In a Senate hearing on torture today, former FBI Special Agent and Abu Zubaydah interrogator Ali Soufan decried so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques used against detainees, calling them less effective than traditional methods of information gathering.
From CNN:
Soufan, who was involved in the interrogation of CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah, took issue with former Vice President Dick Cheney, [...]

ASP Senior Fellow Dr. Bernard I. Finel recently penned an op-ed about the restoration of professionalism in the executive branch after the administration of George W. Bush, where aides were permitted to dispense advice that led to illegal acts, and subsequently have not been held accountable for their actions.
From Bernard’s piece:
In the last administration, lawyers [...]

Ali Soufan, a supervisory special agent in the FBI from 1997 to 2005, writes a compelling op-ed in today’s New York Times, in which he rebuts claims that the use of torture on Abu Zubaydah produced actionable intelligence where traditional methods had failed. 
He writes:
It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. [...]

The Senate Armed Services Committee today released the declassified version of its investigation into the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody since the start of the so-called “War on Terror.”  You can read the whole report here.
What they found, in a bipartisan report, is striking and horrifying.  In essence, the United States government adopted techniques [...]

Blogger Andrew Sullivan has likened torture to a cancer on America’s democracy, that “metastasizes quickly and poisons everything it touches.” Today’s Washington Post has a story about likely investigations in Europe of torture during the Bush Administration:
European prosecutors are likely to investigate CIA and Bush administration officials on suspicion of violating an international ban on [...]

American Security Project Adjunct Fellow Dr. Evelyn Farkas appears on MSNBC on Friday, April 17th to discuss President Obama’s release of the CIA torture memos and U.S. policies towards Pakistan.  You can view Dr. Farkas’ interview on our website here.

My colleague Jim Ludes already flagged this story from the Washington Post (Detainee’s Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots).  There are at least three significant issues I’d like to stress as well.
First, regardless of whether torture can ever work in the abstract, I think we need to be very skeptical about the utility of torture as [...]

General David Petraeus spoke eloquently this morning about the need to preserve our values even as we prosecute a fight against those who would do us harm.
Asked by CNN’s John King about former Vice President Dick Cheney’s assertion that President Obama was making America less safe, General Petraeus said:
PETRAEUS: Well, I wouldn’t necessarily agree with [...]

There is a news story out today that the CIA confirmed destroying 92 videotapes of interrogations of terrorist-suspects since 9/11/2001.
According to the AP, the tapes
were destroyed, in part, to protect the identities of the government questioners at a time the Justice Department was debating whether the tactics used during the interrogations—which are believed to have [...]

From the NYT: Bush Decides to Keep Guantánamo Open
Here are the key section:
Despite his stated desire to close the American prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, President Bush has decided not to do so, and never considered proposals drafted in the State Department and the Pentagon that outlined options for transferring the detainees elsewhere, according to [...]