been utilized in a manner that was inconsistent with the understanding between CIA and the Department of Justice. The Department had provided the Agency a written legal opinion based on an Agency assurance that although some techniques would be used more than once, repetition would “not be substantial.” My view was that, whatever methodology was used to count applications of the waterboard, the very large number of applications to which some detainees were subjected led to the inescapable conclusion that the Agency was abusing this technique.

Helgerson said the Justice Department did not provide the CIA with a “critical legal opinion…, which I believed was needed to protect Agency employees and detainees.”

“The Department of Justice had earlier determined that the Agency’s interrogation techniques did not constitute torture, but it had never opined on whether the same actions were consistent with the obligation undertaken by the US Government under Article 16 of the Torture Convention to prohibit cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,” Helgerson said. “In fact, it appeared that certain of the techniques were designed solely because they were degrading. As a result of our report and appeals from other key officials, the Department of Justice did later issue an opinion on this matter, approving the Agency’s actions.”

Although Helgerson said he accepted the conclusions of CIA managers that the brutal torture of detainees resulted in “valuable” intelligence, he believed the CIA has yet to provide definitive answers as to whether specific torture techniques were “effective” and “necessary” in obtaining intelligence or whether the same information could have been obtained through “traditional methods.”

“Even at this late date, an independent panel of experts with backgrounds in interrogation should systematically evaluate the quality of the intelligence gained as related to the specific techniques used, or not used, in particular cases,” he said. “This would clarify the value of the information and the utility of various approaches.”

Yet despite the fact that the report clearly shows that the Bush administration officials had been intimately involved in the process, a criminal investigation authorized by Attorney General Eric Holder Monday will be limited in scope and will focus on whether CIA contractors and agency interrogators violated anti-torture laws.