US increases security worldwide ahead of report on anti-terror probe tactics

The Senate Intelligence Committee report will include graphic details about sexual threats and other harsh interrogation techniques the CIA meted out to captured militants in the aftermath of 9/11.

By REUTERS
Police officers patrol outside the US embassy in London December 9, 2014. (photo credit: REUTERS)
Police officers patrol outside the US embassy in London December 9, 2014.
(photo credit: REUTERS)
Security measures were intensified at the United States embassy in Berlin on Tuesday ahead of the release of a new report on CIA anti-terrorism investigation tactics.
The report by the Senate Intelligence Committee will include graphic details about sexual threats and other harsh interrogation techniques the CIA meted out to captured militants in the years after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, sources familiar with the document said on Monday.
Preparing for a worldwide outcry from the publication of explicit details, the White House and US intelligence officials said on Monday they had shored up security of US facilities worldwide, including at the Berlin embassy.
A police presence could be seen at the embassy on Tuesday, including police vans and officers patrolling.
The document describes how al-Qaida operative Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, suspected mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was threatened with a buzzing power drill, the sources said. The drill was never actually used on him.
The suicide attack on the USS Cole in Yemen killed 17 US sailors. Nashiri was captured by the CIA in Dubai in 2002 and held in secret CIA prisons for four years before being transferred to the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The report also documents how at least one detainee was sexually threatened with a broomstick, the sources said.
The report, which took years to produce, charts the history of the CIA's "Rendition, Detention and Interrogation" program, which President George W. Bush authorized after the September 11 attacks.
Bush ended many aspects of the program before leaving office, and President Barack Obama swiftly banned "enhanced interrogation techniques," which critics say are torture, after his 2009 inauguration.
A pair of Republican lawmakers, Senators Marco Rubio and Jim Risch, criticized the release of the report on Monday saying it could destabilize international relations and incite violence.


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