CIA Used Gun, Drill in Interrogation

"We could get your mother in here," a CIA interrogator told Abd al Rahim al Nashiri, the man authorities believe plotted the bombing of the U.S. destroyer Cole, according to the report. The threat was meant to prey on fears in Middle East circles that prisoners would be made to witness the sexual abuse of their immediate family members.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, suspected of masterminding the Sept. 11 attacks, was told, "We're going to kill your children," the report said.

The document provides the most extensive examination to date of CIA conduct in a constellation of secret prisons that the agency set up after Sept. 11. In some cases, the report praises how the prisons were run, and acknowledges that the program provided intelligence that let to other captures and the disruption of planned attacks.

But the report also faults CIA personnel -- from the bottom ranks to the top -- for failures in oversight and breakdowns during interrogations. It also sounded a warning that what the agency was doing could be out of step with the nation's values and commitments.

The techniques being used "are inconsistent with the public policy positions that the United States has taken regarding human rights," the report said, citing the anxieties of case officers convinced that they would one day be held to account.

"One officer expressed concern that one day, agency officers will wind up on some 'wanted list' to appear before the World Court for war crimes stemming from activities" in the secret prison sites, the report said.

Many of the incidents described in the document were previously disclosed. The inspector general expresses the deepest misgivings, for example, with how frequently CIA interrogators were subjecting prisoners to the simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.