Washington (CNN) -- The CIA's harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees during the Bush era didn't work, were more brutal than previously revealed and delivered no "ticking time bomb" information that prevented an attack, according to an explosive Senate report released Tuesday.
The majority report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee is a damning condemnation of the tactics -- branded by critics as torture -- the George W. Bush administration deployed in the fear-laden days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The techniques, according to the report, were "deeply flawed," poorly managed and often resulted in "fabricated" information.
The long-delayed study, distilled from more than six million CIA documents, also says the agency consistently misled Congress and the Bush White House about the harsh methods it used and the results it obtained from interrogating al Qaeda suspects.
The report is reigniting the partisan divide over combating terrorism that dominated Washington a decade ago. Democrats argue the tactics conflict with American values while leading members of the Bush administration insist they were vital to preventing another attack.
It contains grisly details of detainees held in secret overseas facilities being subjected to near drowning, or waterboarding, driven to delirium by days of sleep deprivation, threatened with mock executions and threats that their relatives would be sexually abused.
The central claim of the report is that the controversial CIA methods did not produce information necessary to save lives that was not already available from other means. That is important because supporters of the program have always said that it was vital to obtaining actionable intelligence from detainees that could not be extracted through conventional interrogations.
CIA Director John Brennan strongly disagreed with the finding.
"Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees (subject to enhanced interrogation) did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives," he said. "The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al Qaeda continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day."
Brennan said the agency had learned from its mistakes, but refuted the idea that it systematically misled top officials about its tactics and results. Obama: 'We tortured some folks' Hagel: We're 'prepared' for report release Former CIA: Program was 'mismanaged' Shines a light on a dark chapter for CIA Bush refutes CIA torture report
But President Barack Obama said in a statement the report reinforced his view that the harsh interrogation methods "were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests."
"I think overall, the men and women at the CIA do a really tough job and they do it really well," Obama said later Tuesday in an interview with Telemundo. "But in the aftermath of 9/11, in the midst of a national trauma, and uncertainty as to whether these attacks were gonna repeat themselves, what's clear is that the CIA set up something very fast without a lot of forethought to what the ramifications might be."
The Senate report also reveals new information that former president George W. Bush was not briefed by any CIA officer on the extent of the interrogations until April 2006.
When he finally was told, Bush expressed discomfort about the "image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself," according to the report, a declassified 525 page summary of a still-confidential 6,000 page document. ...
