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How the CIA misled the public on its torture program, in one chart

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s torture report didn’t just find that the CIA carried out some pretty terrible abuses of human rights. The report also found that the agency repeatedly misled the public about the extent of its torture program.

This chart, compiled with information from the report, shows the discrepancies:

CIA misled public

Most strikingly, the CIA reported fewer than one in five of its wrongful detentions, cases in which the agency detained someone who turned out to be innocent. And the CIA tortured and detained more people than it had previously reported.

Among these wrongful detentions, perhaps one of the more embarrassing for the CIA is that the agency actually tortured its own informants at one point.

In short, the CIA shackled two detainees for approximately 24 hours in a standing position to deprive them of sleep — only to find out that the detainees were former CIA contacts who tried to let the agency know of their activities so they could provide intelligence. So the CIA tortured two people who not only were not terrorists, but had been trying to help the CIA fight actual terrorists.

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