Here’s What Made George W. Bush Uncomfortable About Torture

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George W. Bush
President Bush speaks about the war on terror at a hotel in Washington on Sept. 29, 2006.Charles Dharapak—AP
By Tessa Berenson Rogers

The CIA’s interrogation and detention programs occurred under President George W. Bush, but even he had reservations, according to a Senate report.

The Senate report released Tuesday says that the CIA did not brief President Bush on specific interrogation techniques until April 2006 and that he expressed reservation about one technique then.

According to footnote 17 on page 18 of the introduction:

According to CIA records, when briefed in April 2006, the 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.”

Footnote 179 on page 40 elaborates that the account of Bush’s discomfort came from en email from a psychologist working as a CIA contractor, who was given the pseudonym “Grayson Swigert” in the report, about a June 7, 2006, meeting the contractor had with the director of the CIA.

The footnote goes on to note that the CIA did not dispute that account, but went on to say that agency records were incomplete and that Bush said in his autobiography that he discussed the program with CIA Director George Tenet in 2002 and “personally approved the techniques.”

Bush first publicly acknowledged the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program in September of 2006.

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Write to Tessa Berenson Rogers at tessa.Rogers@time.com