Heinrich Statement On Today's CIA Detention, Interrogation Report Vote

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, released the following statement after he voted to declassify the committee’s Executive Summary and the Findings and Conclusions of its Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) detention and interrogation program:

“America has paid a huge price for torturing detainees. Not only is torture morally wrong, it just doesn’t work. It’s a grave stain on our history costing us global credibility on the issue of human rights. I hope the release of this report will finally let us face what was done in the name of the American people, and allow for future generations to use these findings to learn from the mistakes made by the architects of this program.

“The decision to use these techniques and the defense of the program were the work of only a few people at the CIA. This report is not a condemnation of the thousands of men and women at the agency who work tirelessly every day to protect and defend our nation from very real and imminent threats.

“While I would still like to have the full report declassified and released, today’s vote is a step in the right direction. The information in the Executive Summary and the Committee’s Findings and Conclusions will finally pull back the curtain on the bad judgment that went into creating and implementing this interrogation program.

“This report shows that multiple levels of government were misled about the effectiveness of these techniques. If secretive government agencies want to operate in a democracy, there must be trust. As the Committee carries out future oversight, we will be wary of the lessons we’ve learned from this report.”

The review was initiated by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in March 2009 by a bipartisan 14-1 vote. Last year, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to adopt the study. The full report is a 6,600-page comprehensive review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program based on a documentary review of over six million pages of CIA and other records.