[Frofted]

A hotly disputed US Senate torture report concludes that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods provided no key evidence in the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to congressional aides and outside experts familiar with the investigation.

The CIA still disputes that conclusion.

From the moment of bin Laden's death almost three years ago in what was America's biggest counterterrorism success, former Bush administration and some senior CIA officials have cited the evidence trail leading to the al-Qaida mastermind's compound in Pakistan as vindicating the "enhanced interrogation techniques" they authorized after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

But Democratic and some Republican senators have disputed that account. They described simulated drownings, sleep deprivation and other such practices as cruel and ineffective. With the release edging closer for the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on interrogations, renditions and detentions, they hope to make a persuasive case.

The report, congressional aides and outside experts said, examines the treatment of several high-level terror detainees and the information they provided on bin Laden. The aides and people briefed on the report spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the confidential document.

The most high-profile detainee linked to the bin Laden investigation was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom the CIA waterboarded 183 times. Mohammed, intelligence officials have noted, confirmed after his 2003 capture that he knew an important al-Qaida courier with the nom de guerre Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti.

But the report concludes that such information wasn't critical, according to the aides. Mohammed only discussed al-Kuwaiti months after being waterboarded, while he was under standard interrogation, they said. And Mohammed neither acknowledged al-Kuwaiti's significance nor provided interrogators with the courier's real name.

The debate over how investigators put the pieces together is significant because years later, the courier led US intelligence to the sleepy Pakistani military town of Abbottabad. There, Navy Seals killed bin Laden in a secret mission.

The CIA also has pointed to the value of information provided by senior al-Qaida operative Abu Faraj al-Libi, who was captured in 2005 and held at a secret prison.

US officials have described how al-Libi made up a name for a trusted courier and denied knowing al-Kuwaiti. Al-Libi, they said, was so adamant and unbelievable in his denial that the CIA took it as confirmation he and Mohammed were protecting the courier.

But the report concludes evidence gathered from al-Libi wasn't significant either, the aides said.

Essentially, they argued, Mohammed, al-Libi and others subjected to harsh treatment confirmed only what investigators already knew about the courier. And when they denied the courier's significance or provided misleading information, investigators would only have considered that significant if they already presumed the courier's importance.

The aides did not address information provided by yet another al-Qaida operative: Hassan Ghul, captured in Iraq in 2004. Intelligence officials have described Ghul as the true lynchpin of the bin Laden investigation after he identified al-Kuwaiti as a critical courier.

In a 2012 news release, Dianne Feinstein, the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Carl Levin acknowledged an unidentified "third detainee" had provided relevant information on the courier. But they said he did so the day before he was subjected to harsh CIA interrogation. "This information will be detailed in the Intelligence committee's report," the senators said at the time.

In any case, it still took the CIA years to learn al-Kuwaiti's real identity: Sheikh Abu Ahmed, a Pakistani man born in Kuwait. How the US learned of Ahmed's name is still unclear.

Without providing full details, aides said the Senate report illustrates the importance of the National Security Agency's efforts overseas.

Intelligence officials have previously described how in the years when the CIA couldn't find where bin Laden's courier was, NSA eavesdroppers came up with nothing until 2010 — when Ahmed had a telephone conversation with someone monitored by U.S. intelligence.

At that point, U.S. intelligence was able to follow Ahmed to bin Laden's hideout.

Feinstein and other senators have spoken only vaguely of the contents of the classified review. But they have made references to the divergence between their understanding of how the bin Laden operation came together and assertions of former CIA and Bush administration officials who have defended harsh interrogations.

Feinstein will push to release a summary of the intelligence committee's review later this week, starting a declassification process that could take several months before any documents are made public.

[lukemac]

"Intelligence committee" now there is any oxymoron if ever there was one. No, they did NOT water-board the suspect to reveal Osama bib Laden;s whereabouts, it was the spiked cattle prod they shoved up his rectum and ran 1000 volts through that got him talking. Lets be fair.

[oconnor]

I thought when US&Alies did torture we agreed to rebrand it as ''Enhanced Interogation''. Not that anyone would dare say or do anything about it....but we all know good guys do enchanced interogations, while bad guys do torture, lets get the facts straight.

[tgs]

It's remarkable how the US is consistently getting away with torturing (I'm gonna refrain from using the bs euphemisms) people despite the UN Convention Against Torture, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rghts and the Istanbul Protocols.

Also, I literally laughed out loud reading how the NSA were supposedly crucial in finding Bin Laden. That's a bit of a coinky-dink, given how badly the NSA is viewed globally, not just in the US.

[brraverishhh]

Using torture revealed no useful information but reveals a great deal concerning the character of our leaders. There is an utter absence of morality in our leadership and the US public now must accept that we are the bad guys.

[Beerinkol]

Torture does work, but it depends on the information and how you can verify if its true or not!
for example, if I wanted your pin number and you refused to give it too me, I can could torture, and verify the number you gaveto me , by testing it on a cash point machine. Just because something is distasteful , does not mean it does not work.

The reason the SIS gave their agents poison pills in WW2 was because everyone breaks eventually.

[softy54534]

This purveys a false impression. The truth is that our torture gave enough bad information it got a lot of people killed. I don't think they used torture to get information, but because they are just bad people who wanted to torture.

[Ifroham4]

So even though the Hollywood movie told us torture led us to Bin Ladin (and the movie was based on leaks from the Obama white house) it turns out this wasn't true!

What next? Will you be telling us that Bin Laden died a long time ago, on his dialysis machine in a cave, and that the whole heroic Bigelow/Obama "kill him and dump him in the sea" tale was a fake?