Bush only got torture details four years into programme: US Senate Report

WASHINGTON - Former US President George W. Bush was only given details of the torture being used by the CIA four years into the brutal interrogation programme launched during his tenure, according to the Senate report released Tuesday.

The former Republican president "'expressed discomfort' with the 'image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself,'" the report recounts on page 40.

According to the 500-page declassified summary of the Senate Intelligence Committees findings, the first CIA briefing with Bush on the "enhanced interrogation techniques" was on April 8, 2006.

Some of the prisoners - including Abu Zubaydah, allegedly Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who allegedly led Al-Qaeda operations in the Gulf - were subjected to the torture starting in 2002.

"CIA documentation and discussions with Presidential briefers and individuals involved with the interrogation programme at the time suggest that details on enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) were not shared with the President" between 2001 and 2003, the report said.

In the April 2006 briefing, then-CIA director Porter Goss described seven proposed "enhanced interrogation techniques" and showed a photograph of a detainee who had been subjected to them, at which point Bush "expressed discomfort."