CIA Torture Poll Indicates Majority Of America Supports Agency’s Brutal Interrogation Techniques

CIA torture poll shows that a majority of Americans today think that the agency's brutal techniques for interrogating terrorism suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks were all justified. Even if half of the public believes that treatment methods have somehow amounted to torture, they still support the Central Intelligence Agency.

By a margin of nearly 2 to 1, 50% to 31% of those who were interviewed for the CIA torture poll believe that the harsh techniques are more able to produce valuable intelligence. In general, 58% believe that torturing the suspected terrorists can actually be justified "sometimes" or "often."

This new CIA torture poll actually follows the scathing Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into the detention and interrogation program of the agency, which US President Barack Obama decided to end back in 2009.

A report, which was submitted just last week, has reached a conclusion that the agency's interrogation techniques, which include placing the suspects in stress positions, water boarding the detainees, and keeping them inside confinement boxes, were not effective in acquiring intelligence.

The same report also discovered that more than two dozen of the detainees were actually wrongly held. It also mentioned that the interrogation program was very poorly managed and that the agency intentionally misled the top officials of the United States into believing that the program was effective.

Despite the results of the CIA torture poll, the report points out that 54% of the American people agree that the agency has been misleading the Congress, the public, and the White House about its activities. However, former intelligence officials have strongly disputed this assertion.

Director John Brennan acknowledged that, apart from the CIA having made some mistakes, the findings of the Senate with regards to subjecting the detainees to "enhanced interrogation techniques" or EITs did not provide any intelligence information that were of use.

Brennan said, "For someone to say that there was no intelligence of value, of use, that came from those detainees, once they were subjected to EITs, I think that is - lacks any foundation at all."