Mr Obama ­admitted that some of the tactics ­detailed in the report were ‘brutal’. Picture: AFP Source: AFP

The Central Intelligence Agency also misled the White House and congress with inaccurate claims about the program’s usefulness in thwarting attacks, the Senate intelligence committee said in its graphic report that revived the debate about interrogation ­tech-niques such as waterboarding.

President Barack Obama ­admitted that some of the tactics ­detailed in the explosive report’s 500-page declassified summary were “brutal”. The 6700-page full report is still classified.

“There are a lot of folks who worked very hard after 9/11 to keep us safe, during a very hazardous situation and a time when people were unsure of what was taking place,” he told Telemundo.

“But what was also true is that we took some steps that were ­contrary to who we are, contrary to our values.”

CIA director John Brennan ­defended his agency’s adoption of tough tactics under president ­George W. Bush in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, al-Qa’ida attacks on US cities.

He insisted that while mistakes were made, brutal techniques “did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture ­terrorists and save lives”.

US embassies were on alert for reprisals as committee chairwoman ­Dianne Feinstein pushed ahead with publication of the report, ­despite Secretary of State John Kerry warning that it could provoke anger around the world.

Democrat Senator Feinstein said at least 119 detainees were held under the program, with many subjected to “coercive ­interrogation techniques, in some cases amounting to torture”.

The detainees were rounded up by US operatives from 2001 to 2009 and interrogated either at CIA-run secret prisons in allied nations or at the US detention ­centre at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Senator Feinstein said some around the world “will try to use it to justify evil actions or incite more violence”.

“We can’t prevent that. But history will judge us by our commitment to a just society governed by law, and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say ‘never again’.”

While heavily redacted, the ­report is damning.

“The interrogations of CIA ­detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others,” it said.

Management of the program deteriorated so poorly in one country “that the CIA remains ­unable to determine the number and identity of the individuals it detained”.

The review of 6.3 million pages of documents concluded that use of the techniques “was not an ­effective means of obtaining accurate information or gaining ­detainee co-operation”.

Seven of 39 detainees known to have been subjected to so-called enhanced interrogations “produced no intelligence”, while others “provided significant accurate intelligence prior to, or without having been subjected to, these techniques”. In several cases “the CIA inaccurately claimed that specific, otherwise unavailable information was acquired from a CIA detainee” as a direct ­result of the harsh interrogations.

Republicans blasted the report as a “political” assault on the CIA.

“We found that those biases led to faulty analysis, serious inaccuracies, and misrepresentations of fact,” Republicans led by Saxby Chambliss said in their minority report.

But Republican John McCain, a former prisoner of war tortured in Vietnam, praised the report’s release and said harsh interrogations did little to make Americans safer.

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence,” he said.

“This question isn’t about our enemies, it’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be.”

British Prime Minister David Cameron said: “Those of us who want to see a safer, more secure world want to see extremism defeated. We won’t succeed if we lose our moral authority.”

Former Bush vice-president Dick Cheney staunchly defended the program, telling The New York Times the interrogations were ­“absolutely, totally justified”.

“When we had that program in place, we kept the country safe from any more mass casualty ­attacks, which was our objective,” he said.

AFP