Cheney: Bush knew about CIA torture after 9/11 attacks

Former US president George W. Bush was aware of the CIA’s harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists at prisons, according to his vice president Dick Cheney.

“I think he knew certainly the techniques, we did discuss the techniques, there was no effort on our part to keep him from that,” Cheney told Fox News on Wednesday.

“That the president wasn’t being told is just a flat out lie,” he said. “He was fully informed.”

A new report by the Senate Intelligence Committee claimed that Bush did not know about the torture program that began following 9/11 attacks until April 2006.

The Senate report released on Tuesday also disclosed that the torture program did not work.

The tactics were more brutal than previously revealed and they delivered no “ticking time bomb” information that prevented an attack.

According to the report, the CIA misled Congress and the White House about the harsh methods such as waterboarding, sleep deprivation, mock executions and threats that the relatives of the prisoners would be sexually abused.

“Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in painful stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads,” the report said.

Many prisoners under the CIA’s torture methods suffered from insomnia, hallucinations, and paranoia. Some of them tried to mutilate themselves.

The Senate report is a declassified 525 page summary of a still-confidential 6,000 page document.

Top UN officials said all American officials who were involved in torture must be prosecuted for violating the UN Convention Against Torture that was ratified by the United States in 1994.