CIA 'Torture Report:' House Intelligence Chairman, Former CIA Chief Warn Against Report's Release

Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on Sunday that the release of a U.S. Senate report investigating the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the CIA is a “terrible idea” and is likely to cause “violence and deaths” abroad. Rogers told CNN that the report's findings could be used by extremists to incite violence, harming American interests around the world.

“Our foreign partners are telling us this will cause violence and deaths,” Rogers said. “Our own intelligence community has assessed that this will cause violence and deaths. ... We have seen what happens when other incidents are used in the propaganda terrorist machine to incite violence.”

Marie Harf, the spokesperson for the U.S. state department, reportedly said that all American officials and military personnel overseas had been directed to review their security situation to ensure their safety “in case the report triggers violence.” Concerns over the timing and accuracy of the report were also echoed by Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA.

“First of all, the CIA workforce will feel as if it has been tried and convicted in absentia since the Senate Democrats and their staff didn't talk to anyone actively involved in the program. Second, this will be used by our enemies to motivate people to attack Americans and American facilities overseas,” Hayden told CBS on Sunday.

He also disputed earlier statements by Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in which she reportedly accused the CIA of willfully understating the harshness of the interrogation and confinement practices employed by it.

“To say that we relentlessly over an expanded period of time lied to everyone about a program that wasn't doing any good, that beggars the imagination,” Hayden reportedly said.

The 6,200-page report, which is scheduled to be released later this week, contains details about the CIA’s use of techniques such as sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces and waterboarding, The Associated Press reported, citing officials who have read the report.